The Murder of Jared Bridegan: Part Two: The Crime Scene

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[00:02:10] [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.

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_02] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of murder and violence.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_00] A note before we begin. Starting this summer, multiple defendants are slated to face charges in the murder of Jared Bridegan. We'll be doing a deep dive into this case and then jumping right into in-depth trial coverage. In today's episode, we'll be picking up where we left off in the case. Keep in mind, we're basing all of this coverage off of an extensive review of case documents. Some of these ranks of different law enforcement officers may be outdated and some of these officers have since become detectives.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00] We just tried to keep to what the documents said.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_02] In our last episode, we left Sergeant Lawrence Smith in the dark, kneeling over Jared's body, performing CPR, trying to save Jared's life.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00] We also told you that Sergeant Smith's colleagues with the Jacksonville Beach Police Department weren't far behind him. In fact, two arrived at almost the same time as him. Officer Harold Corey and Officer Aaron Filbert. Soon, more would arrive. The Jacksonville Beach Police Department investigators would take charge of the scene.

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_02] These police officers would need to analyze the crime scene for clues, secure and start to process physical and forensic evidence, make contact with witnesses, and canvass the area for additional ear and eyewitnesses. These early moments of a case are crucial. They can make and break a later investigation. In this episode, we will drill down on all they found and all they did.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_00] My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_02] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_00] And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_02] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_00] And this is The Murder of Jared Bridegan. Part 2. The Crime Scene.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00] Sergeant Smith fought to save Jared Bridegan's life. Jared had no pulse. He wasn't responding to CPR. But the sergeant did not give up. In a scene like this, where there's even a sliver of hope for saving a man's life, that has to take priority. It trumps interviewing witnesses. It trumps collecting physical evidence. A human life has to come first.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02] As we mentioned, officers Corey and Filbert showed up at nearly the same time as Sergeant Smith. There had been multiple calls about the situation at the intersection of Sanctuary Boulevard and Jacksonville Drive. Officer Corey saw Sergeant Smith giving CPR to Jared. He went over to the gathered witnesses. He needed to start getting information. He asked the witnesses if the Volkswagen SUV was theirs. Everyone said no.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02] Officer Corey looked inside the car. Dispatch had indicated that there was a little girl at the scene too. But the SUV was empty. He became concerned. She could be in danger. Where was she?

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00] The other witnesses assuaged Officer Corey. The little girl was being taken care of by a witness named Janelle in a night. Another vehicle. Remember, Janelle's boyfriend Shane had gotten the little girl out of the SUV. So Officer Corey went over to their vehicle. He saw that Janelle was comforting the two-year-old. The little girl was okay. At least physically. She had just seen her father shot in the street after all. Then Officer Corey went back to Sergeant Smith.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00] Performing CPR correctly is tough and tiring. To maintain high-quality CPR, switching between rescuers is advisable. So Officer Corey knelt down and took over from Sergeant Smith. The Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department's rescue team would be arriving soon. The police officers needed to keep up life-saving measures until the rescue team got there.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_02] At some point, presumably after Officer Corey relieved him, Sergeant Smith got on his radio. He advised that he was at the scene where he had located a male victim lying in the street. He asked all responding units to secure the scene and hold witnesses for questioning. He also requested that two particular people, Officer Shane Jarman and Officer James Choate, come to the scene. Officer Jarman was an evidence technician.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_02] Officer Choate was the property officer at the station. They both had the training to document, handle, and collect evidence at the crime scene. Sergeant Smith also rang Detective Sergeant David Young, who arrived to begin coordinating a response from the department's detectives.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_00] First of all, the police needed to figure out who this victim was. Officer Philbert got to work running the Volkswagen's tags. Jared's name came up right away. So did the name of Jared's wife, Kirsten. Officer Philbert got the contact information for Kirsten. Jared's wife would soon hear the worst news possible.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_02] When Corporal Yvonne Santiago arrived, her sole focus was on the little two-year-old, Jared's daughter. She found that Janelle had calmed the toddler down. The child looked uninjured, despite having been strapped into her car seat as the father's SUV was shot up. Corporal Santiago took the little girl from Janelle and brought her to the Jacksonville Beach police station to await her mother, Kirsten.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00] One detail at the scene that struck these law enforcement officers was all the blood. Blood all over the road, smeared after Sergeant Smith rolled Jared over to begin CPR. Blood coagulating near Jared's head. Then there was the darkness. As we mentioned in our previous episode, this intersection gets very dark. Tall trees looming against the night sky. Very little ambient light, other than the moon on that particular evening.

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_02] The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department's Rescue Station 60 team reached the scene. The JFRD's rescue division handles emergency medical services. Jacksonville Beach began contracting its fire and rescue services to the big nearby city of Jacksonville.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00] The rescue personnel took over life-saving measures from Officer Corey. Thus relieved, he grabbed police tape and strung a strip of it across the south end of Sanctuary Boulevard. He waited there, ready to stop any traffic from coming in and disrupting the scene. Until his colleague, Officer Jared Langlaw, swung by to block off the road with his vehicle. He had initially been sent to State Road A1A and J. Turner Butler Boulevard over reports of gunshots.

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_00] And then dispatch had him go to Sanctuary Boulevard and Jacksonville Drive, where the actual crime scene was. He flipped on his overhead lights. Officers Langlaw and Corey walked back to the crime scene on the northbound side of the street. Officer Langlaw could see the glow of headlights. Then, Jared's body.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_02] Others, like officers Lindsey Lyon and Julie Spurrier, held the perimeter. They needed to ensure nobody was going to run over or trample their crime scene.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_00] Meanwhile, the rescue personnel saw that Jared wasn't responding. He was gone. The rescue team declared Jared dead. He was 33 years old. The rescue team then covered Jared's body with a white sheet. And then on top of that, an emergency blanket.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_02] Having parked his vehicle to help with the perimeter, Officer Langlaw braved the marshy brush in the median. He cut right across. What he saw at the crime scene was horrible. A body lying beneath a sheet that was quickly becoming seeped in blood. Jared's feet stuck out from under the sheet. They were crossed. One was missing a flip-flop. Jared's left hand rested on the curb, curled inward, streaked with blood.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_02] He wore a wedding ring and a black Apple watch.

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00] Whoever had done this apparently hadn't been interested in any of those valuables.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_02] Let's start out by talking about how the Jacksonville Beach officers processed the crime scene.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Shane Jarman arrived, having been called over to the scene by Sergeant Smith. He noted the lack of street lights, ambient lights, anything. Fortunately, though, Sergeant Smith was there with a flashlight. He illuminated the way for Officer Jarman as they walked the whole scene together. The flashlight hit the open driver's door. It also lit up two bullet holes and the damaged tire in front of the SUV that had blocked Jared's way.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_02] From there, Officers Jarman, Choate, Filbert, and Langlaw formed a bit of a team. They were aided by Sergeant Smith, who switched from patrol mode to helping the evidence technicians. He even helped videotape the scene. Sergeant Smith also loaned Officer Langlaw his camera to photograph the scene.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Jarman later sent Officer Langlaw back to the station to get even more equipment for processing the scene. Officer Langlaw returned with that, and they proceeded to help the rest of the team by holding a flashlight to help illuminate everything for photographs.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_02] Photography is a crucial part of crime scene investigation. It is seen like this. Investigators want everything carefully documented. That helps them out a lot later on and shows that they did a good, thorough job of processing everything.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00] These officers took pictures of a lot of stuff. Early on, Detective Sergeant Young asked Officer Filbert to take a picture of something through the open SUV door. She went over and saw that the object in question was Jared's cell phone. It was important to document its exact position because Detective Sergeant Young wanted to go ahead and collect it. It might contain important evidence.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_02] From there, Officer Jarman began photographing the entire scene. From the east side of the north median, from the northbound traffic lane, from the south median. Then, north to south. He snapped images of Jared's body. Of the shell casings, without any evidence markers. Of the inside of the car through the open driver's door. Then, all of those spots again. This time, with the markers next to the evidence. Then, mid-range. Then, up close.

[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_00] By then, detectives were showing up. Including Detective Stephen Currier and Detective Jason Lamont. They had been called to the scene by Detective Sergeant Young.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_02] Detective Currier pulled out his phone. He rang up the state attorney's office, 4th Circuit, or the Duval County State Attorney's Office, which is housed in Jacksonville. He got the on-call homicide state attorney. That was Assistant State Attorney Christina Steifler. ASA Steifler agreed to meet the detectives at the scene. She headed over.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Currier also called the Duval County Medical Examiner's Office. He got investigator Jeremy Stumm. He also called North Florida Transport and asked them to come transport the victim's body to the Duval County Medical Examiner's Office for autopsy.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_02] Now is probably a good time to introduce the lead detective in the case. Detective Christopher Lee Johns of the Jacksonville Beach Police Department.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00] He got there fast. The first police officers arrived just before 8 o'clock at night. By 8.32 PM, Detective Johns was there too. He was there to take everything in.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_02] One of the very first things he did was familiarize himself with the scene. He had Officer Jarman walk him, Detective Sergeant Young, Detective Currier, and ASA Steifler through the entire dark intersection. They looked at the black 2018 Volkswagen Atlas with the bullet holes in a spidered front passenger window. They came to the body beneath the bloody sheet.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Jarman drew back the sheet covering Jared so Detective Johns and ASA Steifler could see him. In doing so, he spotted a small piece of metal, a bullet fragment. He took more photographs of that.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_02] Then, the evidence team got back to work. Officers Jarman, Filbert, and Langlaw set up the OSCR 360 behind the vehicle and in front of it. This device features a 360-degree camera setup that can essentially take spherical photos of a crime scene.

[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_00] Sergeant Smith asked Officer Jarman to complete a shooting reconstruction on the scene too. Officers Filbert and Schott worked on that. These reconstructions are supposed to help investigators visualize the path of a bullet to understand the positioning of a shooter and a victim, or a shooter and something they've shot. The evidence team broke out rods and strings and took pictures, trying to measure the bullet's strike to the passenger door as best they could.

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_00] In his report, Officer Jarman indicated that they used the wrong size rod for part of this. It's a good reminder that no investigation is without mistakes. Police investigators noticed a few things as they processed the scene. Four bullet casings lay around Jared. Officer Filbert noted those and placed a blank field contact card next to two of them. She didn't think those two were too visible,

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_00] and she wanted to help other officers and technicians see them better.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_02] There were also clear bullet holes in the SUV. One blasted through the center console dashboard area to the lower right of the steering wheel. The other was in the middle left area of the passenger side front door under the window. That had damaged the window. The glass was spidered, although it was not fully broken out.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_00] In other words, somebody had been quite close to Jared when they pulled the trigger.

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[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_02] By then, the medical examiner had arrived. The documents use male pronouns and just refer to this person as the medical examiner. It is unclear if this was Investigator Stump, the person Detective Currier called. The medical examiner would need to check over Jared's body and then have him moved for an autopsy. Before Jared was taken away, Officer Jarman directed Officer Langlaw to do something one usually sees in old movies.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_02] He had him mark the spot where Jared lay with chalk, noting locations of the body's head, feet, and arms, as well as the spots where casings and possible projectiles lay.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_00] It was now time to move the body to give the medical examiner a better look. In that process, the medical examiner and officers scrutinized Jared for wounds. The medical examiner felt Jared's head, but could not find an entry wound. The whole body retrieval team arrived then. Together, they rolled Jared onto his left side and then his right, allowing Officer Jarman to photograph Jared's back. At that time, they still didn't really see any entry wounds.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00] Finally, Officer Filbert helped the medical examiner locate the entry wounds in Jared's left shoulder. They saw two holes in his shirt at his left shoulder. That is where he had been shot. Officer Jarman photographed the wounds first through Jared's shirt and then with a garment peeled away from his skin.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_02] When they lifted him, they also noticed something shiny lying beneath him. A silver colored projectile beneath the body. In other words, a bullet. Officer Choate collected that and kept his eye out for any other potential evidence like bullet fragments and casings.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_00] Once they were done, the North Florida body removal team took Jared's body away. After the body was gone, the evidence team laser mapped the whole scene. Officer Langlaw joined the line search of the north and southbound lanes of Sanctuary Boulevard. They were still searching for more evidence. Perhaps the killer had discarded something after fleeing. Officer Choate worked to gather and protect any potential physical evidence at the scene.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_00] For instance, the tire in the road was collected. And so was the Volkswagen. Once the photographs and analysis were done, Officer Choate personally taped up Jared's SUV with evidence tape, carefully ensuring that the scene would be preserved for a later in-depth search back at the station. Ray's wrecker came and collected the vehicle. Officer Choate drove behind them. After the wrecking crew dropped Jared's vehicle in the Jacksonville Beach Police Station's property garage,

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Choate personally locked the garage behind him. All to preserve the chain of custody and potentially crucial physical evidence. So that was the physical evidence side of things at this crime scene.

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_02] Then there's the witness side of things. That's what most of the other officers and investigators were focused on.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00] For instance, as she stood at the perimeter, Officer Lyon spoke with a witness, a man who said he heard four or five gunshots. Quick succession, with a pause before the last one. Like the killer lingered a moment before firing again. Soon afterwards, this witness saw the blue lights of the police cars. He came over because he wanted to tell the police what he knew.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_02] Plenty of other earwitnesses would also come forward. Many, many people in the neighborhood heard gunshots. Some heard three. Others, four. Others, five. Many weren't quite sure. This is a great reminder that ear and eyewitnesses, while extremely helpful to an investigation, do not occupy some kind of a hive mind. Discrepancies like this are normal in any police investigation.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_00] So a lot of people heard Jared's murder. But had anyone seen anything? Nobody at the scene seemed to have actually glimpsed the act.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_02] Then there were the witnesses who had interacted with the crime scene after discovering Jared's body. One of these was George, one of the Good Samaritans.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Spurrier checked in with him. He told her that he didn't hear gunshots or see any suspicious activity. He only noticed multiple vehicles near the south end of the boulevard. He wanted to get out there and help. She asked him why he thought he needed to help if he did not observe anything suspicious.

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_02] George bristled. He did not seem to like that question. He said he was just trying to do the right thing.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Spurrier asked to see George's identification. When he started pulling his driver's license from his wallet, she noticed his concealed carry permit. She asked him about it.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_02] That agitated George. He did not want to be there anymore.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_00] Now, before anyone jumps on George, let's think about this from his perspective for a minute. He's going about his business. He gets thrust into a situation where he comes upon the aftermath of a man shot dead in the street in front of his small daughter. And then suddenly, he's talking with the police and hearing some questions that he might perceive as pointed. I'm not blaming Officer Spurrier either, for the record. It's very much her job to ask pertinent questions and frankly be skeptical.

[00:26:01] [SPEAKER_00] Safety and crucial case information come first.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_02] We just think it's important to call for some empathy and understanding for witnesses in situations like this. Because we've seen witnesses get attacked online for things like this.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_00] Anyways, Officer Spurrier told George he needed to stick around to talk to a detective. He retorted that he didn't see why he had to stay. As Officer Spurrier went and talked to other witnesses, she noticed George pacing up and down the boulevard. He kept getting in and out of his truck. For her part, Officer Spurrier tried to defuse the situation. She assured him the detective would get there fast.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_02] George told her he felt he was being punished for trying to help him.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_00] Getting punished for trying to help. Such is the lot of many crime witnesses. It is not clear from the documents if George did indeed wait for detectives and they allowed him to go or if he just left. But to his credit, despite his obvious unhappiness, George did ultimately give a statement. We'll hear more about that in a later episode. Detective Jason Lamont focused on some of the other key crime scene witnesses.

[00:27:13] [SPEAKER_00] He went and spoke to Shane, the witness who took Jared's daughter from the SUV. He also spoke to the two sisters, Zoraida and Osiris, who had been in the vehicle directly behind Jared. He got statements from them all. Shane also gave a written statement and accompanied police to the station. Detective Johns interviewed him in the station's soft room. He gave his whole story that we outlined in episode one.

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_02] Let's go over some of the witnesses and residents Officer Spurrier spoke to that evening. They gave a sense of the chaos and churn of information in the initial hours of an investigation. First, Officer Spurrier spoke to a man who lived in the area. That man heard two to three shots. His son, upstairs in his bedroom, heard four to six. The kid called down to his dad thinking that some fireworks were going off.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_00] That man's wife had also noticed somebody suspicious that evening. Maybe the person the police were seeking. A white male, over six feet tall, average build, wearing a short sleeve black shirt and a black hat. That guy was stalking east on Jacksonville Drive towards South Beach Parkway. This wife thought this guy looked really suspicious. He kept glancing over his shoulder and kept a really brisk pace.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Lamont called on that same father and son duo who heard gunshots and even got access to their home surveillance footage. But reviewing that, Detective Lamont found that he didn't see anything that appeared to resemble a suspect fleeing from the scene. He couldn't get a copy of the footage right away, but he would work something out later to get that. Footage in this case would turn out to be key evidence. But it would take some time to sift out what was valuable and what was not.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_02] Officer Spurrier also checked in with a woman who was a member of the neighborhood watch. She'd gotten a text from a neighbor about the gunshots, but she had not seen or heard anything herself.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00] Another man approached Officer Spurrier as she talked to the neighborhood watch member. He had something to share, too. He had heard four gunshots. Hadn't seen anything, though.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_02] Then Officer Spurrier talked to a woman and her son. They saw the police lights and went over to stand on the northwest corner of Jacksonville Drive and Sanctuary Boulevard. That is when a white man with gray hair and a beard stopped in a white car. He asked what was happening. The woman replied she thought it was a car wreck. The man replied, hopefully nobody got shot, and drove away.

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Spurrier took all that down.

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_02] Like Officer Spurrier, Officer Corey ended up talking to a lot of people that night. He canvassed America Avenue. Much like his colleague, Officer Spurrier, he heard all kinds of stories. Here's a quick rapid-fire sampling.

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_00] One man heard the gunshots as he pulled into his driveway. He thought they were fireworks.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_02] One man had been changing upstairs in his house and heard three shots but saw nothing.

[00:30:16] [SPEAKER_00] One woman heard four or five shots but hadn't yet checked her surveillance cameras.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_02] One man hadn't been home during the shooting but had a camera that might have caught something.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_00] Many, many residents heard three or four or five or six shots. But they couldn't help the detectives or the police officers because either they didn't have surveillance cameras or the footage they had hadn't captured a thing.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_02] One woman saw a white panel van on the street 30 to 40 minutes after police arrived. The driver had acted weird in her view. She heard he was run off by other neighbors. That was something to check up on. Could that be the killer? Come back to see their handiwork.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_00] Another woman spoke more about the white van. Her son had tried to take a picture of it before it sped off but couldn't get a clean shot in the dark.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_02] One man living nearby told them even more details. He had left his house to drive to the store. Found a white panel van blocking his way. The driver stood in the bushes on the west side of America Avenue. The man asked the driver to move his vehicle. A pretty simple request. But the driver seemed nervous. A white guy. Heavy set. With a black scraggly beard and a gray hoodie and hat. About six foot two and 252 pounds.

[00:31:36] [SPEAKER_02] His van had no markings and PVC pipes atop his van. His plates were from Florida. But the witness did not get the number. The driver had said something odd to the witness. He said his father used to live in the sanctuary. He was driving past and saw police lights and got curious. But talking with the witness, he didn't seem curious. He just seemed anxious. He got in his van and drove off.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Corey took all of that down.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_02] In the initial hours of an investigation, no one knows what is going to turn out to be important. Keep in mind, after a murder, people are going to look back on certain things with more suspicion. That doesn't mean these are going to be relevant later. But they are important to take note of.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_00] Back at the Jacksonville Beach police station, Detective Johns had another person to meet. An extremely important person. Kirsten Brightigan. Jared's wife.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_02] Earlier in the night, she had chatted with her husband. She became frantic around 8.51 p.m. When Jared and their older daughter had still not arrived home. She began blowing up his phone. Then she got unimaginable news.

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_00] Kirsten was now a widow. Not because of a freak accident. But because someone had ambushed her husband on a dark road. She arrived at the station to get her two-year-old daughter and to speak with the police. One can only imagine the heartbreak she was feeling at this time.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_02] She arrived at the station with her mother, Mary, to pick up her daughter. Corporal Santiago had been safeguarding the child. The corporal was struck by how articulate and intelligent the little girl was. The child had chatted away on the drive from the crime scene to the station.

[00:33:23] [SPEAKER_00] About innocent things. Like how her mommy had just bought her new shoes at Target. That was almost correct. Corporal Santiago learned that the store was really a Walmart. The little girl was only two after all. The two-year-old went on to say that she had dinner that night with her brother and sister. And her daddy. Mommy stayed home.

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_02] Then the conversation took a dark turn. On the drive back, something happened. The child said, Daddy opened my car door and I heard a boom. The little girl said, It's too loud.

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_00] Back at the station, Corporal Santiago met Kirsten and returned her daughter to her. ASA Stifler asked the newly grieving widow if they could interview her two-year-old with the Child Protective Services team in the coming days. Kirsten gave them permission. She wanted to do anything she could to help figure out what had happened to Jared.

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_02] And she had plenty of information to give herself. Investigators would ultimately ask Kirsten if anyone had a problem with Jared. Generally, no. He was easygoing and likable, she would say.

[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_00] But last week, we mentioned that there were exceptions to that. And Kirsten would inform investigators of two of those exceptions.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_02] Things were bad between Jared Brightigan and his former wife, Shanna Gardner, and her new husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_00] Theirs was not a cordial co-parenting arrangement. Or even a merely moderately awkward one. Things were ice cold between the exes.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_02] According to Kirsten, Gardner was litigious. Always filing things in court about the children. Jared felt Gardner and her new husband were telling the kids lies to make him look bad. To make him seem like an awful father.

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_00] Gardner had last filed against Jared in the past year. Although that had been dropped. On top of that, Kirsten thought Fernandez-Saldana seemed like a very controlling person.

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_02] Then again, drama and even animosity after divorce is common. And Kirsten said there wasn't any history of intimate partner violence or threats of violence in the history of their relationship.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00] Police would need to dig to determine whether or not Kirsten was simply describing a tense domestic situation or a prelude to murder. We will get into the full extent of the acrimony across the miniseries.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_02] But in the meantime, it fell to Detective Lamont and Detective Brett Burrell to break the news to Gardner. After all, she was the mother of Jared's twins. Two nine-year-olds who were now some of the last people to see their father alive. The detectives reached her house on Marsh Inlet at 1239 a.m. Well past midnight.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_00] Gardner let them in. They told her Jared was dead.

[00:36:12] [SPEAKER_02] Gardner spoke to them. She noted that the divorce had not been amicable. They barely spoke. Really, they only communicated through text. Before picking up their twins that night, Jared had texted her, Here. That was it.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_00] Gardner didn't know if he had any enemies. He wasn't really in her life anymore, aside from exchanging custody of their children And going to different school events and court dates. Gardner assured the police she would be available if they needed anything else for the investigation. So after midnight, the detectives left that home on Marsh Inlet.

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_02] In this episode, we've heard from many witnesses, figures close to the victim. And we've also heard about how the officers process this crime scene. The crime scene can be a bit like a witness too. It has a story to tell. In this case's crime scene, we see a man lying down next to an SUV. He's seemingly gotten out to move a tire left in the road. Someone ambushed him, shooting him twice, firing into his SUV. He dies. The shooter flees the scene.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_02] Lots of people hear the shooting. No one seems to glimpse it.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_00] One idea comes to my mind. Maybe this is one you've thought of as well. Perhaps this was a carjacking or a robbery gone wrong. That sort of thing can happen to anyone. One only has to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_02] Investigators noted a few things though. Nothing from this scene had seemingly been stolen. Jared had clearly been incapacitated fast. Shot down in an ambush. His Volkswagen was there, just waiting to be taken. What kind of thief would not have gone for the vehicle? Or for valuables on the scene like his Apple watch, his ring, his wallet?

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_00] No, a robbery didn't really fit because of that. And then there was the tire. Had that been placed in the road in order to force Jared to stop? Was that for Jared specifically? Or was it a trap set for any passing driver?

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_02] In the world of crime, one can never totally discount just some random, untargeted madman or mad woman or mad person doing something terrible to someone they've never met. But investigators would soon begin to believe, based on all they collected that night, that this crime was not random.

[00:38:34] [SPEAKER_00] The fact of the matter is that most crimes are personal. People kill people they know. Investigators soon felt strongly that this was a targeted killing. That Jared Brightigan had been lured into a deadly ambush. But who would have set such a trap? In our next episode, next week, we will get more into the ongoing investigation. We'll hear from more witnesses. With more stories.

[00:39:01] [SPEAKER_00] And we'll learn more about Jared's relationships and the people who may have wished harm upon him.

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_02] Jared Brightigan, 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.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_00] If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com slash murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com slash murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[00:39:51] [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.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_00] If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. .

[00:40:23] .