The Murder of Jared Bridegan: Part Eight: What the Actual Truck?

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[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_00] I'm Anya Kane, 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.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of murder and violence.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00] Now, detectives found a crucial clue in our last episode. We are finally in the endgame of our discussion of the investigation into Jared Bridegan's murder. This will be the final episode where we take you through all the twists and turns of that investigation.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_01] In our next episode, we will do something different. First, we will talk about the actual arrests, the probable cause, the indictments. We will chat about that.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00] And then in our first episode on the trial in this case, we will go through the pretrial phase and discuss the highlights from that before we get on to the opening statements. That way, you can be caught up in time for the trials in this case. We will be keeping an eye on the first trial. Now, we're not going to really be recording an episode on it every single day, but we will be covering it frequently and keeping you updated on all the big moments and developments. So stay tuned. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an 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.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00] And this is The Murder of Jared Bridegan. Part 8. What, the actual truck?

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_01] Do you remember Officer Shane Jarman, the evidence technician who kept saying his involvement with this case was finished? Okay, well, he wasn't really done with this case.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_00] On July 22, 2022, he was so back. He went to the Jacksonville Beach Police Department's property room because detectives wanted him to try something.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_01] Property Officer James Choate got Officer Jarman the item they wanted him to swab. He unsealed it and laid it on fresh brown paper. Then he got to work processing the tire.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00] No, not that tire. Not the one they found at the murder scene. But the new one they had come across at Mario Fernandez Saldana's rental property in Jacksonville, Florida. The one that was identical to the tire at the crime scene. They wanted to know if DNA might be on this new tire. They wanted to know if it might somehow be linked to Jared's murder.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_01] Now, after asking resident Jeremy Ordway's permission to take it off his hands, Detective Brett Burrell had promptly loaded the tire into the bed of his police vehicle. He and Detective Jason Lamont drove off, bearing the tire off to police headquarters, took digital photographs of it, and loaded it into the property room.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00] Now, Detective Burrell hadn't put on gloves to move the thing. I don't really blame him. The whole thing felt like he was trying to be really casual about asking for that tire. We imagine that effect would have been lost if he yelled, hang on, give me a second, and started peeling out some gloves. That might have freaked out the possible persons of interest. So anyways, he touched it without gloves and possibly got his own DNA on it. So Officer Jarman gave him buckle swabs for elimination.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_01] Officer Jarman carefully photographed the tire and its identifying features. He marked the whole thing up with a sharpie. The front side he marked in a way that split the whole thing in half, with two lines at the top and bottom. He swabbed as he went, changing gloves between each swab. He swabbed the outside and inside of the tire, and did a control swab, and two DNA swabs.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01] Once he was done, he placed each swab into individual packages and envelopes.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_00] When Officer Jarman was finished, Detective Burrell helped him put the tire back into its original packaging and rewrapped it with new paper as well. Then they gave it back to Officer Choate.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01] The following day, Detective Lamont and Detective Burrell went over to look over the two tires. They checked the little numbers on each, notably the Department of Transportation numbers. Both DOT numbers were AP80-2T11. Both had the date of manufacture as 4718, or the 47th week of 2018,

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_01] the week of November 29, 2018, through November 25, 2018. The tires also looked to be a match. The detectives wrapped up both tires in paper and put them back.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00] The next day, on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, Detective Lamont got alarming news from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was a report from the FBI on a human trafficking investigation, one that involved Fernandez Saldana's friend, John Biggerstaff. As it turned out, Fernandez Saldana had dated Biggerstaff's daughter in high school. That's how they first got to know each other. And more recently, he was having sex with Biggerstaff's wife, Maria, seemingly with Biggerstaff's consent.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00] So, yeah, they were pretty well connected.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_01] The following day, Detectives Burrell and Lamont headed to Jacksonville, to the home of one of Fernandez Saldana's other associates, a man we will call Joshua. We heard about him previously. He came up with Fernandez Saldana's old boss.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00] They sat down with Joshua, and he okayed them audio recording the whole thing. Now, Joshua started out saying something surprising. He told the detectives he hadn't even heard that Jared Bridegan had been murdered.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_01] He went on to say he had known Fernandez Saldana since 2011. They met through a mutual friend, Michelle, who in turn knew Fernandez Saldana from attending Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville. Then Joshua and Fernandez Saldana worked together at Black Hive Gym, although they both left in 2019. Some every few months. Fernandez Saldana was a normal guy, outgoing, never angry or violent as far as Joshua saw.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_00] Joshua had last seen him on June 25, 2022, at a party for Michelle's uncle. That was one of two times he had even seen him since 2019. Joshua went up to him there, asked him what he'd been up to. The response was laconic, playing video games mostly. But that sounded like Fernandez Saldana to Joshua. He loved playing Destiny on his PlayStation. Now Joshua was more of an Xbox man himself.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_01] Did Joshua know of anyone who owned or drove a blue Ford F-150 who was connected to Fernandez Saldana? No. But then again, Joshua said he didn't know Fernandez Saldana's close friends or associates, although he did meet Gardner and the kids. He had been by their house about three times in the past. Gardner was a really cool person. Sometimes he would hear her and Fernandez Saldana talk about how she and Jared Brightigan had not been meant to be.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01] But then again, he'd also hear Gardner and Fernandez Saldana tell the twins that they should always love Jared, their father.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Christopher Johns, the lead detective on the case, wanted to talk more to the guy who had given them the tire, to Fernandez Saldana's tenant, Jeremy Ordway. He took detectives Lamont and Burrell with him, and on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, they went back to the little house on Potomac Avenue.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_01] Once again, Ordway stepped outside to speak with investigators. Detective Johns told him he had follow-up questions, like would he be willing to provide a DNA sample via a buckle swab?

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00] Sure, Ordway said. Why not? He had just had to do the same thing for his probation officer after all. Detective Johns swabbed him right there and slipped the swabs back into their packaging and into envelopes.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_01] Once again, when asked, Ordway asserted that he only knew Fernandez Saldana as a landlord, despite those calls in his phone records. Just a typical landlord-tenant situation.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_00] What about Henry Tenen, Fernandez Saldana's previous tenant? What was he like?

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, he and Ordway were friends. Back when he originally lived in the house, when Tenen wasn't in Georgia, he often stayed there.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_00] And now what about that tire?

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway knew nothing about that. It was in the ditch in front of his house. Then it somehow ended up leaning against the side of his house. At some point in between, it had been lying in his front yard, filling up with water. So he supposed he was the one who moved it to the side of his house. It did not really concern him. It was a tire for a truck. He did not own a truck.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_00] What about Tenen? Did he own a truck?

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_01] Not for a few months, since his engine blew about three months ago. It was no longer functional. Tenen had been forced to leave it at a Twins food store parking lot for two weeks. Then he had it moved to a local repair yard. Ordway was not sure where exactly the thing had been towed to.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_00] What could Ordway tell the detectives about the truck Tenen had owned?

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_01] It had been inherited from Tenen's father. After he died, he passed the truck on to his son. Tenen had driven up to Georgia to get it. It had been blue. Ordway motioned to the unmarked truck the officers had driven in. It is like yours. The officers drove a Ford F-150.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_00] Same as the suspect vehicle. Detective Johns pulled out a picture of a blue 2000 Ford F-150 Lariat with tan trim around the base and wheel wells with a metal toolbox in the back. Ordway stared at it. Yeah, that's it.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Johns pulled the records. He found what he was looking for. A blue 2004 Ford F-150 crew cab had indeed been registered to Tenen. He searched for his plates on the local license plate readers. He found several hits for the truck. And the truck in those LPR photos looked identical to the one captured in surveillance footage from the investigation.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Johns entered the truck into the Florida Crime Information Center and the National Crime Information Center as a felony vehicle. He felt they identified their vehicle of interest.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_00] The following day on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, Detectives Lamont and Burrell were back in Jacksonville. They were on the hunt for the blue truck.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01] They looked on...

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_00] Missouri Avenue.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01] Wabash Boulevard.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00] Shannon Avenue.

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_01] Amazon Avenue.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00] Shenandoah Avenue.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_01] Potomac Avenue.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_00] Shenango Boulevard.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01] Kankakee Boulevard.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00] Rio Grande Avenue.

[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_01] Wasissa Avenue.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_00] They didn't find it.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_01] They checked every automotive type business they could find.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_00] Soda Auto Sales, Paxson Motors, Mohawk Scrapyard, H&S Outside Storage, and VIP Motors on Edgewood Avenue.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_01] Todd's Transmission on Wasissa Avenue.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00] Father and Son Auto on Rio Grande Avenue.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_01] S&E Trucking Repair and Sliders Precision and Alignment on Old Kings Road.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00] Rusty Acres on Lanes Avenue.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_01] Mickens Auto Sales on Clifford Lane.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_00] And J&J Recycling Demo on Pickettville Road.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_01] Nothing. None of these businesses had any records or recollection about Tennant and his truck either.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives went to Monison Pallets, a business two miles away. Tennant was supposed to be employed there. But they didn't see Tennant there.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_01] The next day, Thursday, July 28, 2022, the truck hunt continued. They went to Arbor Place apartment on Barnes Road in Jacksonville. The day prior to the murder, Fernandez Aldana's cell phone placed him there. But the truck was not in that apartment complex's parking lot. Detectives talked to a guy named Kevin who was part of the maintenance crew there. Kevin said he saw a truck matching the description of the suspect vehicle in the lot.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_01] Not often enough to make him think the driver was a resident, but enough to remember it. He said he would definitely call the police if he saw it again.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives couldn't give up. They needed to find that vehicle. They needed to get to that blue truck. And they also needed to see if they could make any evidence stick as far as DNA.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_01] On Friday, July 29, 2022, Detective Lamont met with Special Agent Mark Mutz of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. He got him a bunch of the recently collected buckle swabs. Special Agent Mutz would get those to the ATF laboratory for further testing.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00] On Monday, August 1, 2022, Detective Burrell and Commander Thomas Crumley kept up the search for the truck. They hid a whole lot of places connected with Tennant, either in the present or the past.

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_01] On Potomac Avenue.

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_00] On West 10th Street.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_01] On West 18th Street.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00] On Odessa Drive.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_01] On Wabash Boulevard. On Old Kings Road. On McDuff Avenue. On Juice Road. They saw no truck. They didn't even see the white-crowned Victoria that they had witnessed Tennant driving.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_00] They figured they needed to think outside the box and maybe take to the skies.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_01] On Monday, August 8, 2022, at 10 a.m., Detective Burrell met Brandon Harmon, an agent with United States Customs and Border Protection. Agent Harmon wasn't just a CBP agent. He was also a pilot with the CBP Air and Marine Office at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville. And that was where they were meeting.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_00] At 11.40 a.m., the two of them took off from the Naval Air Station in a helicopter. They flew over state lines into Georgia to the Big Cypress Hunt Club in Fargo, Georgia. They scanned the ground for the blue truck. They targeted that hunt club for reasons that will become clearer later in the episode. Agent Harmon recorded video on that flight. But they found no trucks at the hunt club.

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_01] That same day, back on the ground, Detective Lamont got cell phone location data from T-Mobile for Tennant. From January 1, 2022 to July 27, 2022.

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_00] On February 16, 2022, Tennant had two calls of interest. One at 9.18 p.m. to Ordway. Another at 9.23 p.m. to someone unknown. Both calls came from the T-Mobile cellular tower in Jacksonville Beach. Both were incoming calls.

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_01] On Thursday, August 11, 2022, detectives reviewed the local license plate readers. They found Tennant's blue truck and discount tire in Jacksonville at 1.06 p.m. back on April 2, 2022. There, Tennant purchased two new tires. They were put on the truck's front axle.

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[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01] Truck was later seen on 103rd Street and Ricker Road. That was at 412 p.m. That was the last time the vehicle appeared on the LPRs.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_00] That same day in August, detectives had another idea. Detective Burrell requested that CBP do a flyover of a property on Juice Road in Jacksonville. Specifically, a kind of run-down place with a lot of trees in the back.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_01] The following week, on Monday, August 15, 2022, at 8.02 a.m., he spoke with CBP Aviation Enforcement Agent Zoe Shadd. She told him they'd be doing the flyover in about one hour.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00] At 1.01 p.m., she went to the police station to meet with Detective Burrell. She gave him an envelope with a DVD of the recorded flyover. But she said that while she was up there, she didn't see the truck.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01] On Friday, August 12, 2022, Detective Sergeant C. David Young passed on some key information to Detective Sergeant Keith Shackelford. It was about Tennant, how he may have had a vehicle serviced at Discount Tire on 103rd Street in Jacksonville, Florida. Detective Sergeant Shackelford knew Discount Tire would need Tennant's phone number to help them. He got that, and then he and Detective Burrell went to the business at 4.20 p.m. They met with a manager, Eric.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_00] Eric found two dates of service for Tennant, April 2, 2022, at 1.06 p.m., for a 2004 Ford F-150 18-inch base Lariat with a listed mileage of 160,781 miles. That also featured a purchase of two 265-60 R18-114 VXL BSW RAD DIMAX AS8 tires.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_00] Tennant paid the $319.28 charged with a debit card. Eric also noted that whoever had brought in that truck had opted to keep the front driver's side tire for whatever reason. The second date of service was for April 23, 2022, at 11.53 a.m. for a 1993 Ford Crown Victoria with a listed mileage of 111,074 miles.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_00] That also featured a purchase of two 215-70 R15 98T SL BSW MHV Mojave Touring NS tires. Tennant paid $221.45 with a debit card.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_01] Eric did not have any personal knowledge of either transaction. Also, they were out of luck as far as footage. The stores only went back 10 days. But he suggested they talk to another employee named Aaron. Aaron might remember. Aaron was working at the River City location of Discount Tire on Skymarks Drive in Jacksonville.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_00] Now, mistakes get made in any investigation. That's very important to remember. On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, Detective Johns found one. Remember those crucial interviews with Ordway? The CD filed into the property room didn't actually have the audio recording on it. He made sure they got the recording onto a CD in there. But he had to file some paperwork about it.

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_01] Speaking of Ordway, on August 18, 2022, at 845 in the morning, Detective Johns went back to Potomac Avenue. He spoke with Ordway, got a set of keys from him, and an explanation of each one.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_00] The small Ford key was for Ordway's father's crowned beck. Another was for his vehicle in the driveway. And the third was for Tennant's blue truck. Detective Johns took them all. But detectives weren't done with Tennant's pal, Ordway. Could he know more than he was saying? They had another good excuse to go talk to him because something big had happened. On August 18, 2022, Henry Tennant was pulled over on Edgewood Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida for speeding.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_00] The pair of patrol officers from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office were able to determine that he was driving despite the fact that he had a suspended license. And then things got even worse. They found an old shotgun in his trunk. That was possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. Tennant and the two people he had in the car with him were taken in. So now Tennant was incarcerated. Tennant's dog went with him everywhere. And now somebody would need to care for it.

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_00] That was the ruse that detectives were using. They wanted to know if he would take care of Tennant's dog. Once again, Detective Lamont found himself in Ordway's driveway. With him was Detective William Cullen, known as Paul, of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. And in their vehicle was the dog.

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_01] They told him his friend had been arrested. Ordway said he would take care of the dog for Tennant.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives let him know something else, too. They believed Tennant's truck had been used in the murder of Jared Brightigan. They reminded Ordway about what he'd said previously about that truck.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway said he admitted to taking Tennant to pick up that very truck after his father's passing. He changed his story. Previously, he had said in July the truck had been out of commission for three months. So since approximately April. But now he moved that back to February or even January, the first of the year. If that was the case, then it could not be the right truck because Jared's murder happened in mid-February.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_01] At that point, Ordway said he let Tennant drive around his father's old Crown Vic and gave Tennant $1,000 to fix the truck's engine back in March. Even though he had just said the truck broke down in January. Never got that money back, though. Ordway said the truck arrived at Portomac Avenue on a wrecker. Oh, and the truck he knew was at some mechanic's shop. Did not say which one.

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_00] Why did Ordway give Tennant access to the Crown Vic? Well, Tennant had been his father's only friend. So he lent him the car and quite a bit of money. Ordway claimed he had been living on Potomac Avenue since February and that he had had his phone. And when asked, he told detectives he had had his cell phone number for eight years.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway said, I am not stressing because I called Henry because, hey man, can you bring me home or something like that?

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_00] See, Ordway had called Tennant at 9.18 p.m. on the night of the murder.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives confronted Ordway on why he had seemed hesitant to talk about the truck during previous interviews.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00] Well, Ordway said he wasn't trying to go about telling them Tennant's life story. He wasn't trying to lie or anything either. Frankly, he didn't want to be involved. After all, he never drove Tennant's truck. Never saw anyone drive it, aside from Tennant. He drove the Crown Vic a few times, but never any great distance from his home. He knew one thing Tennant would do with that Crown Vic, though. He'd give rides to a woman named Peggy in Palatka, Florida, an hour south of Jacksonville. He'd take her to pick up her sister.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_01] Again, detectives asked Ordway what he and Tennant talked about the night of the murder. He said he did not remember, but he was sure Tennant hadn't ever talked to him about the murder of Jared Bright again.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_00] So what did Tennant think about detectives finding that specific truck tire at the house?

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, he had no issue with that.

[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_00] What about other people? Did anyone else have problems with Ordway talking to the cops?

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_01] Well, after the first interview, Ordway admitted he did ring up Fernandez-Saldana about it. His landlord was apologetic and said that detectives were interviewing all of his known associates. Ordway said at some point he asked Fernandez-Saldana about the murder, but they never really talked about it.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_00] Ordway went further than that. He insisted Fernandez-Saldana had never once mentioned a past conflict with Jared, the victim. Not to him, at least. Then again, they weren't friends. And he knew very little about Fernandez-Saldana, had never visited him in Jacksonville Beach, hadn't even been there in six years. All he knew was Fernandez-Saldana and Tennant probably knew each other because Tennant used to rent the property from him. Oh, and Tennant once helped Fernandez-Saldana fill in a pool at some property.

[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_00] He didn't remember when or where that happened, maybe six months ago?

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_01] Either way, that was a roundabout way of saying he did not know where Tennant's blue truck was. Never heard him speak of getting rid of it. Figured it was somewhere around Potomac Avenue.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_00] As for Tennant, Ordway did know things about him. After all, they were friends. Like how he had a phone planned with four cellular phone lines. One for his girlfriend, Janie Deal. Another one for some lady called Peanut. As it turns out, Deal and Peanut were one of the same. Just so you know, detectives knew that she was also in Fernandez-Saldana's context under the name Peanut. The four numbers thing was kind of amusing to Ordway. Ordway knew his friend's number.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_00] But then sometimes he'd get a call from a random number and it would turn out to be Tennant, calling him because his other phone's battery was dead. In total, Tennant usually lugged around his two phones everywhere he went.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_01] Did Tennant have two guns? No. Well, there was one. A shotgun from his father.

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00] That shotgun had been discovered during the traffic stop. Now, after the arrest on Thursday, August 18th, 2022 at 7 a.m., Detective Lamont showed up at the Fourth Circuit's state attorney's office. He was all set to interview Janie Deal, Tennant's alleged girlfriend, and William Hrabel, who had been the other man in the car during the traffic stop.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Lamont interviewed Deal, Tennant's girlfriend, first in an interview room at the Criminal Gun Intelligence Center. Detective Burrell was there as well.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_00] Deal explained Tennant had been driving her and Hrabel to the Methadone Clinic at the time of the traffic stop. Now, she had known Tennant for over 20 years. They had dated once. She sort of indicated from what we can tell from the report that they were not an item now. Every morning, though, he would still take her to the clinic, take her home, and drop her off. Then he would go to work.

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_01] According to Deal, Tennant still lived on Potomac Avenue, just in a different home than Ordway. He'd lived there for a few years. So had she for a year or so. She confirmed that Ordway lived next door. For the most part, she started to avoid the Potomac residence because she did not like to be around booze and Ordway drank.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_00] Deal went over Tennant's vehicles. The only one she knew of was the Crown Vic, the one she had just been riding around in. And a bicycle. Sometimes, though, he would borrow cars to take her to the clinic and get to work, like Ordway's red convertible. There was a truck in the past. She didn't know where that had gone. But she took a while to even bring up the truck.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives asked her why she hadn't even mentioned it. Well, she thought it had broken down. It had been given to Tennant by his late father. But it needed a new motor and had been damaged in the middle of the front bumper where Tennant said he hit a pole. She had last seen it two or three months ago and had never been inside it. It used to be at Potomac Avenue. Before it broke down, Tennant let others borrow it. But she was not sure who. She didn't get out much after all. After getting home from the clinic, she would stay at home.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_01] She thought it might have been at the Twins food store on Edgewood Avenue, but it was since gone. Maybe it was with the mechanic friend of Tennant's. But she didn't know the guy or where he was. Detectives showed her the LPR pictures of the truck. She said it sure looked like Tennant's truck. They told her it had been involved in Jared's murder.

[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_00] That upset deal. She became agitated, saying she didn't know where it was. But she would try to help them find it. Tennant never talked about the murder, not to her. And she wasn't sure why he'd be involved in something like that, this helpful guy she had known for 20 years, who reliably brought her to the clinic every morning. Why would he kill a man who was a stranger to him?

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives asked if she knew who Fernandez Saldana was.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_00] Sure. He owned that Potomac Avenue address where Tennant used to live. Sometimes he gave her rides, too. She hadn't seen him for eight months, though. She identified him from a picture, along with Ordway. Detectives showed her a picture of bigger staff, too. She did not know him.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_01] Tennant's truck was. Investigators had not asked her again. She just kept saying that. And saying, quote, a black dude who works on cars, end quote, had it and was fixing it up.

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_00] Investigators asked Deal if Tennant had any weapons. Yes, a shotgun. The one that had been in his car during the traffic stop.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_01] Did the truck have sentimental value to Tennant?

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_00] Yes, it meant a lot to him because it had belonged to his late father. She didn't think he'd just junk it. She herself had even told him to sell it a while ago. But he countered that it was still a good truck. That had been about a month ago. Last, they talked about the phones. Deal confirmed that Tennant had two phones. She didn't know why. One for work, one for personal use, maybe? He always carried both around with him. His plan had four phones. His daughter had one, and she had the other. Tennant paid for it for her. As for her phone, the one Tennant was paying for,

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_00] Deal handed that over to Detective Burrell. She gave him permission to take a look inside.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01] Next, they interviewed William Rabel. He said he did not know Tennant. He was friends with Deal for several years, as they lived in the same neighborhood. But Tennant gives him rides to a clinic, and done so for about a month. Ever since he ran into Deal at the clinic, Tennant's rides were helpful. And he didn't even charge Rabel gas money. They always rode in Tennant's Crown Vic. He must have seemed like a guy who didn't know much, who just happened to be in the car at the time.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_00] That same day, while his colleagues were interviewing Deal and Rabel, Detective Johns had a pretty big interview of his own. He went into that same state attorney's office, and he sat down with Tennant himself. At that point, Tennant was only facing unrelated charges from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office around the traffic stop, around driving without a license, and around the weapon found in the vehicle.

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_01] It began at 7.13 a.m., audio and visually recorded, of course. Detective Cullen was there, too. He read Tennant his Miranda rights. Tennant signed the waiver form and consented to speak.

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_00] For a while, they talked about some pretty non-controversial subjects. Tennant's driving habits, what vehicles he drove, how the Crown Vic belonged to his roommate Ordway, how he started driving that in February or March, how he mostly kept it on Potomac Avenue, and occasionally on Old King's Road, how he drove it up to Drayton, Georgia, to visit his brother in April.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_01] What about other vehicles? Did Tennant have any of those?

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00] Sure, a truck. He owned it. He inherited it from his late father, around the first of the year. He had driven that for about eight months until it began to have trouble, and he simply couldn't afford to get it fixed. It broke down in February, which frankly doesn't really make any sense if he got it in January and drove it for eight months, whether he meant January of 2021 or 2022. I don't know. It's confusing. Either way, at that point, Tennant said he sold the truck for parts. It had been a 2004 Ford F-150.

[00:35:50] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Johns pulled out a license plate reader hit showing Tennant's truck at 103rd and Ricker in April, well after the supposed breakdown.

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_00] Well, Tennant said he did keep the truck for about a month after he put new tires on it, April 2nd, 2022.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_01] Did he ever have it towed anywhere?

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_00] Sure, in April, after its oil pump went bust. After that, he sold it for parts in a cash deal to a man whose name he did not know.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_01] Did anyone else have access to his truck?

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_00] Sure, he let a guy named Jimmy drive it, but he was always there with him when that happened, and he would let Ordway drive it when he wasn't there, but that only happened twice when he was at work in the middle of the day.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Johns took out a picture of the truck. He asked Tennant where he was driving around 6.30 p.m. on February 16th, 2022, the night of the murder.

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_00] Tennant said the only reason he'd really be out at Jacksonville Beach was because he was going to a restaurant there to get burnt ends. Those are caramelized bits of meat from the fatty points of a smoked beef brisket. But actually, it sounded in this report like he was saying he was going to a restaurant called Burnt Ends. On the right off of Beach Boulevard, four blocks from Taco Lou, a local taco joint.

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives knew that the only barbecue joint in that area is Mojo's BBQ, not anything called Burnt Ends.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_00] Would Tennant be curious to know that the night he visited Jacksonville Beach, someone happened to get murdered there? Who had his truck that night? He didn't know. Then he asked what night it was again?

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_01] He was told, February 16th, 2022, and asked if he was in the truck.

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_00] No, he was not.

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_01] Who had his truck then?

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00] He didn't know.

[00:37:33] [SPEAKER_01] Did Fernandez Aldana have his truck? No. What happened to his truck that night then?

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_00] Tennant fell silent.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_01] Why was his phone off that night?

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_00] It must have went dead, he said.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives John and Cullen asked Tennant to tell them what happened that night.

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_00] He said he didn't really know.

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_01] They showed him a picture of John Biggerstaff. Tennant said he used to drive a white Chevy Sierra. They showed him a picture of Fernandez Aldana. He identified him as his former landlord. But he didn't know anything to help the detectives put him away, he said. Detectives confronted Tennant with the fact that they had plenty of evidence against him and the fact his cell phone had pinged in Jacksonville Beach.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_00] Tennant kept denying, denying, denying. He hadn't even known what happened with his truck until learning that from detectives just now. All he did was drive his truck that had supposedly been broken down for months to a restaurant that seemed not to exist. While his phone happened to have died on the night the murder of his ex-landlord's sworn enemy took place a few miles away. What was so odd about that? He said he got to the barbecue place after 5 p.m. that night, the night of the murder.

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_00] He left one key in the ignition of his truck and took another one with him. Someone must have taken his truck. Detectives asked him if he'd remember the face of the person who took the truck. He said yes, so now his story was changing from not knowing anything to having a sense that someone may have taken his truck for nefarious purposes. He also said he was standing in the restaurant's doorway. Again, this restaurant that does not seem to exist. He was looking out of it. The truck was in the restaurant's parking lot off Beach Boulevard.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00] He wasn't sure how long he was in that restaurant. Again, the one that did not exist. But it was for a long time. When he was done, he walked to the other side of Taco Lou to get his truck. At some point, he used his secondary cell phone to call his main cell phone, which he'd apparently left in the truck. A green SUV pulled up. The person inside told him mysteriously to get his truck from the plaza next to the taco place. From there, Tennant went to a store on Beach Boulevard, got a water and soda.

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_00] Sure enough, he found his truck at the plaza. That was around 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night. He found that truck, and he found his other cell phone within.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_01] So Tennant's story shifted a lot. But detectives wanted to know who borrowed his truck.

[00:39:52] [SPEAKER_00] A guy named Danny. He had known Danny for about eight months at that point. They did some landscaping jobs together. He said Danny previously did work for that fool and pointed at a picture of Fernandez Saldana.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01] This guy? Detective Cullen touched the photo of Fernandez Saldana.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, Tennant said. Danny had asked to borrow the truck back in January. But that didn't work out that month. There had been issues with the vehicle. So Danny bought a new battery and alternator for Tennant. That sort of seemed to lock Tennant into helping him. So Danny told him to meet him at the restaurant. Danny knew there would be a key in the ignition. Danny left his own black Mazda at Tennant's place on Potomac Avenue and got the truck from there. Again, the story keeps changing. Well, why did Danny want the truck?

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_00] Well, just to move some tile, parchments, something like that. Later on, Tennant changed his story again. Danny actually needed the truck to go repossess someone else's car. Tennant didn't want anything to do with that drama. So that's why he hung out at the restaurant instead. So yeah, that was his new story. Quote, To the best of my knowledge, Danny had my truck, he said. Tennant said he had been upset with Danny, though. Danny hadn't brought back his truck on time. So then who was that guy in the green SUV?

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_00] He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure if it was even Danny.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_01] Did Tennant notice that his tire was no longer in the truck after it was returned?

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_00] Yep.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_01] Did he talk to this mysterious Danny ever again after that night?

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_00] No, and he didn't even have the guy's phone number.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01] Was Danny white or black?

[00:41:22] [SPEAKER_00] I can't even tell from the report what his response was.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01] He was shown a picture of John Biggerstaff. Was that Danny?

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_00] No, he didn't think so. So Tennant at this point had little else to say to detectives. He hadn't driven the truck around Jacksonville Beach that night. It was his truck, though. Tennant seemed to get upset. Police had pictures of his truck in a murder case. But he wasn't in the truck, he said. And now he was going to be messed up. All because he couldn't say Fernandez Saldana took his truck. And because somebody left one of his tires at the scene of the murder. That was fucked up, he said.

[00:41:55] [SPEAKER_00] He also mentioned something confusing about someone pulling up in a two-door black Mazda. Was that Danny? Or someone else? At this point, Tennant said he was done. There was nothing else he could tell them.

[00:42:06] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Cullen asked Tennant what his concern was with telling investigators the truth. After all, that whole story had made no sense.

[00:42:15] [SPEAKER_00] Tennant responded that his concern was with his children and grandchildren.

[00:42:19] [SPEAKER_01] Their safety?

[00:42:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yes, their safety and well-being. Now Tennant was really done. He said, there ain't anything else I can give you, and I think I need an attorney.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_01] On Friday, August 19, 2022, Detective Burrell went to meet with Commander Crumley at 8 a.m. He got from him a sealed envelope inside with the plastic flex cuffs used on Tennant the previous day when he was brought into Duval County's Crime Gun Intelligence Center. He also had a closed brown paper bag with a disposable coffee that Tennant had drunk from in his interview. Those would be maintained as evidence.

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_00] More major interviews followed.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01] On Monday, August 22, 2022, Detective Lamont went to Biggerstaff's home in Jacksonville. The time was 9 a.m. Biggerstaff's street address bore the name of a type of firearm. Detective Lamont asked Biggerstaff if he talked to investigators about Jared's murder. Biggerstaff said he was late for work. He had a job at TDH Christian Academy in Jacksonville.

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_01] He served there as a junior reserve officer's training corps advisor for the high schoolers interested in potential military service. But after he got off, he'd swing by the Jacksonville Beach Police Department.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_00] And he did. At about 6.40 p.m., he sat down with Detectives Johns and Lamont in interview room 89. Detective Sergeant Young was there for it, too. The detectives Mirandized him, and he verbally acknowledged that and signed a form noting that he understood. Throughout the interview, Biggerstaff brought up his 22-year career with the United States Navy, the one he left after his daughter graduated from Sandalwood High School in 2008. He briefly brought up being a reserve officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, too.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_00] And how his son was now a police officer with the Arlington Police Department in Texas. How his son was a former SWAT sniper turned narcotics unit guy. How his son had played college football in Melbourne, Florida. After quitting the sport, he decided to go to the University of North Florida to get a criminal justice degree. After graduating, his son went to Texas. He still visited, though. He apparently was coming back to or had come back to Jacksonville in February to get married. Biggerstaff kept talking about his family.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_00] How he met his current wife while serving in the Navy in Spain. How they had been married for 34 years.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_01] Fernandez Saldana seemed to be one guy intimately familiar with Biggerstaff's family. Biggerstaff said he had been friends with his daughter in high school. Biggerstaff got to know the young man. They started working out together. He even had Fernandez Laudana help him fill in a pool to get his parents' home ready to rent out. Then, Fernandez Laudana left to serve in the Army. But they stayed in touch. After his stint in the Army, Fernandez Laudana went back to working out with Biggerstaff.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_00] Fernandez Laudana had all sorts of issues from a head injury sustained in the Army. Recurring migraines. Biggerstaff knew a thing or two about that.

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_01] Fernandez Laudana made money with contracts maintaining gym equipment. Before the COVID pandemic in 2020, he had a handyman business going. He also acted as Biggerstaff's middleman for his business, although he lost that business during the pandemic.

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_00] Biggerstaff revealed that somewhere between a month and a half and two months ago, Fernandez Laudana had told him detectives of the Jacksonville Beach Police Department had been skulking around Potomac Avenue talking to his tenants. He described it as a courtesy call. Police were talking to everyone who knew Fernandez Laudana, so he figured Biggerstaff might get questioned too.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_01] Then he started opening up about his criminal history. In 2016, a horrible accusation had been made against him. Then, while he was on probation, he made some mistakes. Some bad choices. He ended up in prison.

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_00] The courtesy call from Fernandez Laudana had been because he was a drug addict, according to Biggerstaff. Everybody always suspects an addict in a terrible crime. That was a point of contention in Biggerstaff's own life and his own family. He resented his son going into that narcotics unit.

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_01] Biggerstaff had so many troubles. It all stemmed from a head injury he had. After that, he began having accidents. Waking up in random places in Jacksonville with no idea how he got there. He also mismanaged money and got evicted a lot.

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_00] But having a head injury could also be convenient when talking to detectives when you claim not to remember a lot of important events. Anyways, Potomac Avenue came up. Biggerstaff was in the middle of remodeling the Potomac Avenue address where Ordway and Tennant seemingly lived. Remember that handyman named John who was chunky and white? Yeah, that's John Biggerstaff. Detectives wanted to know if Biggerstaff knew the residents there. No, not really. Biggerstaff did get the impression the resident there was in trouble

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_00] and was sure he was jailbound, though. So he knew enough to know that. But that was okay with Biggerstaff. With the Tennant out of the way, he would have a deal with Fernandez-Saldana. He would move in, pay $1,000 a month to live there. The rent would get jacked up each year until it was on par with nearby houses. But that would get offset by the remodeling work that Biggerstaff was doing now.

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_01] In past years, when Tennant lived there, Biggerstaff had worked on that same Potomac Avenue address. Tennant was an older guy who worked at a pallet company. One time, Tennant had pulled out a bow and arrow while Biggerstaff was there. Biggerstaff stopped going around there after that. He was a convicted felon. He couldn't be around weapons, so he had not seen Tennant in a year or two.

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives spread out some pictures, ones of Fernandez-Saldana and Tennant. He recognized those ones.

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_01] Broadway, though, he did not know him. The guy whose house he was apparently remodeling in anticipation of moving in. Later, he admitted he might be the current resident.

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives also showed him a picture of Tennant's truck.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_01] Biggerstaff said he thought Tennant only rode a bicycle. He did not know about the blue truck or the white-crowned Vic.

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_00] What about Shannon Gardner? Did Biggerstaff know her?

[00:48:25] [SPEAKER_01] Sure. His buddy's wife, ex-Mormon. Lots of legal wrangling with her ex-husband, Jared Brightigan. Biggerstaff hadn't even known she and Fernandez-Saldana were married for a year. But he and Fernandez-Saldana would talk about her sometimes. When the last times they did, Biggerstaff made a comment about how perfect her butt was. But Fernandez-Saldana had told him they were divorcing because they couldn't agree on how to raise the children. And because of the stress of the constant battles with Jared.

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_00] Biggerstaff remembered the first time he and his wife met Gardner. They'd all gone to the beach. Then Fernandez-Saldana invited them back to his home for a barbecue. But Biggerstaff's wife hadn't wanted to go, so they parted.

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_01] After the divorce, Fernandez-Saldana told Biggerstaff he would buy a toy hauler, a specialized type of trailer, and live in that. He wanted to simplify.

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_00] Back to the vehicles. Detectives held up a picture of Tennant's blue truck once more. They told him how it had been in Jacksonville Beach on the night of Jared's murder.

[00:49:24] [SPEAKER_01] Well, Biggerstaff said he didn't even know about that murder until Fernandez-Saldana brought it up randomly, talking about how hard it had been on the twins. Biggerstaff wasn't even familiar with that area. He'd only recently been to the General Vicinity two months ago, driving down the J. Turner Butler Boulevard.

[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives asked Biggerstaff why he thought Tennant would have gotten embroiled in this murder plot. Biggerstaff again pleaded ignorance. He didn't really know Tennant. Knew his family may have had property up in Georgia. That was it. Didn't know him to get angry or have any weapons, other than the bow and arrows.

[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_01] Frankly, he didn't even see Fernandez-Saldana wanting to hurt anyone. Even a guy he didn't like, such as Jared.

[00:50:05] [SPEAKER_00] Detectives changed the subject. Did Biggerstaff have an interest in 10mm handguns? Sure, yeah.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_01] He had one back when he was part of a hunt club in Fargo, Georgia, for bear protection, all prior to his arrest. He thought it might have been a Glock. That gun got listed after his arrest, and his son helped him inventory all his weapons, mostly family heirlooms, and remove them from his home in 2016. He also had a .40 caliber Glock for a backup in those days. His son currently used that gun.

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_00] Did his son also have the 10mm gun?

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_01] No.

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_00] So then why was Biggerstaff searching for 10mm Glocks on January 26, 2022, on Google?

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_01] That question stumped him. Biggerstaff froze for a full 15 seconds. No, he said. He didn't have anything to do with guns. Not anymore. He was a felon. He wasn't allowed to. But he did want them to know that Google search history generally is not accurate.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_00] That hardly explained things, though.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_01] Detective told him Tennant's cell phone was in Jacksonville Beach on the night of the murder, the same night Fernandez-Saldana's cell phone was turned off. Why were those phones off? Biggerstaff said he did not know. He turned off his phones all the time. He didn't get out of his house much either. He didn't remember having any conversation with Fernandez-Saldana around there, prior to or after the murder. He didn't even remember February 16, 2022 at all, really.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_00] Would Biggerstaff be willing to submit a DNA sample and give his cell phone over for detectives to search?

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_01] Yes, to both.

[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_00] Detective John swabbed Biggerstaff himself and submitted those buckle swabs into evidence. He also rushed off the man's cell phone to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Biggerstaff's old employer, ironically, to their computer forensics department to be downloaded. Then it was back to the questions. What happened to that 10-millimeter handgun he once owned?

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_01] He just kept going on about bears and hunting and seeing the bears while hunting.

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_00] What ammunition did that thing take?

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_01] He could not remember. But he would buy the ammunition from Academy Sports on Kernan Boulevard.

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_00] So where did the gun go again? After Biggerstaff's arrest? After the whole drama with the inventoried guns carried away by his son? Had he been required to give the guns away? Were they confiscated by the state of Florida?

[00:52:27] [SPEAKER_01] It was a mixture of crap, Biggerstaff told them. His son, daughter, and wife were all involved. He figured he would get the firearms back eventually, because the charges against him had all been BS. But his son was forced to give up his crap after the arrest.

[00:52:43] [SPEAKER_00] Again, where was that 10-millimeter gun?

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_01] Biggerstaff seemingly was not answering that.

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_00] So the investigators pivoted to his communications with Fernandez Saldana on the night of the murder. Biggerstaff said they could check his phone, so they did. And they found no messages present from the night of the murder with Fernandez Saldana. In fact, all communications with Fernandez Saldana up to May of 2022 had been deleted.

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_01] Biggerstaff could not help them. After all, he had a bad memory. Thanks to that head injury, he didn't remember much. Previously, Biggerstaff said he wasn't familiar with the area around the murder scene. But he did concede he went to Jacksonville Beach often. Every July 4th, for sure. He had been there probably at least a dozen times in 2022 alone. Then again, he wasn't really certain where Jacksonville Beach started and ended.

[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_00] At that point, Detectives Johns and Lamont steered him back to the subject of his old pal, Fernandez Saldana. They showed him a whole bunch of his communications with Fernandez Saldana, presumably ones they'd gotten from subpoenas around Fernandez Saldana. They asked him about those communications on the night of the murder.

[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_01] Biggerstaff said that was personal. And it sure was. Finally, Biggerstaff came out with it. He and his wife, Maria, were swingers. Swingers refers to being in a relationship and consenting to have sexual relations with others outside of that relationship. Seemingly talking about the night before the murder, Biggerstaff said he did not know why Fernandez Saldana was at his house. He didn't know why they were driving around together in Jacksonville.

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_01] Maybe they were going to the Potomac Avenue properties or moving scrap. Or was that in July? Or going to a salvage yard. Maybe on the west side.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_00] So why again had Fernandez Saldana contacted Biggerstaff to warn him about the police?

[00:54:38] [SPEAKER_01] Again, Biggerstaff said it was because of his criminal past. A courtesy call between friends.

[00:54:44] [SPEAKER_00] What did Biggerstaff know about Tennant's truck?

[00:54:46] [SPEAKER_01] Nothing. He hadn't seen it in the two to three months whenever he'd been by Potomac Avenue. For all he knew, Tennant was a cyclist. Didn't even drive as far as he knew.

[00:54:57] [SPEAKER_00] When was the last time Biggerstaff talked to his friend Fernandez Saldana? Well, that day. That very day, as it turned out. Fernandez Saldana had actually showed up at Biggerstaff's school and asked about getting a job with the JROTC program there.

[00:55:11] [SPEAKER_01] So going back to the swinging. Biggerstaff and his wife swung. He believed Fernandez Saldana did too. Gardner did not, though.

[00:55:19] [SPEAKER_00] Where was the 10mm gun?

[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_01] Well, all his firearms had been inventoried all the way back in 2016, a long time ago. Biggerstaff didn't know where they all went. But the Middle District of Florida informed the Biggerstaffs that all of his weapons had to be out of the house. They even forced his son to get rid of his bow and arrow. Biggerstaff insisted he knew nothing of Jared Bridigan's murder.

[00:55:41] [SPEAKER_00] Soon, Detective Johns would begin getting subpoena returns. Namely, AT&T for Biggerstaff and Ordway for June 15th to August 23rd, 2022, and July 15th to August 23rd, 2022, respectively. Oh, and a letter from the first premier bank, which was behind one of Tennant's credit cards. That bank told him they would not comply with an out-of-state subpoena.

[00:56:03] [SPEAKER_01] On Wednesday, August 24th, 2022, Detective Johns traveled to the Duval County pretrial detention center. He wanted Tennant's DNA. Detective Corporal Yvonne Santiago went with him. Detective Johns handed over a DNA search warrant to Tennant and Tennant's attorney, Al Shipperfield. He slid on gloves and then collected buckle swabs from Tennant and sealed those.

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_00] That same day, Detective Corporal Yvonne Santiago and Sergeant Keith Shackelford met a guy named Alfredo at the police station. Alfredo primarily spoke Spanish. Corporal Santiago was able to translate for him, and he sat down with them for the interview.

[00:56:41] [SPEAKER_01] Alfredo worked as a mobile mechanic. His business card had been found in Tennant's possession. But he had not worked on any Ford 150 blue trucks in recent times. He did not recognize pictures of Tennant, Bigger Staff, Fernandez Aldana, and someone else named Daniel Holmes. It was a dead end.

[00:56:58] [SPEAKER_00] On August 31st, 2022, the search for DNA kicked up. Detective Johns asked Officer Erin Philbert, one of the officers from the original evidence team, to do swabs for touch DNA on a set of Ford truck keys. She got those from property officer R.K. Mobley and processed them right there in the property room. Using sterile gloves each time, she collected four swabs and a control swab.

[00:57:21] [SPEAKER_01] As for digital forensics of the victim's technology, investigators ran into a roadblock. Detective Johns got word from Detective H.M. Quintana of the Computer Forensic Unit of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Detective Quintana, supervised by Detective David Ostertag, had processed Jared's worked Apple MacBook. Nothing came up as far as keywords associated with the investigation. A complete report for his technology came in on October 5th, 2022.

[00:57:47] [SPEAKER_00] That showed that the Apple iMac Pro computer had no hits as far as keywords with investigative relevance. Or words like baptism, child, church, custody, divorce, fight, or kill. Or the first names of people involved in the case. No internet searches or deleted internet artifacts of investigative interests came up at all.

[00:58:06] [SPEAKER_01] The Apple iMac Pro had full disk encryption on. Guest passwords did not work. They were not able to do anything with that.

[00:58:15] [SPEAKER_00] As for one of the portable hard drives, that actually did have numerous artifacts of interest. Tax documents, medical bills, a last will and testament, and some court documents related to the divorce.

[00:58:25] [SPEAKER_01] For the other hard drive, a Lacey HD full disk encryption was also employed. They were not able to get into that without a password.

[00:58:32] [SPEAKER_00] On Tuesday, September 6th, 2022, at 5 p.m., Detective Burrell conducted yet another search for the mysterious truck. No, they were not going to give up on that truck. And detectives were now armed with location data from T-Mobile that might provide them some clues. Detective Burrell went to a spot on Old Kings Road, met a guy named Clarence, who had a bunch of broken down rusty cars on his property, in what the detectives in their report politely called varying states of disrepair. Clarence was a mechanic.

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_01] And you know what? He had worked on a blue F-150 earlier in the year. The owner was a tall guy, referred to him by his wife's cousin, who was known as Tron. The truck owner was black, and he always had a dog with him. He told a story about inheriting the truck from his late father in Georgia. Drove a white-crowned Vic.

[00:59:21] [SPEAKER_00] That sure sounded exactly like Tenen.

[00:59:24] [SPEAKER_01] Clarence said the truck's motor needed replacing. Tenen wanted him to just change the oil pump, though. Those details were confirmed by Tenen's associates, Ordway, and Deal.

[00:59:34] [SPEAKER_00] That truck had sat there for a long time on Clarence's property. Then Tenen had helped take it to Twins Grocery. But Clarence didn't know where it had gone from there.

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Burrell had found a lead on the blue truck.

[00:59:45] [SPEAKER_00] Meanwhile, on Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Detective Lamont shipped Tenen's cellular phone off to Celebrite Advanced Services in New Jersey. Conventional Celebrite forensic downloads hadn't worked on it. Previously, detectives had gotten a search warrant for the phone. They had then taken it to the digital forensics computer lab at the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office and left it to Detective Kevin Green to examine. Again, no relation to Kevin. But he had not been able to extract the thing.

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_01] On Monday, September 26, 2022, Tenen's cell phone came back from Celebrite. They had apparently gotten the data from that, which was placed into the case folder.

[01:00:23] [SPEAKER_00] Now it was time to get inside the incarcerated Tenen's former residence. The residence where the mysterious Ordway still lived. On Thursday, October 5, 2022, at noon, Detective Lamont and his police colleagues served a search warrant signed by Judge Scott Mitchell on Ordway's Potomac Avenue residence. A red two-door convertible and a black truck, both with Florida tags, sat in the driveway. Ordway was there at the time. So were three others, Norma, Devin, and Dane.

[01:00:53] [SPEAKER_01] It failed to Detective Lamont to talk to all three of those people and record it. Except for Ordway. We will get to that later.

[01:01:00] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Lamont and ATF Special Agent A. Simmons talked to Norma in the back of an unmarked patrol car. Norma volunteered to do the interview. She said she and her husband, Dane, were now renting Tenen's former room from Ordway. They all worked at the local Domino's restaurant together. Meanwhile, Devin was living out of his truck in the driveway.

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_01] When the couple moved in, the whole room was empty aside from a pair of underwear. Ordway said he moved out Tenen's belongings. Norma knew there was a bunch of clutter in the garage, but she wasn't sure if that belonged to Tenen. Ordway sold the Crown Vic he'd loaned to Tenen to the Domino's manager, a guy named Sean. Sean said there was still some of Tenen's stuff in there, and he needed to swing by Potomac to give it back.

[01:01:43] [SPEAKER_00] Now, Norma had heard about Tenen getting arrested for a murder in Jacksonville Beach. From Ordway, actually. Ordway told her that he didn't think Tenen had really been involved, though. And she knew the house was owned by a guy named Mario, who was going to sell it to get some money. She had talked to him a few times, but didn't really know him. That was Fernandez Saldana, of course, the landlord.

[01:02:04] [SPEAKER_01] Norma got a weird vibe from Fernandez Saldana and Ordway. Like, Ordway had something on their landlord. It was odd. Once when Fernandez Saldana came in to get Ordway to sign a lease, the tenant became ornery. He tore up the lease. He said something like, he don't want me to call such and such about something. Maybe that was about the murder. Maybe it wasn't. Norma didn't know. That was in the second week of September.

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_00] Now Norma had her own dealings with Fernandez Saldana. She and him had been talking about a rent-to-own agreement for one of the Potomac Avenue addresses. She didn't know, though, if there were guns in that house in response to Detective Lamont's question about that. Apparently, her husband Dane had asked Ordway about the guns in the house. Ordway stated the house was protected. I don't really understand that confusing exchange. No one ever mentioned Tennant's blue Ford F1 to her, though.

[01:02:52] [SPEAKER_01] Next, Detective Lamont and ATF Special Agent M Stengel brought Devin into the back of the patrol car. Another voluntary talk.

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_00] Devin really didn't know much. He had been living out of his truck for three weeks and had only been in the driveway for a couple days. Ordway was letting him do that. But Devin actually had some harsh words about Ordway. He called him an alcoholic and an undercover racist. He told detectives that Ordway would say racist things to Dane all the time to try to make Dane angry because Dane happened to be black.

[01:03:22] [SPEAKER_00] But as for the murder, this whole police swarming the home to serve a search warrant thing was really the first time Devin was hearing about that.

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_01] Last up was Dane. Voluntary. Same unmarked patrol car. Detective Lamont and Special Agent Stengel handled it. Dane had been living there for a month. Fernandez LaDana had not been over to the house in two weeks. He confirmed much of what Norma said, like the lease tearing incident. But unlike Norma, Dane did not know about Tennant or the murder. He thought some of Tennant's stuff might be on the right side of the garage.

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_00] Meanwhile, evidence technician officer Ashley Hawkins Thompson handled much of the evidence collection at the home on Potomac Avenue. Everyone cleared out of the house when she got there. She walked through it, entering through the front entryway to the left of the garage.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_01] Within, she found a living room with a dark leather sectional couch. A small hallway led to two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a linen closet. There was another living room type space with a gray couch, a television on a stand, boxes, beer cans, marijuana, and a pipe. Then the kitchen, opening up to a laundry area with a washer and dryer. That room also had two doors, one leading to the backyard and the other leading to the garage.

[01:04:37] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Hawkins Thompson didn't want to go into the backyard. An aggressive dog was running around out there, presumably Tennant's dog.

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_01] Instead, she took pictures of other spots outside and used the OSCR 360 to capture exterior and interior photos of the house. She started bringing other officers back in to search specifically assigned rooms and collect and label potential evidence.

[01:05:00] [SPEAKER_00] Items they found in the home and the vehicle included a bong, a pipe, six THC vape cartridges, vapes with cartridges, and two additional vape cartridges. Oh, and marijuana. She conducted a field test of the marijuana, found it tested positive, and weighed it. That was all given to Jacksonville Sheriff's Officer Christopher Graham for pending charges.

[01:05:21] [SPEAKER_01] They also found items they considered a potential evidentiary significance, including a brown zip-up hoodie jacket, two leather welder-style jackets, a camouflage jacket, a pair of brown boots, cell phones, including a ZTE touchscreen cell phone, and a ZTE flip phone, two laptops, numerous papers, including Ford F-150 paperwork, ammunition, and a .320 caliber.

[01:05:46] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Hawkins Thompson took extra pictures of most of the items they collected. She also swabbed a brown zip-up hoodie jacket for DNA.

[01:05:54] [SPEAKER_01] Meanwhile, Officer Hawkins Thompson handed Corporal Santiago a dark blue Motorola cell phone they found in the search. Corporal Santiago took that to the state attorney's office and gave it to Detective Lamont there. Then, later, she brought it to the JSO Computer Forensic Unit with the required consent form from Ordway, the phone's owner.

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_00] The next day, it was time to process possible evidence. But first, a man needed his phone back. Detective Johns made sure Ordway got it back. We'll hear more about what Ordway told detectives later in the episode.

[01:06:26] [SPEAKER_01] That same day, Officer Hawkins Thompson swapped the boots, a cool pad cell phone, changed her gloves before handling new piece of evidence. All the while, Detective Johns went through the papers collected in the search. He asked her to photograph a couple in particular. Meanwhile, JSO Officer Graham returned some evidence to her. That was the end of Officer Hawkins Thompson's involvement in the case. Except, no, it was not.

[01:06:52] [SPEAKER_00] What is it with the evidence technicians in this case prematurely declaring that they're done? Anyways, three days later, Officer Hawkins Thompson was back in the Jacksonville Beach Police Department's property room. She photographed the sealed bag with tan and black boots in it. And with a sterilized razor blade, she cut away and labeled three pieces of evidence from the boots. She did a field test for blood. Nothing. After each test, she switched gloves and took another picture. Then she put everything back into evidence.

[01:07:21] [SPEAKER_01] On October 13th, 2022, Officer Hawkins Thompson went to process a beer can. But she saw it had already been processed, so she put it back in its original package and sealed it.

[01:07:32] [SPEAKER_00] That Friday, October 14th, 2022, at 4 p.m., Detective Johns kept working on the Tenen angle. He got back the man's financial records. He went over them. There might be clues in there. As it turned out, there certainly were.

[01:07:44] [SPEAKER_01] On June 8th, 2022, Tenen had paid for auto transport. And that matched phone records that found he was communicating with a business called Rivers Auto Transport the day before. And that, in turn, aligned with cellular location data that showed Tenen at a place on University Street in Jacksonville.

[01:08:02] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Johns gave the address to ATF Special Agent A. Simmons, who drove there, saw a White House, blue awnings. From the street, the special agent could see something big in the backyard. Parked near the back fence, with grass growing high around its wheels, was a blue and tan Ford F-150, one with Georgia blades. They had finally found the dang blue truck.

[01:08:31] [SPEAKER_01] Detective Lamont immediately got a search warrant for the premises and served it to their resident, a guy named Jimmy. Jimmy told the police they could search his yard and get that truck out of there. He had been friends with Tenen for 10 to 15 years. Tenen would swing by the house with a case of beer and they'd drink and hang out together. But he had no idea who any of these other people were. Ordway, Biggerstaff, or Fernandez-Saldana. He simply did not know them.

[01:08:58] [SPEAKER_00] A few months back, Jimmy's friend came to him to ask a favor. Could Tenen store his truck in the yard just for a few months? At least until he could raise enough money to get the thing fixed.

[01:09:07] [SPEAKER_01] Sure, Jimmy said. Tenen picked him up in a white Crown Vic, drove him to someplace. Then Tenen drove the truck and Jimmy followed him in the Crown Vic. There was a problem, though. The truck broke down on University Street. They had to use the Crown Vic to push it the rest of the way.

[01:09:24] [SPEAKER_00] After that, Tenen kind of disappeared, kind of ghosted Jimmy. Jimmy kept calling him to see when he planned on getting that truck out of his yard. But his calls would only ever go to voicemail.

[01:09:34] [SPEAKER_01] Investigators requested that Officer Hawkins Thompson come to the home on University Street. There, she met with Detectives John and Lamont. She photographed the seemingly locked truck as it was and sealed it up. The truck had damage to the bumper. Two different models of tires.

[01:09:57] [SPEAKER_00] By the time that truck was towed away, darkness had fallen. But Officer Hawkins Thompson kept snapping pictures of where the truck had been in the yard.

[01:10:06] [SPEAKER_01] Back at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department property room, Detectives Lamont and Burrell covered up the truck, the thing they'd long searched for, with a blue tarp. The processing would wait until Monday.

[01:10:18] [SPEAKER_00] But there were still financial records for Detective Johns to go through in the meantime. Looking through Tenen's PNC checking statements, he noticed three checks, all coming into Tenen. One for $2,000 from March 28, 2022. One for $3,000 from March 29, 2022. And a third one for $5,000 dated April 4, 2022.

[01:10:43] [SPEAKER_01] All were from First Choice Home Rentals, LLC. You remember that name from our previous episode?

[01:10:49] [SPEAKER_00] Detective Johns didn't have to look up who owned that company. That company's street address was listed as Marsh Inlet Court in Jacksonville Beach. Its electronic articles of organizations were listed as of March 28, 2019. He knew the names of the authorized members authorized to manage that LLC. Fernandez Saldana and Gardner.

[01:11:11] [SPEAKER_01] Months after the murder, their company had paid Tenen, a guy with concerning phone and location records, whose truck closely matched the vehicle of interest, a total of $10,000.

[01:11:23] [SPEAKER_00] The weekend passed. Monday arrived. At 9.30 a.m., Officer Hawkins Thompson got the keys from the property officer. Detective Sergeant Young sent Sergeant Lawrence Smith to help. Sergeant Smith was the supervisor of the evidence technicians.

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_01] Sergeant Smith and Officer Hawkins Thompson removed the blue tarp. Then she took pictures of the vehicle. It was still sealed up. All the evidence tape was intact.

[01:11:47] [SPEAKER_00] Within the cab of the truck, they saw tools, paperwork, boxes. Sergeant Smith figured they ought to divide up the work, section off the cab, front, and back seats. Number each one with a tent marker.

[01:11:59] [SPEAKER_01] Then Detective Lamont came over and read the search warrant. He corrected the search warrant for location. Apparently, there'd been an error.

[01:12:06] [SPEAKER_00] From there, Sergeant Smith and Officer Hawkins Thompson began to photograph the vehicle with different scales.

[01:12:12] [SPEAKER_01] Within the truck bed, they found...

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_00] A beer can.

[01:12:15] [SPEAKER_01] Two bottles of water. A latch. Four screws. Two bungee cords. A salaneous car parts. A kitchen knife. A pair of socks. Leaves. Oh, and the markings that seemed to indicate where a toolbox had once been. A toolbox like the one seen on the suspicious truck from the surveillance the investigation turned up.

[01:12:33] [SPEAKER_00] Officer Hawkins Thompson collected the bungee cord socks, the latch, and four screws. They swabbed the tailgate's handle, and then she unlocked the truck driver's side door. Then all the other doors. She photographed the inside of the vehicle, then swabbed it, and then emptied it of all its items.

[01:12:49] [SPEAKER_01] Sergeant Smith collected items from each of the sections and placed them on a table. Investigators could file through these objects and determine what might be evidence. Anything determined not to be relevant was photographed and ultimately returned to the truck's cab.

[01:13:03] [SPEAKER_00] Meanwhile, the evidence technicians went over all the seats with a trace evidence vacuum. Officer Hawkins Thompson made sure to switch out filters for that for the front and back seats.

[01:13:14] [SPEAKER_01] Once that was all done, they put back a lot of the items in the truck. The truck was sealed. But officers forgot to lock the driver's side door and rear passenger door. They broke the seals and locked those, and then Officer Hawkins Thompson resealed the doors.

[01:13:29] [SPEAKER_00] Two days later, Sergeant Smith and Officer Hawkins Thompson returned to the truck to help process and collect the truck's spare tire.

[01:13:37] [SPEAKER_01] But there was a problem. They ended up going to meet with Commander Crumley.

[01:13:40] [SPEAKER_00] The evidence technicians explained that they were unable to lower the vehicle's spare tire in order to process it. Why? Well, the tool belonging to the vehicle that would allow them to do that was damage. So they held off.

[01:13:52] [SPEAKER_01] Commander Crumley said he would meet them at 1 p.m. to help. At that point, Sergeant Smith and Officer Hawkins Thompson were working on other things. So Commander Crumley called in Parking Enforcement Coordinator Dan Fox. Because Coordinator Fox happened to drive the department-issued 2019 Ford F-150,

[01:14:10] [SPEAKER_00] Commander Crumley was also personally familiar with the Ford F-150 spare tire storage location and lowering process as well. So he got the special tool from Coordinator Fox's vehicles, grabbed a box of rubber gloves, and put on a fresh, sterile pair. He managed to crank the tire down and lower it, but he left the tire connected to the vehicle by a cable and a strut so he didn't have to touch it.

[01:14:32] [SPEAKER_01] Then he stood around until Officer Hawkins Thompson got to the tire. She and Sergeant Smith unhooked it and put it down on a table. She swabbed it, collected its stem valve cap, and photographed it. She also processed a small tire they found in the truck bed with two plugs in it. She also took a look at the original tire from the crime scene and all of its specific indentations.

[01:14:55] [SPEAKER_00] All right, so detectives finally got the mysterious truck. Now, let's jump back in time to earlier in October, to the one thing we didn't tell you about, to the interview with Jeremy Ordway, the one from Thursday, October 6, 2022. Remember, Detective Lamont had already talked to three additional tenants, if poor Devin in the driveway even really counts as a tenant.

[01:15:18] [SPEAKER_01] But he talked with Ordway all the way over at the Criminal Gun Intelligence Center in the state attorney's office.

[01:15:24] [SPEAKER_00] ATF Special Agent Stengel was there too. Reading a pre-printed departmental document, Detective Lamont gave Ordway his Miranda warning. Ordway said he understood that and he wanted to talk to the investigators.

[01:15:35] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway started from the beginning of his relationship with Tenant. Ordway had moved to Jacksonville to care for his father. Tenant lived in his father's neighborhood. He was close with Ordway's father. He and Ordway became close. Maybe not super close. They talked once every few weeks normally, usually not by phone. Although he did know that Tenant had the two phones.

[01:15:55] [SPEAKER_00] Around that time, there had been a lot of construction on Potomac Avenue. Because of that, both Ordway and Tenant frequently got flat tires back then, including on that truck, which Ordway and Tenant retrieved from Georgia together at the end of 2021. So Tenant didn't have that truck for a long time. And for much of the time that Ordway was aware of it, it was sitting in the driveway with a flat tire.

[01:16:17] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway began describing Tenant and Deal's relationship. Ordway advised they had been an item for 20 years, a bit different than Deal's characterization. But it definitely fits with Tenant driving her to the clinic daily. Ordway said he knew Deal to swing by for a half an hour at a time, and she used to live with Tenant before Ordway moved in.

[01:16:37] [SPEAKER_00] Did Ordway ever drive around Jacksonville with Tenant?

[01:16:40] [SPEAKER_01] Sure. He was the one driving Tenant to his driving-under-the-influence court-mandated classes. That was before Tenant got the truck.

[01:16:47] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, and after Tenant got the truck, once Ordway helped him bring a refrigerator back from Home Depot.

[01:16:52] [SPEAKER_01] Did Tenant let people borrow the truck?

[01:16:54] [SPEAKER_00] Not that Ordway knew of.

[01:16:56] [SPEAKER_01] Where was the Crown Vic that Tenant had gotten arrested driving?

[01:16:59] [SPEAKER_00] Ordway explained that Sean the Domino's manager was working on it since there was an issue with the transmission. Sean was apparently going to buy it. Then Ordway said Tenant had got the Crown Vic when his father died. For some reason, I had thought earlier Ordway said the Crown Vic was his and he lent it to Tenant, but maybe I'm just confused by this report.

[01:17:18] [SPEAKER_01] What kind of clothing did Tenant wear?

[01:17:20] [SPEAKER_00] A practical, simple wardrobe, jeans and t-shirts, tan work boots. Ordway brought up something odd, though. Last year, Tenant went to do a job filling a pool in with Fernandez Saldana. For some reason, Tenant ended up refusing to complete the gig. Ordway opened up about bigger staff, too. Come to think of it, some old Navy guy had been recently coming around to do work on his house. He showed up, put six tiles down, and hadn't made an appearance since. Fernandez Saldana had to come back

[01:17:49] [SPEAKER_00] with a young Hispanic dude to finish the work.

[01:17:52] [SPEAKER_01] What did Ordway know about a guy named Michael Connors?

[01:17:55] [SPEAKER_00] Ordway didn't think Fernandez Saldana knew that guy, but apparently records showed that Connors called Fernandez Saldana multiple times after Tenant's arrest. Ordway said Connors was a crackhead who sometimes crashed on his couch. He didn't recall if Connors was around the day of Tenant's arrest. Ordway explained away the phone record by saying he might have borrowed Connors' phone to talk to Fernandez Saldana, the landlord he claimed he didn't know very well and didn't speak to very often, who he claimed not to know much about, like the fact he was married.

[01:18:25] [SPEAKER_00] Ordway didn't know about that, he said.

[01:18:27] [SPEAKER_01] What about Marquis Carter? Did Ordway know him?

[01:18:30] [SPEAKER_00] No. Well, that was another guy who came up in Ordway's phone records from the night of the murders. Ordway was adamant though, he didn't know Carter. He didn't participate in the murder in any way and his connection with Fernandez Saldana and Tenant wasn't that strong. He wasn't a killer. He didn't even know Fernandez Saldana and Tenant were running around Jacksonville Beach together. But Ordway wasn't a killer. He wasn't involved in the murder plot.

[01:18:53] [SPEAKER_01] Ordway volunteered a name of his own, Rabbit. Some guy Tenant knew. Tenant would talk about him. Ordway did not know him. But Tenant knew a lot of interesting people. He would have never expected Tenant to become entangled in a murder investigation though.

[01:19:09] [SPEAKER_00] Glumly, as if it was all hitting him at once, Ordway said he wished he'd never moved into that house on Potomac Avenue.

[01:19:16] [SPEAKER_01] And now, he was being forced to leave.

[01:19:18] [SPEAKER_00] See, Fernandez Saldana had asked him to change the lease so it ended in December. So Fernandez Saldana could actually sell the place and get out of there. But since then, realtors had started coming by. Ordway told Norma and Dane not to sign any deal from Fernandez Saldana. He knew it would just turn out to be bullshit.

[01:19:35] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives wanted to know if Ordway had an idea of how Tenant got involved in the murder of Jared.

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_00] Well, Ordway wouldn't know. He said that like Tenant, he had recently lost his father. His own dad had died on February 11, 2022, days before the murder. He had numbed the pain by drinking way too much. He spent a lot of that February intoxicated. So had he been working the night of the murder? He had not been. Five days after his father's death, he was still deep in the drink. What's more, Tenant didn't tell him any details about the night of the murder or anything like that. But Ordway didn't think

[01:20:10] [SPEAKER_00] Tenant owed Fernandez Saldana anything. He couldn't figure out how Tenant had gotten involved.

[01:20:16] [SPEAKER_01] Well then, how was Ordway involved? He had called Tenant the night of the murder.

[01:20:21] [SPEAKER_00] Previously, Ordway had said that that was probably a call requesting a ride. Now, he said he never called Tenant for a ride other than that time with the refrigerator. Also, the only person who ever answered Tenant's phone wasn't the man himself but Deal, according to Ordway.

[01:20:35] [SPEAKER_01] Had Ordway ever gone to Jacksonville Beach?

[01:20:37] [SPEAKER_00] Sure. 15 years ago, he had worked for a tow company in Mayport, Florida. That job took him to Jacksonville Beach sometimes. Since he had moved back to Jacksonville, though, he had not really gone there. Previously, he had told investigators he had likely been there about six years ago, so I'm not sure if that's a conflict or not.

[01:20:53] [SPEAKER_01] Did the blue truck hold sentimental value to Tenant?

[01:20:56] [SPEAKER_00] No. Unlike Deal, Ordway didn't think so. To him, Tenant treated the truck like a truck. He didn't even take very good care of it.

[01:21:03] [SPEAKER_01] Tenant's arrest had created problems for Ordway. He complained about that.

[01:21:07] [SPEAKER_00] Take Tenant's dog, for instance. Ordway called Tenant's brother Dwight and told him to come get that dog. By that time, Dwight was already aware of the arrest. Ordway had also called Fernandez Saldana around that time and told him to, handle his business, end quote, because he felt maybe Fernandez Saldana knew more than he was saying about the night of the murder. He ought to know. The victim was his wife's ex.

[01:21:31] [SPEAKER_01] Detectives asked Ordway what he thought Fernandez Saldana knew about the murder.

[01:21:35] [SPEAKER_00] But at that point, Ordway demurred. After all, he didn't know Fernandez Saldana very well.

[01:21:41] [SPEAKER_01] The investigators asked Ordway if they could search his cellular device.

[01:21:45] [SPEAKER_00] Sure, and while they were at it, they could request his cell site data. He'd even been willing to call up Fernandez Saldana right then and there.

[01:21:53] [SPEAKER_01] That went down at 3.52 p.m. in front of investigators.

[01:21:57] [SPEAKER_00] Without letting him know the detectives were listening in, Ordway told Fernandez Saldana that the ATF had searched the Potomac Avenue residents.

[01:22:05] [SPEAKER_01] Fernandez Saldana asked his tenant if he had contact information for the investigators or a copy of the search warrant. Did he know what had been taken from the home?

[01:22:15] [SPEAKER_00] Ordway seemingly pushed back with questions of his own. Like, why were the police searching his house?

[01:22:20] [SPEAKER_01] Apologetic, Fernandez Saldana said he was sorry this was happening, that he had to deal with it. He said he didn't know why. It didn't make sense. The call ended at 3.58 p.m., lasting only six minutes. Investigators asked Ordway if he believed his landlord had any involvement in killing Jared. He said he did not know.

[01:22:42] [SPEAKER_00] Okay, so we've gone through this whole month-long investigation together. Quite the odyssey, no? All around heartbreak, a family shattered several times over, and then this endless chase for those who were culpable, from tidy Floridian suburbs to the now infamous Potomac Avenue rentals to hovering helicopters to junk-strewn lots, running down swabs of DNA and swingers and home bakers in that dang delusive blue truck. So what exactly

[01:23:11] [SPEAKER_00] do investigators have as far as the case at this point? Do they have enough? And who exactly is going down for Jared's murder at this point? In our next episode, we will shift gears and chat about who got charged and who's going to trial and why police and prosecutors believe they're guilty. Then after that, we'll start covering the trial. We'll get into the legal wranglings about the pretrial phase and the opening statements for the first of three trials in this case. To set your expectations about our upcoming trial coverage, we probably won't cover it every single day,

[01:23:41] [SPEAKER_00] but we will cover the trial regularly. We'll be checking in for the big updates and all the twists and turns. We hope you'll tune into our trial coverage on The Murder Sheet wherever you listen to podcasts.

[01:23:52] [SPEAKER_01] 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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[01:24:36] [SPEAKER_01] 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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