The Murder of Jared Bridegan: Part Six: A Sweet Gesture

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[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_00] I'm Anya, and this is part of our deep dive into a murder conspiracy case full of twists, turns, and upcoming trials. This series will take you inside the murder of Jared Bridegan and make you an expert for the approaching trials. Today we're going to learn some pretty shocking and upsetting details, so just be aware of that.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of rape, murder, violence, and the killing of animals, specifically cats.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives at this point were certain that Jared Bridegan had been a victim of a calculated ambush. Not a random shooting, not a robbery gone wrong, not road rage. But they had to figure out who might have been after him. On March 7, 2022, we previously mentioned that lead detective Christopher Johns drove the victim's vehicle to the city garage. He brought along with him Detective Jason Lamont. It wasn't

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_00] a long trip. The Jacksonville Beach Police Department property garage and the city garage are in the same general compound. The detectives put the vehicle on a lift and had it raised up

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_02] into the air. While there, Detectives Johns, Lamont, and Stephen Currier, as well as Detective Sergeant C. David Young, searched the victim's whole vehicle, focusing on its undercarriage. They stared up at that. They went to see if they could find any tracking devices. They saw nothing. It seemed like whoever had ambushed and killed Jared had done so without the help of any surreptitiously placed tracking devices. Another dead end.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00] Later that day, detectives got a reminder of the human cost of this case. At 3 p.m., Jared's widow, Kirsten Brydigan, arrived at the Jacksonville Beach Police Station. She collected something from Detective Lamont, the spare key for her Chevrolet Suburban. It had been in Jared's vehicle, along with two spare house keys on the same ring. She got the extra key and one of the house keys. Detectives retained another house key in their evidence room.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_02] Kirsten had loved Jared. She mourned him. That much was clear. But detectives had some ideas of others who seemingly loathed Jared. In our last episode, we went over the intense animosity between Jared and his former wife, Shanna Gardner, and her new husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00] Do you remember the last episode in our series? In it, Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana bashed Jared to the police in their respective interviews, presenting themselves as the aggrieved reasonable parties and portraying him as a passive-aggressive control freak. At the same time, as they were calling him controlling, they revealed they would not let Jared's twins attend their own father's funeral

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_00] after learning that they would not be welcome at the service. Yeah, all that seems like a lot, right?

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_02] But a grudge is one thing. Investigators needed something tying somebody to the crime scene. They had to go where the evidence led them, not just make assumptions based on vibes and family drama. So far, their best clue was the mysterious blue truck seen before and after the murder, captured on surveillance footage and in the memories of witnesses. It seemed to arrive before the

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02] shooting and then speed away from the crime scene. But they did not have a license plate number or a

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_00] clear shot of the driver. They needed more. One way detectives can tie a suspect to a crime scene is through the murder weapon. Now, based on the shells around Jared's body, police knew what kind of firearm had killed him. A 10-millimeter firearm. That was interesting. In fact, we have heard from a couple of lovely listeners that the 10-millimeter has a notoriously strong recoil. That can make it hard to handle. If the detectives were lucky, though, perhaps the perpetrator had bought the gun

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_00] locally. They had to check. On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, at 5 p.m., Detective Lamont got copies of gun sales from Beaches Pond, a Jacksonville beach shop, specifically for transactions of 10-millimeter pistols. He got back six of them. Six names. Six men. He ran each of them through law enforcement

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02] databases. None of them owned a Ford truck. None of them seemed to be the driver of that vehicle of

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_00] interest seen rambling across the night of the murder. It was another dead end. Detectives would have to keep searching. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02] attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is The Murder of Jared

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00] Bridegan, Part 6, A Sweet Gesture. We mentioned previously all the video recordings of this mysterious

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00] blue truck. From all the canvassing they did, detectives were able to gather so many bits of this footage. Even as late as early March, videos were still coming in. One woman told police her late husband's friend had helped her download something, although it turned out to be nothing because her camera was broken. There were a lot of instances like this. Civilians sincerely trying to be helpful, but ultimately unable to provide additional information. On March 10, 2022, Detective

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_02] Corporal Brian Wallace met with Security Supervisor Donnell Wright at Baptist Medical Center Beaches. They could not find the vehicle of interest on the footage, a four-minute drive from Garner's house or crossed the way from the Jacksonville Beach Golf Club. But other people coming forward provided new

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00] pieces of the puzzle. The same day he struck out with the medical center, for instance, Corporal Wallace went to Taco Lou on Beach Boulevard to talk with Caitlin, the manager there. She gave him access to the restaurant's outdoor cameras. At the 625-34 timestamp, he saw that mysterious blue truck going eastbound on Beach Boulevard. Beach Boulevard is a main thoroughfare that is also United States Route

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_00] 90. By going eastbound, the truck was rushing closer and closer to the place where the murder occurred, on Sanctuary Boulevard and Jacksonville Drive. A business called Public Storage at 1200 Shutter

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_02] Avenue also provided a video on a DVD. In it, Corporal Wallace watched the suspicious blue truck rumble past at 6.52 and 10 seconds p.m. on the night of the murder west on Shutter Avenue. Shutter Avenue is where Pablo Hamlet is. It's right near Marsh Inlet, where Gardner lived with Fernandez-Haldana. That footage had been recorded on an investigator's city iPhone at first due to extraction issues.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_00] In total, in those days, six videos emerged as the most important ones of the bunch. The wheat amongst the chaff. The diamonds in the rough. Corporal Wallace knew that the Jacksonville Beach Police Department would need to focus on those. So on March 1, 2022, he met with someone from the St. John's Sheriff's Office, Detective Kevin Green of their digital forensics unit, to be exact.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_02] That's almost my name, Kevin Greenlee, but of course, there's no relation.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00] Anyways, Corporal Wallace gave Detective Green a USB flash drive with all six key videos.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_02] The SJSO was not the only sheriff's office helping out. On March 4, 2022, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Computer Forensics Unit responded to a request from Detective Alan Ford. He wanted help pulling more data from Jared's 2018 Volkswagen Atlas. They made a plan to process the vehicle on March 7,

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_00] 2022. The Orange County Sheriff's Office also stepped up, even though their county is two hours to the south of all of this. We previously mentioned Orange County Sheriff's Office Detective Peter Hernandez, a digital expert on a major task force known as the Electronic Surveillance Support Team slash Florida Department of Law Enforcement Task Force, or ESST slash FDLE. On Monday, March 7, 2022,

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_00] he arrived in the Jacksonville Beach Police Department's lobby. He handed Detective Brett Burrell an open envelope. Within that was a sealed envelope. That was from Corporal Wallace. Also, within was a clear plastic resealable bag labeled 220000517. Within that was a blue and gray thumb drive with the same number label. Corporal Wallace was out that day, and Detective Burrell was not sure if he'd already made

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_00] a property entry for the sealed package of DVDs they were getting, so he gave those to Detective Sergeant Young. He also signed the FDLE receipt form and scanned a copy for his report. He took the USB and copied its contents and then put that USB in the property room. The following day, on March 8, 2022, he put the contents of the USB drive on DVDs and left those in the property room with everything else.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_02] It was time to expand the scope. The detectives had a trail to follow with this blue truck. They needed to follow it beyond the area right around the crime scene.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00] So, on Thursday, March 10, 2022, Corporal Wallace and Detective Burrell teamed up again, this time on Osceola Avenue, specifically west of South Beach Parkway all the way to America Avenue.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_02] From the murder scene, riding north on America Avenue or going further down Jacksonville Drive and then going northward on South Beach Parkway gets one to Osceola Avenue. It is a nice residential street with plenty of pastel painted homes and fat palm trees. It definitely captures a bit of the resort feel of Jacksonville Beach, in our view.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_00] Corporal Wallace and Detective Burrell were back to canvassing. They needed to ask the residents living there if they had surveillance footage relevant to this murder investigation. They were joined by Detective Ford, who was actually already there searching, and he needed to let them know that.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_02] Detective Burrell only got to one house that day, but he got no response and left his business card. Then Corporal Wallace called Detective Ford. Detective Ford told them he had already gone to all the homes along Osceola Avenue to America Avenue. No need to reinvent the wheel.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_00] Corporal Wallace and Detective Burrell decided to drive north to Roberts Drive. You get there from Osceola Avenue by driving north. It's only about two minutes away. It's a short, tidy residential drive located very close to that golf club we mentioned. Detective Burrell found a resident at

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_02] 1043 a.m. who checked his security footage and only found videos of himself doing yard work around the relevant time of 7 p.m. on the night of the murder. He also went to the storage bin storage facility and talked with Debbie, the manager. She gave him security footage that captures a portion of the east and westbound roadways of 13th Avenue south. He saw only one truck, but that had multiple front headlights,

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_02] and it drove eastbound. That was not what they were looking for. Corporal Wallace, in the meantime,

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00] went to various Baptist health offices in the area to see if they had security cameras that captured

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_02] anything relevant. But as the search for surveillance footage raged on, other detectives tried to

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00] explore other avenues. Investigator B. DeFore brought in credit reports for Jared, Kirsten, Gardner, and Fernandez-Saldana. Detectives knew that they wouldn't find anything super important in those reports, but those reports could help them hone in on specific banking relationships.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_02] On Tuesday, March 8, 2022, Detective John sent subpoenas to Chase Bank and Citibank for records of Jared and Kirsten Breitigan's accounts, as well as those for Gardner. The following day, he sent out

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_00] more to USAA, American Express, and Chase Bank for records of Fernandez-Saldana and Gardner. And

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_02] Community First Credit Union of Florida for Jared and Fernandez-Saldana's accounts. And Mayo Employees Credit Union for just Jared's accounts. And then, on Thursday, March 10, 2022, another one was sent to

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_00] Vice Star Credit Union for Fernandez-Saldana. And on Friday, March 11, 2022, Detective Johns made sure to email a search warrant for Ring doorbell footage to ring.com. That's a lot of paperwork. Meanwhile, on Monday, March 7, 2022, Detective Corporal Ivan Santiago finally got to the bottom of Jared's insurance mystery. But it took a lot of effort. Obviously, in a murder case, insurance is

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_00] very important. It can provide a financial motive for a crime. That day, Corporal Santiago called Farm

[00:16:52] [SPEAKER_02] Bureau Financials about Jared's life insurance policy in 946, one that came up in his divorce from Gardner. She got supervisor Jody Couchman on the phone. At 1.59 p.m., Couchman sent Corporal Santiago an email with an encrypted message attached. The message made it clear that Jared had no active life insurance policy

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_00] at the time of his death. Well, Corporal Santiago wanted to know when that policy from the divorce

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_02] was canceled. Couchman told her she'd need a subpoena to answer that question, so Corporal Santiago

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00] did just that. Later, much later, on Friday, April 1, 2022, Corporal Santiago got an email from the records department. It was about a United Parcel Service package she had just got. Opening it,

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_02] she found subpoenaed documents from the Farm Bureau. The weekend passed. That Monday, April 4, 2022, she went through them, found a few pages missing. So she called Farm Bureau's legal assistant,

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_00] Gloria Statlander. Statlander said that they don't usually send underwriting documents and medical forms. She promised to check with counsel to see what could be done. It's August, which means

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[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00] Around 1.34 p.m. that day, she called back and said that those documents would be sent in overnight. So on Tuesday, April 5th, 2022, Corporal Santiago finally got everything she needed. All the information about the canceled insurance policy. She filed it all away into evidence. Sometimes even the police really have to push to get documentary evidence. On Monday, March 14th, 2022, Detective Lamont asked

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_02] for toll records for a group of people. Kirsten Brightigan, Jared's wife. Shanna Gardner, Jared's former wife. Mario Fernandez-Saldana, Gardner's new husband. John Biggerstaff,

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_00] a local cop accused of sex trafficking and drug crimes. Justin Brightigan, Jared's brother. And then there's some names we just don't recognize. Alexandre Taylor, Stephanie Marie Kim, James Spicer, Michael Swapsey, Brianna Vereen. We do not know why they wanted these names.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, and Jeremy Ordway. We'll hear more about him later in upcoming episodes.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_00] Meanwhile, Detective Currier kept wrangling Google data. On Monday, March 21st, 2022, he got back Google Geofence subscriber information. This was for his warrant for the night of the murder from 640 p.m. to 650 p.m. The names on the devices all belonged to people who lived right near the murder scene. In other words, people who had a reason to be there. The closest one lived on Sanctuary Boulevard. The furthest lived only six minutes away. Some of them might have been in their

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00] residences. Others may have just been nearby, driving to or from their homes. The appearance of their phones in the area was not really weird or suspicious, therefore. Detectives would need to dig deeper to see if there was anything else to follow up on with these people.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_02] On Friday, March 18th, 2022, he wrote up a brand new cell phone tower dump search warrant. This time, he was including the longitudes and latitudes of both the scene location and Jared's ex-wife Gardner's residence. For the whole date of the murder, February 16th, 2022, for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Four days later, Duval County Assistant State's

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_00] Attorney Christina Stifler approved that warrant. The same day, Detective Courier drove into Jacksonville across the St. John's River to the Duval County Courthouse, a large, white, classically influenced building. He needed signatures for his three latest Google Geofence search warrant returns, one for the actual crime scene from 7.50 p.m. to 8 p.m., two just before the murder from 6.40

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00] to 6.50 p.m., and one for the Cradle Creek preservation area. He got Judge Meredith Charbula to sign those. The following day, on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022, Judge Charbula signed Detective Courier's warrant around Gardner's home and the murder scene. As for the Google Geofence search

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_02] warrant returned for Cradle Creek preservation, Detective Courier got nothing from Google. There wasn't any information for that area at the time he wanted to know about.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00] The next day, Detective Courier put in another Google search warrant for the remaining device identification information from all his warrants. ASA Stifler approved all of that. Judge Jake Schemer signed it. If he could get that from Google, Detective Courier could unmask each ID to identify

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_02] the cell phone owner's identification. He was particularly curious about one individual in particular. Remember John Biggerstaff, the former law enforcement officer who ended up getting drug and sex trafficking convictions? Who has a connection to someone in this case? A connection we have not yet made clear? Well, later in this episode, we'll get more into that. Detective Courier pulled his AT&T toll records. He wanted to see where the guy was going. He got phone call information for Biggerstaff's

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_02] cell and landline from December 1st, 2021 all the way through March 14th, 2022, well before the murder and well after. The detective sent all of that to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives research specialist who ran it through their program. That data was important enough for

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Courier to also pass it along to the lead detective in the case, Detective Johns.

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_02] At that point, Detective Courier also got the tower dump information for the scene in Garner's house from T-Mobile. Then it came in for AT&T on Monday, April 4th, 2022. He gave that raw data to the ATF

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_00] to sort through. That was the data. It was a lot of data. In the meantime, detectives had a few more important people to talk to. They still needed to talk to two of the most important people in Jared's

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_02] life. His twins, his son, and his oldest daughter. On Friday, March 4th, 2022, detectives Johns and Lamont, who seemed to be doing most of the highly important interviews, headed into the interview with the kids. The child protection team led the interview. The report doesn't get much into the

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_00] details, but the twins had some interesting things to say. Things that actually contradicted the statements that their stepfather made to those same detectives days before, such as where he was in the

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_02] home that night and what exactly he was doing. Remember, he claimed he was conked out on a couch with a massive headache, woozy from gabapentin, and that he eventually got up and showered,

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_00] and then chatted with the kids and Gardner. The twins remembered that he had been in a back room of the home. They thought this because they saw the lights of the television in there. They did not see him,

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_02] though. Another strange thing had happened that night. Remember, in our past episodes, the date night routine was pretty set in stone. We heard again and again how the twins would enter their

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_00] mother's home through the garage. Not the night of the murder, though. It was closed that night. That was unusual. The twins had gone in through the front door instead. A missing stepfather in a locked

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_02] garage. Would those prove to be big details? We'll have to keep tuning in to find out. In the meantime,

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_00] investigators turned up even more interesting, many would actually say extremely disturbing,

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_02] things about Fernanda Saldana. On Tuesday, March 8, 2022, Detective Lamont called a witness. We've heard about this story before. It was a small detail, so you'd be forgiven for not remembering. Remember, no one knows what's going to be important later on in the earliest days of the investigation. In the initial canvas, remember how a neighbor of Gardner's on March Inlet told police that he

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_02] suspected Jared's ex's new husband of being involved in some prior incident. Oh, in another episode, remember how Detectives Burrell and Lamont showed up to notify Gardner of Jared's death? Fernanda Saldana assumed they were coming to talk to him about a dispute involving animals.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_00] We're about to learn the troubling details of that incident, or incidents we should say. Let's get into it. The neighbor spoke to Detective Benjamin Connor at the time of the initial canvases. Let's call that neighbor S.M. S.M. told detectives that he had some serious issues with Fernandez-Saldana. He believed the man was extremely violent with animals. He believed Fernanda Saldana had actually

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_00] killed his pet cat, as well as stray cats unlucky enough to wander into the neighborhood.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_02] This guy would just shoot and kill them. Detective Lamont had followed up on that initial tip on February 26, 2022, well before the interview with Fernanda Saldana. He wanted to know more about those accusations. Well, S.M. told him that Fernanda Saldana's aggression did not just extend to felines. He apparently also had a huge problem with neighbors who fed the stray cats in the neighborhood.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_02] He would get aggressive, confront them, threaten to harm them physically. And they did not have to just take S.M.'s word for it either. He gave them the name of his neighbor, who we'll refer to as M.A.

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives couldn't get a hold of M.A. for a while, until that day in March, when Detective Lamont rang him. M.A. said he was friends with Fernandez-Saldana, casual friends. Despite that, he had some pretty negative things to say about the man, who he described as a guy with a short temper.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, he confirmed that Fernanda Saldana was shooting stray cats with a pellet gun. M.A. had seen the weapon himself, stored in Fernanda Saldana's garage.

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_00] Now, Detective Lamont wanted to know if Fernanda Saldana owned a real firearm. After all,

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_02] Jared had not been shot with a pellet gun. M.A. said no, he did not know if Fernanda Saldana owned one. He had never seen him with a real firearm. He did not talk about owning one either. And M.A. did not know much about Jared either, although he could say that his friend would occasionally complain

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_00] about the now dead man. Specifically, Fernanda Saldana would get angry about things like Jared refusing to cooperate with scheduling efforts around the twins. That would often mess up Gardner and Fernanda Saldana's vacation plans, according to Fernanda Saldana, at least.

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_02] To Detective Lamont's surprise, M.A. blurted out that a bunch of neighbors on Marsh Inlet believed Fernanda Saldana was responsible for murdering Jared.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Lamont asked if he believed his friend was guilty of the crime. M.A. said he didn't know. They kept talking. M.A. circled back to his opinion. To the detective, he confirmed he didn't believe Fernanda Saldana killed the victim. That being said, he fully believed his friend could have plotted the murder.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_02] Detective Lamont soon found himself grappling with yet another loose end. On Wednesday, March 9th, 2021, at around 3.25 p.m., a man we will call J.C. arrived at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00] We have already heard from his wife, V, a good friend of Gardner's. So was J.C. Remember, J.C. was the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints bishop that Jared quarreled with before his death.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_02] Detective Lamont met with J.C. in interview room 89 and audio and video recorded him. Detective John set in on this too.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_00] J.C. clarified that his sole interaction with Jared was years ago. That was important to note. The backdrop of that incident was a pretty simple issue. Jared's twins wanted to change their hairstyles. He didn't want them to. J.C. was under the impression that Jared had told his kids that their proposed hairstyles were sinful. Gardner had gone to J.C. and asked him to talk to the kids to offer them some guidance.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_02] J.C. did. He said he told the twins it was silly to call a hairstyle sinful. But that being said, he told them that they ought to honor their parents' wishes and decisions.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_00] The day of the confrontation, J.C. had been wrapping up a counseling session with a church member. That was when Jared confronted him. Apparently, he had taken issue with the fact that J.C. had conducted a counseling session with his twins to talk about this hairstyle situation.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_02] J.C. said Jared had brought up that Gardner wasn't even a member of the LDS church anymore. He took issue with J.C. talking to her because of that.

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_00] J.C. replied that it was his congregation. He could minister or even talk to whoever he wanted to. He said he tried to de-escalate the conversation, but Jared seemed so mad he thought the man wanted to actually go out into the parking lot of the church and brawl. And Jared wasn't leaving either. Even when asked, J.C. was getting ready to call the Neptune Beach Police Department. He informed Jared of that. And at that point, that's when Jared finally left.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_02] Afterwards, J.C. called his church's legal department. J.C. said that his wife, V. felt so unsettled by the situation, she began to carry a concealed weapon.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_00] Gardner went to J.C. again. She asked about getting counseling with him as well as Jared's bishop. It's unclear from the records why exactly she wanted this or what purpose this would serve. But J.C. had already been burned once by this situation. He figured Jared would take extreme issue with him being involved at all. He went ahead and contacted Jared's bishop, explained that he and Jared had exchanged words, and got his thoughts on such an arrangement. That was just a few weeks ago, just before the murder.

[00:33:45] [SPEAKER_02] J.C. was not the only person to say something negative about Jared. Now, keep in mind, when we talk about these sorts of things, we must know that the murder victim is no longer around

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_00] to defend themselves. And in this case, the person was a family member of Jared's. And what they said was not necessarily wholly negative, but it does reflect some level of disagreement amongst those who did love Jared. On Thursday, March 10th, 2022, Jared's brother, Justin Bridegan, went into the Jacksonville Beach Police Department. Detectives had already heard from Adam Bridegan. That was the brother that Jared was closest to. Now they would get to talk to Jared's

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_00] other brother again. At that point, Justin had already talked to them once, but that conversation was largely not captured in the records that we saw. Justin explained that he was coming back in

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_02] because a thought had struck him the day before. He recalled an incident involving Jared and one of Fernandez-Saldana's relatives. He sat down for an audio and video recorded interview in interview room

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_00] 89 with detectives Lamont and Courier. According to Justin, he had had a revelation. He was sitting in his office at the time. Two days had passed since his brother's murder. Three words came to his mind. Well, three images or phrases, really. Blue truck, ice cream, redneck. Justin thought of those things, but he didn't go to the police right away because they didn't seem that important on their own.

[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_00] Now that the information about the vehicle of interest had come out, this blue truck, he thought what he had to say might be important. For the record, we don't really understand the significance of those words and phrases. I mean, blue truck is pretty obvious, but we're not really sure how the other things connect based on what he says next. It's possible that it was extremely

[00:35:31] [SPEAKER_02] clear to detectives though. He recalled for detectives a birthday party that Jared had thrown for the twins several years earlier at Adventure Landing. So that is a since-closed Jacksonville Beach water park. It was supposed to be a day of fun for the kids, but Jared became upset. He thought he and the kids were being followed. He told Justin that one of Fernandez Saldana's relatives

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_02] was hanging around Adventure Landing. It creeped Jared out. And that wasn't all. Justin told the

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_00] detectives that Jared had suspicions about his vehicle too. He said that Gardner had put a bug or tracking or listening device in it. It's not clear what became of this or if he actually found the bug or if he was just suspicious of something. Jared brought up another birthday, this time for

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_02] one of Justin's own children. Unannounced, Fernandez Saldana and Gardner had showed up at his house during the party with a present for his kid. He found Fernandez Saldana rather intense, especially when the guy was sharing war stories about his military service.

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_00] Knowing all three people involved, Justin thought he had a good grasp on what was going on between Jared and Fernandez Saldana and Gardner. He described it as a sort of tit for tat. There was no detente between the households, just back and forth and back and forth, sniping, sniping, sniping, nobody ever letting anything go, nobody ever really backing down. Justin felt in his view that religion might have also been a big part of what happened to Jared because Jared was a devout member

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00] of the LDS faith. And frankly, Justin had his own issues with that in the past because Justin had left the church. That had been a big deal in his family. He pulled out an email from Jared seemingly related to that topic, although it's not entirely clear from the records. He read that email to detectives and told them that this was an example of how Jared could be extremely condescending. Gardner,

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_02] in Justin's view, would not have wanted Jared's religious influence on the twins. Justin said she might have felt like they were being indoctrinated. That's the word in the report, at least. Justin could

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_00] see it all playing out from there, how Gardner would stew, how she would complain to Fernandez Saldana about the situation. Eventually, Fernandez Saldana might grab a friend and do something to deal with Jared. After all, it looked like at least two people would be needed to pull off the murder.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_02] Detectives had to concede that last point. There was nothing tying anyone who had a problem with Jared to the scene. Increasingly, it was looking like this case could be a murder conspiracy, where a shooter was hired to go after Jared.

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_00] The whole thing really did have a calculated look to it. Going after Jared right after a daddy date night when his guard was presumably down with his two-year-old in the vehicle, even the tire being placed in the roadway blocking Jared's path. Detectives wanted to know what the tire could tell them. On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, Sergeant Lawrence Smith went to examine the tire in the property room. He slipped on gloves and unwrapped the tire, laying it down on a flat surface.

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_00] He identified a few notable things, what looked like drops of unidentified liquid in three different places, all on the outside rim of the tire. Taking out a black sharpie, he marked those areas. They could be examined for DNA collection later. Then he took brown paper and wrapped the whole tire once more and signed his name onto it. He collected the original wrapping that he unpeeled and put that into evidence.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_02] The following day, Sergeant Smith returned to the tire. This time, he was not alone. Evidence technician, Officer Shane Jarman, went with him. They unwrapped it again and checked out the markings of where they might find DNA. Officer Jarman photographed those areas and switched on alternate light sources to see if they might notice other evidence. They found nothing and switched back on the normal lights.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_02] Officer Jarman circled the tire and he noticed something. It had a plug in it. He marked that spot with tape and took more pictures. Breaking out some pliers, he pulled away the plug and sealed it in an evidence envelope.

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_00] Then he noticed something else. A possible fingerprint. Taking a clean and disposable brush and fingerprint powder, he tried to collect it. No such luck. The potential fingerprint was far too dried up to collect. He did swab it for DNA though, along with five other spots on the tire, placing all of those swabs into their original packaging when he was done. After each swab, he changed gloves just to avoid cross contamination. And he did a control swab too.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_02] At the end, Officer Jarman collected the tire's valve stem cap and sealed that into an envelope. He took the brown paper wrapping and put that in a brown paper bag, and then wrapped fresh paper around the tire. Next, he submitted everything. The pictures, tire plug, valve stem cap, disposable brush, fingerprint dust, and swabs into property. This time, he said, his involvement in the case was over.

[00:40:58] [SPEAKER_00] We've heard that from him before, so I'm not really sure if he comes back up in the records again. But either way, the police weren't done with that tire. While the evidence technicians were trying to glean evidence from the thing, Detective Currier was trying to run down where it even came from. He got a subpoena for the tire from the Duval County State's Attorney's Office. Then, Tuesday, March 29, 2022, he emailed that to Jill Marsingill Heaton, a paralegal for the North American branch of the

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_00] Michelin Company, which owns BF Goodrich. If they could trace the tire, it might lead them directly back to Jared's murderer. Only time would tell.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_02] We talked about some unflattering, even messed up details that came up around Fernandez Saldana. Well, his neighbors were not the only ones with things to say. On Thursday, March 18, 2022, Detectives Johns and Lamont got a hold of an important potential interviewee, Fernandez Saldana's ex-girlfriend. The woman could tell them all about the kind of person her former boyfriend was.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_02] She'd be happy to meet with detectives on a later date to discuss that. She is not named in the records. We will hear from her later on in this episode.

[00:42:15] [SPEAKER_00] On Friday, March 19, 2022, the two detectives headed into the soft room at 1130 a.m. for a video and audio recorded interview with the guy who knew Gardner and Fernandez Saldana. We will call him S out of respect for his and his family's privacy. He had known the couple before they even got together.

[00:42:33] [SPEAKER_02] He met them in 2017 at the Black Hive Gym, where they had met each other. They were not dating at that point. Gardner would work out of the gym. Fernandez Saldana worked there as a handyman,

[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_00] he thought. S felt Gardner was great. Fun. Lively. A nice woman. But he didn't really care for Fernandez Saldana. That guy was sketchy with a history of making weird comments like boasting about all the money he made off of his disability pay from the military. He seemed controlling. One of those guys who was super opinionated and unable to tolerate dissent. Fernandez Saldana could never be wrong.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_02] S did not get what Gardner saw in Fernandez Saldana. But the relationship moved fast. Strangely fast. One day, they started dating. Fine. Six to eight months later, they were married.

[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_00] That's pretty fast. And it's something that we've seen before with Gardner, because she and Jared got married extremely fast. Anyways, one day, either the day of or the day after her wedding, S came upon Gardner in the gym's parking lot next to her car. She was vomiting. She had been day drinking for hours. Oh, and apparently she and Fernandez Saldana kept the marriage a secret from his family too.

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_00] That caused a lot of drama, apparently. After that whirlwind of the wedding, though, and the aftermath, the couple drifted from the rest of the group at the gym. They stopped hanging out with the other friends. S said Gardner seemed to really remove herself from the group. It always felt it was because her new husband didn't want her socializing with others. One of the last times S saw Gardner was at a

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_00] Christmas party back in 2019. That's when something really bad happened. After that, though, the last time he ever saw her was New Year's Day of 2022 at a wedding. There, Gardner was like a different

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_02] person. The lively, fun young woman was gone. She looked rough, tired. They talked briefly. Gardner told S she was busy with a home bakery business she was trying to get off the ground. She called it Beach Baked 904. 904 is the area code for Jacksonville and St. Augustine.

[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_00] Please forgive me while I go off on a baked goods tangent here. I promise you this is all going to circle back in the end. But anyways, Gardner really seemed to put a lot of effort into this Beach Baked

[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_02] 904 project. On May 9th, 2019 on Facebook, when someone asked where to find gluten-free cupcakes in Jacksonville Beach, a few people commented suggesting Beach Baked 904.

[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_00] So it at least seemed to be catching on in the nearby area amongst people who lived in the Jacksonville Beach area. So it kind of seemed to be catching on in a way. On October 7th, 2019, Gardner, her hair in braids and dyed blonde at the ends, appeared at a table at the Ludus Martial Arts studio, which is located in Jacksonville. She was selling cookies for $3 with some gluten-free

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_02] options. And this was all posted on Facebook that day. Jean Pickett, a realtor then with Remax Watermark, had a segment called Around Town where she highlighted different interesting people in the community. On May 5th, 2020, on this Around Town segment, she highlighted Gardner's

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_00] Beach Baked 904 project. In this remote interview, Gardner is still hyphenating her name with Gardner Fernandez. She appears to be doing the interview from her kitchen. It's very nice, with a dark cabinet above a stainless steel fridge, high-looking ceilings, a tiled backsplash. She looks young, healthy, brown hair, styled and short, white teeth, wearing a tank top, her shoulder tattoo barely

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_00] showing. Very beachy, very relaxed vibe. Topics they touch include Gardner starting to bake as a childhood passion that turned into a hobby that then morphed into a business under Florida's cottage law, and her staying up to the early hours of the morning baking, and her brother-in-law's help with graphic design for the brand, and how her grandmother's recipes inspired her, and Jean's now unfortunate but at the time totally innocuous and understandable phrasing that her guest's

[00:46:50] [SPEAKER_02] cookies were, quote, to die for. Here's Gardner about how her baking impacted her family.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_01] And it turned into a business, and I couldn't be happier about it. This has been my passion since I was a child, and it's allowed me to be flexible with my hours so I could be with my kids more,

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_02] and that was really the goal. Here's Gardner again about the ethos behind her baking.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_01] When it came down to it, this came about, and this is possible through what started with cooking with my grandma in the kitchen, and then it turned into a labor of love and a way to show people that we care about them and to kind of share happiness, make people happy. Everyone's happy

[00:47:34] [SPEAKER_00] when they get little children and they get food. The last post to the Beach Baked Instagram is an orange castle. I'm really not sure if it's a mold or a cake. It looks like an orange castle to me. It was posted November 18, 2021. At that point, Gardner seemed to be doing a lot with some kind of 3D printer thing. Listen, I muddled my way through the occasional cupcake, lemon square, bread, and buns for hot dogs and hamburgers, so I really don't know what I'm looking at here baking-wise. I'm not an

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_00] expert. Her captions were all very casual and enthusiastic about her process.

[00:48:06] [SPEAKER_02] When someone wanted to know where they could get 18 cookies themed Ahoy, a Boy in royal blue, gold, and white, ready in less than two days on March 18, 2021, two commentators recommended Beach Baked 904.

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_00] So again, it was really kind of catching on to a certain extent, at least in the local area. Okay, so let's jump back to that wedding with S. So the bakery might have proved stressful, and Gardner felt totally alone in it. She said Fernandez Saldana wasn't about to start helping her due to his disability. The disability S. noticed that he was always bragging about getting military checks for.

[00:48:45] [SPEAKER_02] So that was the last time S. saw Gardner. But what about 2019? Detectives wanted to know what happened then. Well, there was a party at Go Ruck. That is a company in Jacksonville Beach dedicated to rucking, which is marching across a distance carrying a weighted ruck sack. S. was there. His sister was there too. We will not name her for reasons that will become clear

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_02] later. We will call her C. C. was a part of the Black Hive crew. So like S., she knew Gardner

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_00] and Fernandez Saldana. Well, anyways, after the Go Ruck party, C. didn't want to end the night. Unlike S., she remained out there with friends. And they went out to the beach bars, namely Bricks, an aptly named brick building with a walled-in patio just a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:49:37] [SPEAKER_02] At some point, S. got a text from C. A weird one. He tried getting in touch, but was not getting a

[00:49:44] [SPEAKER_00] response. Then he got another text. It was from C.'s phone, but it wasn't C. texting. The person on the other end was Gardner. Over text, she told S. that C. was, quote, pretty messed up. Don't worry, though. Gardner and Fernandez Saldana would take C. home.

[00:50:02] [SPEAKER_02] S. did not like that. C. wasn't close with the couple at all. Remember, Gardner had basically ghosted all of the gym friends. And no one really liked Fernandez Saldana. There were other friends around that C. was closer with. Why couldn't she go home with one of them? He felt uncomfortable. Something in his gut said this situation was weird and off. He jumped in his car and drove to the home

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_02] where Gardner and Fernandez Saldana lived. When he got there, he found something truly scary.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_00] C. was in the bathroom, totally nude. Her eyes were rolling into the back of her head.

[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_02] There was no confrontation, no time for that. He got his sister and took her straight to Baptist Hospital beaches. There, the hospital found that she had an extremely high blood alcohol content level.

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_00] According to S., the whole thing was out of character for C. She was a seasoned drinker, not a person who would get blackout drunk very often. And when S. went back to her friends who had been with her at Bricks that night, they said one moment she seemed totally fine, then all of a sudden she was not fine. One of the friends described how Fernandez Saldana swooped in out of nowhere and declared that he and Gardner were taking C. home.

[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_02] At some point, it's unclear whether in person or later from the report, Fernandez Saldana started making jokes to S. about his sister, about having videos of C. on his phone, of her naked.

[00:51:36] [SPEAKER_00] At some other point, it's pretty unclear whether in person or later from the report, Gardner started making excuses. Oh, C. being naked wasn't weird. She was nude because Gardner and Fernandez Saldana were, quote, just trying to get her to feel better, end quote.

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_02] One thing Detective Lamont made sure to ask about was, did Fernandez Saldana ever complain about

[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_00] Jared to S.? According to S., no. He never heard anything about Jared from them directly.

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_02] S. had one more thing for Detective Lamont. One really annoying anecdote about what a jerk Fernandez S. could be. S. had a house-flipping project. Fernandez Saldana said he would help. S. could have used the help. So he, despite his reservations, brought Fernandez Saldana into the project.

[00:52:28] [SPEAKER_00] But Fernandez Saldana did nothing, didn't do any of the work himself. Instead, he sent in a friend, some dude named John.

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_02] In total, John did about $12,000 worth of work on the project.

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_00] But that wasn't all he did. John started driving S. crazy. He would drink on the job and even started stashing beer in the home's refrigerator.

[00:52:50] [SPEAKER_02] S. confronted him. He said John acted like a douchebag when he was called out. S. told him to get out. He was fired from the project. And that was that. That was the type of guy Mario Fernandez Saldana hung around. And the kind of flaky person he was.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_00] Keep that story in mind. We'll be bringing up that again later.

[00:53:15] [SPEAKER_02] Detectives Johns and Lamont met with S.'s sister C. next. They wanted to hear about what happened to her.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_00] Like her brother, she said she met the couple at the Black Hive gym, Gardner first. She seemed like a nice and fun young woman. At the time, Gardner was dating one of C.'s other friends. But that friend broke up with Gardner. A short time later, Gardner started dating Fernandez Saldana.

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_02] C. met Fernandez Saldana after she had gotten to know Gardner. He was a bit of a weirdo, lurking at the gym, always popping up to go over to women. Only women, mind you. And offered to stretch them out or massage them. She felt he was more odd than creepy, though. A bit of a loner. There was another gym worker he was friends with, and the two of them would work out together at Fernandez Saldana's

[00:54:04] [SPEAKER_00] home gym. The marriage between Fernandez Saldana and Gardner was pretty odd, too, come to think of it. All of a sudden, they were wed. And frankly, they didn't seem that happy about it. At least, that's not how Gardner struck C. She also noted that Gardner drifted from the friend group at this point.

[00:54:22] [SPEAKER_02] She took detectives back to the 2019 Christmas party. She remembered going to Bricks, then nothing. She awoke in the hospital. She pieced things together later. She got information from the hospital and her friends and her brother S. But she had no memory of anything.

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_00] The hospital told C she was just intoxicated from alcohol. But she wasn't convinced by that. C said she drank a lot back then. She felt that what had hit her that night wasn't just booze, that something sinister

[00:54:54] [SPEAKER_02] had happened to her. Friends told her Fernandez Saldana just appeared at the bar and got her really fast. It struck others as odd because he and Gardner had not gone in with them. It was like he came out of nowhere.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_00] One specific friend, we will call Jay, who had been at Bricks with C, told her that he felt very odd that night too. That it hadn't felt like just too much alcohol. Jay had been so out of it and very woozy. But Gardner and Fernandez Saldana hadn't honed in on him. And Jay hadn't gone to the hospital.

[00:55:28] [SPEAKER_02] Still, other social contacts told her about one story. The story of a specific young woman who would believe Fernandez Saldana had targeted her. Drugged her at a place called V's Pizza a long time ago. That young woman had stumbled into the restaurant's bathroom and locked herself in. All to get away from Fernandez Saldana. To prevent him from taking her.

[00:55:54] [SPEAKER_00] And of course, S told C that she was naked when he found her.

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_02] For C, all of that added up to something extremely disturbing and horrifying.

[00:56:03] [SPEAKER_00] Then, the day after her ordeal, she got a text from Fernandez Saldana. He invited her to the home he shared with Gardner to watch the videos. The videos he made of her. She asked him to send them over to her.

[00:56:16] [SPEAKER_02] No, he said. She would need to come over to watch them in person. It was like he was taunting her.

[00:56:23] [SPEAKER_00] The next day, Gardner texted her to see if she was okay.

[00:56:28] [SPEAKER_02] No, C texted. She was upset. She confided to Gardner that she felt like she had been drugged.

[00:56:34] [SPEAKER_00] Gardner was weirdly adamant in her response. No, that's not what happened. You just drank too much.

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_02] Kind of odd for someone who by all accounts had not really been with the group that evening. Because how would Gardner know? And why would she care about C's opinion about what had happened to her?

[00:56:53] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Johns asked C point blank. Did she know what the couple's intentions had been when they first took her that night?

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_02] C could only say that she never understood why they took her home. Why them? Why did they insist? They were not close. It was as if the couple had waited until she was vulnerable and Jay was too out of it to protest. And then swung in and grabbed her.

[00:57:19] [SPEAKER_00] But C had never confronted them about it. She was scared to. She didn't feel Gardner was necessarily a sinister person. But her opinion on Fernandez Saldana had shifted a lot. He wasn't just a weirdo. He was a creep. So C just cut the couple off for the most part and stopped talking to them.

[00:57:37] [SPEAKER_02] That being said, she had glimpsed Gardner at that New Year's 2022 wedding. Looking all worn out and beaten down to start the new year.

[00:57:46] [SPEAKER_00] Amidst the festivities, Gardner had told her, I wish things didn't happen the way they did. Was she expressing some remorse for what had happened in 2019? C didn't know. Gardner did not elaborate.

[00:58:00] [SPEAKER_02] Unlike Gardner, C remained friends with the folks from the gym. Ever since Jared's murder, the talk around there had been buzzing. The two detectives asked who the gym goers thought had done it.

[00:58:13] [SPEAKER_00] According to C, everyone was in agreement that the murderer was probably Fernandez Saldana. Understandable. Because they all knew him to be a creep. But C had a slightly different take. Yes, Fernandez Saldana was a creep. She knew that better than almost anyone. So her mind had gone to him first too. But she thought back to some of the things Gardner had said in the past, back when they were friends. Like how she hated sharing custody of her children with her ex.

[00:58:41] [SPEAKER_00] How much that seemed to bother Gardner. C told detectives she could see Gardner hiring someone to carry out a hit.

[00:58:49] [SPEAKER_02] Remember how we mentioned that Fernandez Saldana's ex got a hold of the detectives?

[00:58:54] [SPEAKER_00] Well, Detective Johns and Corporal Santiago got to interview her on March 22, 2022. She didn't come to the police station. They went to her residence. At 10.29 a.m., they began. This time, they only recorded audio, no video.

[00:59:11] [SPEAKER_02] The woman made one thing clear. Fernandez Saldana was an abuser.

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_00] The woman said they met when they swiped on each other on Tinder. But he had actually known her sister before that. Perhaps through a military friend? She didn't know. And she wasn't in contact with her sister. Didn't even know where she lived anymore.

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_02] The investigators asked her if Fernandez Saldana was still on Tinder. She did not know.

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_00] Altogether, the woman had only gone out with Fernandez Saldana for a month around July of 2017. That's when things changed a lot.

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_02] He had been single. Never married. No kids. Over the course of the relationship, she met his sister. His brother. His niece. Their names long since forgotten.

[00:59:57] [SPEAKER_00] The woman got to know a bit about him then, too. Fernandez Saldana had been in the military. A sergeant or something? She wasn't sure about the details. Or if that was even right. He worked at Blackhive Gym as a trainer, she thought. And he also worked at Brumos Mercedes, a Jacksonville dealership that has since sold out to Fields Auto Group.

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_02] Back when she knew him, Fernando Saldana drove a white Porsche and a BMW motorbike. That didn't strike her at all. He had the money for those rides because he was good with finances.

[01:00:30] [SPEAKER_00] He banked at Navy Federal Credit Union. Detective Johns pulled out a joint account application from the bank. Her name was on it. The woman noted that he had brought her there to open a joint account because she had no military affiliation, and he did. She clarified that she was the only one who had ever used the account, even though it technically was joint. She had since removed Fernandez Saldana from it.

[01:00:53] [SPEAKER_02] Their relationship moved fast. After just about a month, she moved into his home on Oakwater Drive. She was having a rough time in her life then. Financially, she was struggling. When she got the opportunity to move in with Fernandez Saldana, she jumped at it. At the time, she felt she simply had nowhere else to go. The whole thing was long ago and depressing, so her memory could be fuzzy.

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_00] The couple hadn't been alone in the house, though. There was also another woman we'll call AD. A guy lived there, too, but he moved out very quickly. The woman didn't even remember his name. At the time, she was so depressed and so eager to have a place to stay that she actually took up that departed roommate's share of the rent. Fernandez Saldana's attitude seemed to change toward her after that, and not for the better.

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_02] They all lived there until November of 2017 when the lease ended. At that point, the woman left Fernandez Saldana, stopped talking to him entirely. The last contact was the end of 2017 or the very early months of 2018. Detectives asked what the relationship had been like. Had they been exclusive as a couple?

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_00] The woman said she had thought so at the time, but there was so much ambiguity. They acted like they were in a relationship, but the whole thing was really undefined. Over time, she began to get a really bad feeling, a hunch that Fernandez Saldana was cheating on her. But he didn't bring other girls around.

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_02] Once, they got into an argument. She wanted to know if they were exclusive or not. They both got angry. Then, Fernandez Saldana lashed out. The woman became afraid he would hit her. After that, he moved into the empty room downstairs. But she did not move out. Not right away. She did not have anywhere else to go.

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives asked the woman if Fernandez Saldana ever did hit her. She said he did not. But she did know that he was in the military. She had always been aware that he would have known how to hurt her. But there was something detectives should know. She said he was sexually abusive to her.

[01:03:05] [SPEAKER_02] Detectives asked her to describe the sexual abuse.

[01:03:09] [SPEAKER_00] One thing that is important to understand is that the woman never felt comfortable talking to Fernandez Saldana about sex. When they would talk about past relationships, he would always become enraged.

[01:03:21] [SPEAKER_02] The woman told them that many times she would be asleep. In the middle of the night, Fernandez Saldana would wake her up to have sex with him. She did not want to. But she had a tough history relationship-wise. She felt she just had to give in to whatever he wanted.

[01:03:37] [SPEAKER_00] There were other times when he simply violated her despite her outcry. The woman talked about a time she and Fernandez Saldana were in the shower together. He grabbed her, turned her around, and raped her. She begged him to stop. He was hurting her, she said. He ignored her and kept at it until he was finished.

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_02] Once, during a sexual encounter, Fernandez Saldana took her neck in his hands and squeezed. Squeezed so hard she could not even breathe.

[01:04:05] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives asked if she thought Fernandez Saldana might have been into forceful sex, or S&M. S&M is short for sadomasochism, which is a practice where participants derive sexual pleasure from painful or humiliating acts. To be clear, there's a specific reason why detectives were asking this, and it had nothing to do with the relationship between the woman and Fernandez Saldana.

[01:04:30] [SPEAKER_02] The woman thought about it. On his computer that she had seen, he had a lot of pornography. But nothing stood out about S&M in particular.

[01:04:40] [SPEAKER_00] Next, the investigators turned to something with more obvious implications for the investigation into Jared's murder. The detectives wanted to know what kind of weapons Fernandez Saldana owned, if any. The woman remembered a few. A BB gun, a rifle, and a knife he kept in his vehicle.

[01:04:57] [SPEAKER_02] Then they brought up a name. One we've heard swirling around so far. Quite a lot. John. John Biggerstaff. Detectives asked her if she ever heard that name.

[01:05:09] [SPEAKER_00] The woman said no. The name John sounded familiar as far as Fernandez Saldana was concerned. But not that specific, John. So detectives were trying to connect Biggerstaff with Fernandez Saldana. And this interviewee could not do that for them.

[01:05:25] [SPEAKER_02] But someone else could. Someone we already heard from. You remember S? Remember the guy he said was a douchebag who would not stop drinking while house flipping?

[01:05:35] [SPEAKER_00] John wasn't just some hard-drinking wannabe house flipper. However, Fernandez Saldana, house flipping friend, was none other than John Biggerstaff. The law enforcement officer busted for drugs and sex trafficking. He was a pal of Fernandez Saldana. Detectives were keen to find out if Biggerstaff had done more than just help out Fernandez Saldana with an occasional business opportunity.

[01:05:59] [SPEAKER_02] That day, after the harrowing talk with Fernandez Saldana's ex-girlfriend, a woman who said he abused and raped her on numerous occasions, Detective Johns and Corporal Santiago arrived back at the Jacksonville Beach police station.

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_00] They found a surprise waiting for them. That day, someone had gone to police headquarters and dropped off a white box, tied with a bow. Within, they found cookies contained in plastic wrappers, fresh from the home bakery of a local woman still trying to make it in the sweets business, who saw her baked creations as spreading happiness. Perhaps that is what she wanted to do, spread some happiness to the detectives investigating the murder of the father of her children.

[01:06:42] [SPEAKER_00] What must detectives have thought, recalling the story of C and those lost hours and her suspected drugging? Because those cookies weren't just from anyone. They were from Shanna Gardner herself.

[01:06:57] [SPEAKER_02] Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail dot com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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[01:07:41] [SPEAKER_02] Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet, and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com.

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