- Shanna Garder-Fernandez and her husband are accused of orchestrating the February 2022 murder of her ex-husband Jared Bridegan
- In an interview months after his death, she said she sat down with his widow to tell their children “as a family” about their father’s death
- Bridegan was shot dead execution-style after dropping off his twins at Shanna’s home in Florida
The ex-wife of a slain Microsoft executive has told how she sat down with his widow to tell their children he was dead – months before she was accused of orchestrating his murder in February 2022.
In a newly revealed clip from a July 22 interview with Action News Jax, a tearful Shanna Gardner-Fernandez, 36, described the moment she and Jared’s widow Kirsten Bridegan told their children the tragic news.
“It was a very short visit,” Shanna said. “She only came because she asked to be there to tell the kids. And we wanted to make it very clear that this is in honor of his memory. We didn’t want too much detail, even if we didn’t agree with it. I think we can all agree that we love the kids, and they should be the priority.”
After that visit, Kristen embarked on a mission for justice that would eventually see Gardner-Fernandez and her current husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana, charged with hiring a hitman to shoot 33-year-old Bridegan.
Bridegan was shot and killed execution-style in front of his then two-year-old daughter as he drove back from delivering his twins to Shanna at her home in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
Microsoft CEO Jared Bridegan was shot on February 16 in what police described as a murder-for-hire
Fernandez-Saldana’s former tenant Henry Tenon, 62, is alleged to have acted as the gunman in the killing. Police say he confessed to the plot after being arrested for an unrelated crime.
At the time of the murder, the former spouses were embroiled in a bitter custody battle that had raged since their 2015 divorce and centered on their 10-year-old twins, Abby and Liam.