A Jacksonville judge on Thursday, November 12, denied Mario Fernandez Saldana a new trial and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2022 murder-for-hire killing of Jared Bridegan, bringing the courtroom phase of one of Florida's most closely watched custody-dispute murders to a close in Duval County.
Source: Florida Times-Union via Coral Springs News
Circuit Judge London Kite did not explain her new-trial ruling from the bench and moved straight to sentencing. A first-degree murder conviction in Florida carries a mandatory life sentence, and Fernandez Saldana, 38, had also been convicted of solicitation to commit a capital felony, for which he received a concurrent 30-year term, according to courtroom coverage of the hearing.
Before sentencing, Judge Kite heard victim-impact statements in this order: Ashley Jenkins, Jared Bridegan's sister; Gaylord Bridegan, his father; James Vach, Kirsten Bridegan's father; Kirsten Bridegan, his widow; a statement from Bridegan's daughter, read by Kirsten; and Adam Bridegan, his brother, the Times-Union reported.
What happened on Sanctuary Boulevard in February 2022
Jared Bridegan, a 33-year-old Microsoft executive, was shot multiple times on the night of February 16, 2022, on an isolated, dark stretch of Sanctuary Boulevard in Jacksonville Beach. He had just dropped off his 9-year-old twins at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her husband, Fernandez Saldana, and was driving back toward St. Augustine when a tire placed in the middle of the road forced him to stop. He got out with his hazard lights on to move the tire and was gunned down. His 2-year-old daughter was still strapped in the back seat and was not physically harmed.
Source: Florida Times-Union via Coral Springs News
Prosecutors said Fernandez Saldana conspired with Gardner to hire Henry Tenon to kill Bridegan against the background of a long and bitter divorce and custody dispute, and that the plotters knew exactly when and where Bridegan would be that night. A Duval County jury convicted Fernandez Saldana on August 26, 2026, after deliberating for less than four hours, according to a State Attorney's Office announcement at the time.
"He was not an inconvenience to be eliminated"
Kirsten Bridegan told the court she did not believe Fernandez Saldana had "any shred of remorse," and refused to give him "the satisfaction of hearing the full extent of the pain his actions has caused us." Her husband, she said, "was not an inconvenience to be eliminated." She also explained why she accepted the state's decision to withdraw its intention to seek the death penalty: out of compassion for Jared's two oldest children, who had their father taken from them and were then separated from their younger sisters.
In a written statement read aloud in court, Bridegan's daughter wrote that she has "had to experience things that no 14-year-old should have to experience" and must live without being able to call, hug or hear her father's voice. Jenkins, the victim's sister, said the murder "shattered my stability" and described years of grief and therapy, and a family that spent its savings fighting to see the grandchildren.
Why the new-trial bid failed
The defence's latest motion, a 30-page filing on October 16, centred on a stolen .40-calibre handgun recovered on September 17 during an unrelated narcotics investigation in Killeen, Texas, where it was found under the driver's seat of a suspect's vehicle. The defence argued the recovery undercut the state's trial theory about a copied serial number and a related 10mm Glock that investigators believe was connected to the killing. Prosecutors answered in a 17-page response on November 3 that the defence had failed to object to most of the issues at trial, that none amounted to fundamental error, and that the recovered gun did not resolve the whereabouts of the homicide weapon or change the verdict. An earlier 45-page motion filed September 3 had attacked the circumstantial case, pointing to deleted phone communications, missing location evidence and the absence of the murder weapon.
Prosecutors originally sought the death penalty in the Bridegan cases. They withdrew that intention in November 2025 with the support of Bridegan's widow and family, a decision Kirsten Bridegan addressed directly in her statement to the court on Thursday.
What happens next
Fernandez Saldana's murder case is now sentenced, but his legal troubles are not over. He also faces separate lewd and lascivious charges involving minors that were filed shortly after his murder trial; he has pleaded not guilty to those allegations, and a further pretrial hearing in that case was reported for December 2, 2026. Those charges are allegations only and have not been proven. Separately, Shanna Gardner still awaits trial in connection with Bridegan's murder. The murder prosecution was led by the office of State Attorney Melissa Nelson for Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit.
For the Bridegan family, Thursday's hearing closed a case that began with an ambush in front of a toddler in 2022 and ran through arrests in 2023, a conviction in August 2026 and, finally, a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Fernandez Saldana will serve that sentence in Florida state prison.