Tri-Cities mom back in Florida to face murder-for-hire plot of Microsoft executive
A West Richland mother returned to Florida to face charges in the alleged murder-for-hire plot after her ex-husband was gunned down on a residential street.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office online records show Shanna L. Gardner, 36, was booked into their jail on Friday. She was arrested a little more than two months ago at her nearly $1 million home in the Tri-Cities.
The transfer came just days after her attorney Andrew Wagley said they weren’t going to fight extradition to keep her in Washington state.
Gardner, and her husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana, 36, are accused of recruiting Henry Tennon, to kill her ex-husband, Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, as he was driving home in Feburary 2022.
The couple’s indictments came after Tennon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for his role in the shooting.
Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana are charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder and child abuse.
Florida prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if they are convicted.
Gardner’s first court date in Florida is scheduled for Nov. 3.
She has been a central figure in the highly-publicized murder investigation after Bridegan was shot on a narrow, dimly lit road in Jackson Beach, Fla., with his 2-year-old daughter still in his car.
He was killed when he stopped to move a tire out of the street.
Minutes earlier, he’d dropped off his and Gardner’s 9-year-old twins at her home, say investigators.
Gardner and Bridegan met while she was visiting a friend in Florida in 2009 and married the next year in Salt Lake City, according to The Florida Times-Union. But after a troubled relationship they filed for divorce in 2015.
Prosecutors claim Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana started planning the murder sometime after they met at a CrossFit gym in 2018.
Seven months after the killing, a company run by Gardner’s parents, Sterling and Shelli Gardner, bought a West Richland home, according to Benton County Assessor’s Office records.
She moved into the house early in 2023, and was arrested there in August, following the Florida indictment.