One Saturday Drive Past Jared Bridegan's House May Decide His Murder Trial

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is HiddenKillers With Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:11)
On January 29th, 2022, a phone left a rental house on Potomac Avenue in Jacksonville and went for a drive. An FBI agent traced the route for the jury on the fourth day of Mario Fernandez murder trial. The phone traveled south toward Jared Bridegan's neighborhood, then to the gymnastics facility his kids use, then out to Jacksonville Beach. The phone belonged to Henry Tenon, the man prosecutors say was hired to kill Jared Bridegan. The rental house belonged to Mario Fernandez, the man they say did the hiring. As Tenon's phone ran that route, an FBI agent Bobby Blythe testified Fernandez phone was pinging around the Potomac property. Blythe does cellular analysis for the FBI.
Tower records GPS data. Let him place a phone inside a radius of a few meters. And he spent two hours placing those two phones for a jury based on the records of which the tower recorded them with the GPS data, lining it all out for the jury to see. Eighteen days later, Jared Bridegan was ambushed and killed in Jacksonville Beach after these phones kind of did the same route, it seems.
A handful of days earlier, prosecutors called January 29th a practice run. The defense calls it a workday and points to surveillance showing Fernandez beating contractors and hauling construction materials at that property. The jury's read on that one Saturday may decide this trial. The defense had a strong fourth day and almost all of it came from what's missing. Lead Detective Chris Johns agreed on cross-examination that no DNA ties Fernandez to the blue Ford F-150 linked to the ambush. He agreed no fingerprints, no surveillance footage put Fernandez inside that truck. The gun gave them more of the same. Prosecutors allege Fernandez got a 10mm handgun from John Biggerstaff, a friend he'd known since high school. Johns conceded, there's no physical evidence, any handoff happened and the weapon has never been found. Investigators wanted that gun badly enough to offer Biggerstaff immunity. If he'd say he supplied it, he declined. Biggerstaff's son was a Texas police officer and in December of 22, agents sent him to wear a wire against his own father. No gun ever surfaced. The rarity argument took a hit too. ATF agent Mike Stengel acknowledged that Glock made multiple 10-millimeter models. And then investigators found records of six 10-millimeter purchases at one Jacksonville gun store alone.
The defense even went after the boots investigators pulled from Tenon's truck in Fernandez's home. Johns acknowledged he couldn't rule out that other boots might match the surveillance footage, though he said the flaps on these matched it better. The defense had an answer on timing too. Bridegan died on Wednesday evening driving away from a custody exchange. And Drasher pointed out that the Wednesday schedule sat in public court filings. Anyone who pulled the docket would learn which night to expect him. Every item on that list belongs to a different job than the one Fernandez is charged with. Prosecutors have never claimed he drove the truck or fired the gun. In the state's theory, that work belonged to Henry Tenon, who withdrew his guilty plea in February and faces his own jury in March of 27 Fernandez is charged with first degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony. The solicitation works like this and why so many of these points that don't seem to add up were never meant to add up. But if you're a defense attorney and you have to convince a jury to go to reasonable doubt in some way, shape or form, you're going to intentionally pitch things to them that don't have an answer. Well, his DNA is not on the tire. DNA is not on the gun. Yeah, well, it's never in question to be there to begin with. So let's not sit here and act shocked about it not being there.
But if the jury that doesn't follow the case doesn't know that, they might too be shocked. That doesn't make any sense. He's accused of this, right? No, not directly, not directly. He's not accused of being in the car pulling the trigger, everything. No, he's accused of orchestrating this, the conspiracy end of it. So, whoo, it's spooky, he's not on this stuff. Well, it's not part of the argument to begin with. Fernandez is charged with first degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony. Solicitation works like this. One man asks another man to commit a crime and offers him something for doing it. If the killing happens, Florida law lets the state charge the man who asked with the murder himself, or asked for the murder himself to basically be charged with the murder. That's how Fernandez can face a murder count without anyone claiming his finger touched a trigger. Those charges draw the map of what prosecutors have to prove, direction, communication and money.