Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: More Evidence In The Execution of Jared Bridegan

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

More evidence has come out in the case of the shooting death of Jared Bridegan. There is now more evidence with the tire found in the road and other tires found at a suspects house and Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how all the numbers actually mean something and can become very compelling evidence.    00:00 Introduction 02:45 Bridegan executed at close range 07:37 Sharing custody of children 11:42 Bridegan shot twice on left side 16:36 Numbers on tires mean something 21:53 multiple gunshots heard by witnesses 25:53 Wound Tracking 30:44 Bridegan injuries were not survivable See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. The word shocking is used ad nauseum, I think, in a lot of the cases that we cover intracrime and things that are breaking in the news relative to, in my world, in forensics. But there's a case I'd like to update you on today. And it has to do with a young 33-year-old father who was trying to literally start his life over again with a new wife and a baby and completely destroyed this family. And it's the case of Jared Breidigan. And I think that it's important because we do have updates on this case.

And so with that said, I think that it's important that we try to get into this and understand what has happened since our initial recording of body bags involving his death. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, this case, I got to tell you, it really hit home with me because divorce is painful anyway. And, you know, I've had a blended family. You know, I don't think I'm talking out of school when I say you've had a blended family. You know, I don't think I'm talking about school when I say you've had a blended family. Right. And so you have this dynamic that goes on. Life is tough enough otherwise.

But when you have a young father that is essentially executed, and I will use that term, executed in the middle of a road. He was killed in place. And the one bit of information that the police have released in this case relative to his injuries is that they were at close range. Now, what we do know is that it was close range and that there were multiple of them. As a matter of fact, not only have they talked about that there were multiple gunshot wounds, but they have found multiple casings on the ground, pretty much adjacent to his remains. They've been very nonspecific about the absolute anatomical location of these injuries.

But he was essentially found deceased immediately outside of the car. So it's not like he ran some great distance. And right you were when you mentioned little Bexley in the back of the car. She was close enough that the shots rang out in her ears. She could actually hear them at that moment in time. And she also talked about her father going down. So you have to really wonder, as this goes to proximity, did she actually hear her father impact the ground in her own two-year-old little mind? Is that something that she has a memory of remember she says boom boom daddy on

the ground so it's one thing to hear gunshot wounds but to actually hear her say daddy on the ground does that mean that she heard him impact the ground or did she actually witness or maybe a combination of both him going down down. Boy, how shocking this case was. Yeah, he was. This was truly set up. And we have had some things that have developed along the way. It's funny. You know, I just sat here and Googled it.

I thought, you know what? I'm just going to see what pops up when I Google today. You know, where are we? And immediately, there are so many stories that pop up because over time, police reports come out and things become public. You got your hands on the autopsy report, which, to be honest with you, Joe, I thought, what can it show? And you were like, oh, it shows a lot. Yeah. The investigation into Bridegan.

You know, there was an arrest of a man named henry tennant and they said at the time of his arrest that they being the prosecutors he did not act alone and all along the finger immediately was pointing back to his ex-wife and her husband i mean it was a blended mess. That's all I can say. Boy, talk about a sordid cast of characters. You know, kind of this dynamic that you've got going on. Look, when you're trying

to establish a new life, you have a new family now. Because for whatever reason, you've busted up, right? In this case, Joe, it was really odd because in particular where the Mormon religion is, it's a very involved religion with the family. And the church becomes a center of the family and everything that takes place. And Jared and his first wife were both raised in the Mormon church

and were very active. When his first wife began to pull away from the Mormon religion, that's when it really began to get bad. That's when the divorce happened. She was allegedly having an affair. And anyway, they really went different paths. He remained as a very devout Mormon. She did not.

So that immediately put the divorce and children at, I want to say, at risk for danger because that's what happened. Yeah, and it's very acrimonious at that point in time because that, you know, your beliefs, your spiritual beliefs are a lifestyle. I mean, it truly is a lifestyle. It dictates, and it doesn't matter if you're Mormon or Catholic or whatever. You know, you're going to get down this road, and if you're living by the tenets of the church, if you've got one individual that's not on board, boy, it's tough. And so— Unequally yoked is the biblical

yeah yeah and uh i'm thinking when i heard about this case initially it just it didn't sound right um and you know we think i think that when we did the initial uh taping um the first episode of of uh of jared's case we didn't really know a lot of the details relative to what was found at the scene because you know it had first come out that it was a tire right found in the road well it's not simply a tire it's a tire with a rim yeah yeah we were told that he stopped the car he had gone here's the lay of the land very quickly yeah yeah jared bride again and his ex-wife they were sharing custody of their children and they had an agreement that when the children were at whoever's home for that week the other parent on wednesday night would come come over to join them for dinner to see the children midweek, and they would sit at the table together and have dinner. And in this particular case, Jared Breidigan went to see his children.

They were staying with his ex-wife and her husband that week, and he went there for dinner. Along with him, his two-year-old daughter, three-year-old daughter was with him, with his current wife. Yes. And he gets up to leave to go home. Good dinner. Have a great night. Love you, kids. It's on his drive home where he sees a tire in the road, gets out to move it, and gets ambushed, meaning he gets shot.

Police respond to shots fired, people calling in into the neighborhood. And they arrive at the scene to find Jared Bridegan shot to death in the middle of the road and his daughter crying in the backseat of the truck. That's the scene we're set. little links in the chain to this is that that precious little baby in that backseat of that pickup truck she actually reported uh she was able to communicate to the investigators at that particular time that she heard the sound of of the weapon the report of the weapon going off and look this is and again i i want to draw our attention back to this update in relative to – let me just tell you real quick because I think it's kind of insightful what I found by taking a look at the autopsy report here, Dave. First off, an ME investigator did, in fact, attend the scene. And this individual reported that when police arrived, they found Jared in a prone position face down.

Of course, when the ME investigator showed up, you know, we're talking about the first police officers that arrived. So he's laying, you know, in a prone position face down in the roadway. When the ME investigator got there, Jared's face up. And there's, the reason for this is that the EMTs have been working on him. And a matter of fact, the autopsy report reveals that there were two defibrillator pads, and they're adherent. It's not like, you know, the old days where you think about they're using the paddles where they're, you know, they're holding the shock absorbers in their hand. Yeah, exactly.

These are adherent on his body. So they did take what is commonly referred to as heroic measures. But here's the thing that was really striking. One of the comments that was made when this thing first came up, apparently, and this is through the ME investigators report, they

allude to this idea that when first observed, they thought this was a road rage incident. Really? Yeah. And again, what are you going to think? Because who in their wildest fantasies would think that, first off, you used the term ambush. And I think that's an excellent idea. And I've talked about this before, actually, with our friend Nancy Grace.

This is what you call a choke point. Because whoever planned this out, the road kind of narrows up and there's a lot of vegetation on either side and it's wet. I mean, we're talking about Florida. We're talking, you know, in the Jacksonville area. And so you don't have any way to get around an obstruction in the road. And I'm sure that Jerry is a nice, nice man and a good citizen. He got out of the truck to remove, not just, it's not just a tire, just so we understand that it's a tire with a rim. And so if you run over a rim of a tire, he understood it. And it doesn't matter how big your

truck is, you're going to do damage to your vehicle. And he recognized that got out of the truck so that goes to this idea of intent so you know that's what me investigator at the scene already recognized that he did in fact have trauma to his left shoulder uh and it's later identified that you know he sustained they i think they're saying a witness heard or a witness reported five gunshots i don't know because sometimes you get these you get these comments that come up relative to and people misremember things um and you know we see this happen all the time he did the same two gunshot wounds we just don't know what order they were in however i can tell you, they were both on the left side. So whoever shot him when he gets out of the vehicle to move this tire out of the roadway, that's when pop, pop, you know, like this.

You've got these two GSWs that occur on the left aspect. So this individual is approaching him from that perspective. I think that they were just hidden off of the road. Wow. If I am not mistaken, this is another part of our update. We have someone that has pled guilty in this case, I think already. And this is probably going to be the trigger puller, right? When we left off.

Yeah. We had just had the arrest of henry tennant and that's when they said at the press conference we know henry tennant did not act alone they were able to get henry to talk negotiating a deal you've pointed out before a couple of different times the first one to get negotiated gets the best deal yep and that's what happened here and later um mario fernandez saldana and jared's first wife were both arrested and in this particular case henry tenon apparently when they had enough evidence to go and talk to him they went to his house where he was living and they found a tire matching the tire that was in the road joe yeah and not just a little bit not like oh yeah they look similar or whatever down to the which i didn't

know what all the numbers on a tire meant oh yeah yeah they mean everything about who they actually can tell you that joseph scott morgan licked his tuna sandwich right before this was pressed you know and they were able to pinpoint that that tire matched up to the same batch that this tire was from and it was just remarkable how they were able to pinpoint it down to jared breitigan and his truck well that's what we hope for uh as far as criminals because criminals are never masterminds just to understand that right and so we've been hearing about this for many many months now that they have c footage of this. And the footage that was released was kind of blurry. I really wonder as this investigation has progressed, if they were

able to kind of tighten down those images a little bit, maybe they had other views of this vehicle. Perhaps they sent clips that they had to another agency for them to kind of refine them so that they could use them better to identify this vehicle. What we do know is a specific make that we're looking for Ford F-150. And that is going to lead back, I think, to a key piece of evidence in this case. And this goes back to the tire. People keep talking about the tire that was in the roadway that initially blocked Jared's progression down the road. And we have to keep in mind something here. And this is, again, a major, major bit of evidence. The fact that it's not just a tire.

You know, when we examine tires in forensics, we're not just looking at the tread, you know, the tread impressions that are left on the surface. It is that data that you can get off of the wall of the tire. And it's not just tire size. You can go back. Obviously, there's going to be a manufacturer stamp on there that is going to brand the tire. And that's just the starting point on the autopsy report or you mentioned that the tire wasn't just a rubber tire it was actually mounted on a rim left in the road was the tire flat yes the tire is flat and just so you understand that's not mentioned in the autopsy

report or in the coroner's report that's's something that I had already picked up on. Okay. You know, you talked about batching, you know, when it rolls off the line. And so, if you get to that, you know, what are the odds? And those are circumstantial components from an evidentiary standpoint, but they all directly point back to something else. And so, when you have this evidence mounting, and as you said, this individual has rolled, I like to say, rolled over on the case, we know that he's going to be a state's witness. And dude, the death penalty is on the table here. I need to ask you a question, Joe, because as a death investigator and dealing with police and lawyers and judges and courtrooms and everything else, you have a lot of experience at witnessing a lot of different activity of law.

And I was wondering when they got Henry Tennant, when investigators are looking at a case and they find somebody. I know they always start from the closest to go out. And they knew in this particular case that Jared Bridegan and his ex-wife, Shannon, did not have a good relationship. That it was very murky at best in terms of how they dealt with one another. And as in many cases, nobody's innocent. Everybody's not accusing anyone of any wrongdoing just saying that oftentimes it's not always one-sided both individuals tend to do things because you just get pushed and you anyway when henry tennon was arrested at first he wasn't originally arrested for this crime they knew that based on he was renting a house from uh mario fernandez married to jerry

breitigan's wife ex-wife yep so they knew right away wait a minute we got this connection we got henry tenon he gets charged with possession of a weapon by a felon and driving with a suspended or revoked license and that you know the charge is totally unrelated to Jared Bright again. Right. From that, they get a tip. Now, I don't know who the tip came from, but officers visited Henry's home and found the tire in that moment. Yeah.

And that occurs in many of these cases. This is my own personal vernacular for this, but I call those placeholder charges because you know that something bigger is coming down the line. I never thought of it like that. Well, yeah, yeah, it kind of is. And you have to have the prosecutor on board along with the police in order to roll the dice. Because look, if you make any kind of mistake relative to this and you charge them with this lesser charge or you bring them in under suspicion of being involved in something else, you have to tread very carefully. Because and whatever you do, you need to act swiftly. You don't want them to languish based on this lesser charge that might put future charges in jeopardy.

So they had this in my in my mind, looking from the outside, not knowing any inside information as to what was going on, private conversations, that sort of thing. But I've been around this long enough to know that they're contemplating this. And I got to tell you, Dave, they have affected two more arrests in this case. And this being the ex-wife of Jared, as well as her current husband. And there is motivation here where you've got this premeditative factor that comes into this. And here's another part to this. You talk about kind of the layering of charges. There's actually a child abuse charge that's in here as well. And that goes along with subjecting this poor baby to these events that night. And that's going to be something, when this thing goes to trial, that we're going to watch because, you know, they're not going to obviously put this baby on stand, but they have statement that comes that's uttered.

It's an utterance from this child that the police have recorded. And that's going to go into the record. And you're going to have some police officer, potentially a detective, or maybe even, maybe even the initial patrol officer that showed up and there's like, baby, what, what, what happened? And that will be in the written record. And that, again, is a very damning element to this. But again, we're going to keep our eye on this.

I think that the fact that we have the autopsy report and that we also have these other arrests that have been affected is a big piece to this. And I can tell you this. These people are staring straight down the barrel of capital punishment here because the elements are present, and we know how the state of Florida works, Dave. So they're going to have to show up very well prepared. They're going to have to have great counsel to make their way through this because this case is heard four to five shots reported and there are two bullet wounds to jared bright again

not uncommon to have people say i heard four shots and there was only two no no there's not and that is not uncommon however i think that if we reflect back um you know you're kind of you're kind of dancing back and forth the universal you not you dave but you begin to think about what was in fact heard. And keep in mind, this is a residential area or immediately adjacent. I know that I talked about how narrow the road is, but this is going back into a pretty wealthy area, enclave, as people like to say. Whether it was four or five, it's unknown. However, we do know that four shell casings were recovered at the scene. I'm just wondering if these other projectiles were shots that went wild. And, you know, they're not necessarily finishing wounds or finishing shots.

They're just initial, you know, maybe it was the nerves of the person that was actually pulling the trigger here. We don't know. But two, two found their way, uh, you know, uh, into Jared's body. The first one that they're talking about is a penetrating gunshot wound of the left shoulder and neck. So right, it's going to be at the base of the neck where the neck actually joins onto the shoulder, you know, or the origin of the neck, if you want to put it in another term. And then there is also a, and that's a penetrating gunshot wound. And then we have a perforating gunshot wound of the left shoulder, the neck, right shoulder, and right upper arm. So, what that means is this perforates all of those anatomical structures.

It passes through there. So, let me just say that again. The second wound, and this is not in order, and the pathologist will say, I might call it one and two, but that doesn't imply that this is actually the order in which they were fired. They're just observing these injuries. So, you've got two separate wound tracks here. The first one is a penetrating gunshot wound of the left shoulder and neck. And there's no exit wound identified. And they were able to actually recover the fragment of the projectile core, as they refer to it.

The second one is perforating. So the way they have this wound tracking, again, is going to be from the left aspect of Jared's body. Okay. And we can be positioned in any number of ways. So just because it's in the left aspect, that doesn't mean that it's a static event. Jared could have been moving around. It's just that the person that was shooting was to his left and it's hard to get an idea of spatial spatial orientation we do know that there there's no evidence of like soot deposition or anything like that so we're outside

probably 18 to 36 inches so you're not going to have to have gunpowder landing on the body, that sort of thing. But this, the second wound actually tracks through multiple anatomical structures and it entered initially and the left shoulder neck then passes through the right shoulder and right upper arm where you have this exit. And that goes to perforation. That's perforation versus penetration. So penetration, when we define that, that means that penetration enters, it doesn't exit. Perforation means that it enters and then it's going to exit. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to recover the projectile at the scene,

you know, because we're talking about a densely wooded area and we don't have that information. Did they go out there with a metal detector looking for this projectile? I don't know. But in a case like Jared's and I can, because the, the Emmy district and the state, the state of Florida is broken up into districts, district Emmys. It's not like a city Emmy or something like that. They have it broken into a district. This particular district is jam up. I mean, they're, they're really good office and they would have been very thorough at autopsy.

I can tell you that there would have been x-rays that were performed on Jared's remains before doing the autopsy. The reason you do that is you want to be able to track the wound before you go in and kind of open the body anatomically and do a gross examination that way. And you're looking for when you have like a perforating wound where it passes through the body, that projectile in this case is hitting a lot of structures, Dave. And so, what does that mean? Well, it can lead to fragmentation of the round. And we call it a lead storm, which is kind of interesting to me.

I've heard that years and years ago. A lead storm. Yeah, you look at it and you can see these radio opaque little bodies that are tracking. And you can almost track the wound with those because if it's shearing off along the way, you'll see these little dots, metallic dots in the x-ray. That's very powerful in court because many times they don't want you to show autopsy photographs because they claim that they're prejudicial because they're so over the top with a lot of blood and that sort of thing. Not in this case. You can take an x-ray and put it up there. There's nothing necessarily grotesque about it.

You don't have blood and tissue and all that stuff. What you do have is these little elements that the bullet is leaving behind as it's tracking through this guy's body. It's very powerful. Matter of fact, more people can appreciate the anatomical orientation with an x-ray than they can like if you're looking at a body that's open on the table you're not used to seeing that it's shocking to the senses and they'll you know the physicians will point out well we've got hemorrhage here and here and here and it all when you're not used to seeing these things, as a jury member, it all looks the same.

And it took me years working in a morgue before I was able to disseminate between these two. So, if they have these x-rays, trust me, that's going to be presented in court. The forensic pathologist is going to address that in court. And they're going to be able to show these little elements along the way. So they're really, I think in this case, they're prepped as far as the physical evidence, this connectivity, this big piece that you revealed about the reveal with the tire and how you can track that

and what are the odds that this is going to, you know, I know. And so, look, you know, I've always held and I've always said this about perpetrators. It's merely a Hollywood device. When you have some master criminal, they do exist out there, but they are rare as hen's teeth, as they say. Most, and thank goodness that that's the case, because most people do not think these actions through.

You mentioned Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. Perforated bullet going through his skin, coming out, right? Yeah, yeah. In Rambo 3, Sylvester Sloan has the gunshot wound, and he's got to make it stop bleeding, right? Yeah. Sylvester Sloan has the gunshot wound, and he's got to make it stop bleeding, right? Yeah. And so he takes a little gunpowder and lights it on fire, and you see the fire go right through from the front to the back, you know?

Yeah. And of course he screams in pain, but then a minute later he's doing whatever, gymnastics or whatever. Right, right. But that wouldn't actually serve any real purpose, would it? I mean, would that help or hurt? In that context, what they're trying to display is quarterization i was trying to remember that quarterizing a wound yeah and uh pouring gun and that's been done in a number of movies over the years you know you're trying to quarterize those and kind of uh serum so that you uh you block off

those little broken vessels along the way but yeah, that's been done a number of times in the movies and demonstrated. I don't know that it's ever been done in reality. But I can tell you with the injuries that Jared sustained, these were obviously catastrophic. The viscera that this would have passed through. And what I mean, like the, the organs and also the, um, adjacent areas. When you begin to think about all the vessels that pass through this area,

it's, it's so bloody cast catastrophic in this, in this, uh, context that even if you had a team of surgeons there, Dave, it would be really hard to tie all these off so that he could have survived these injuries. But I do know this. Jared, though he is not with us, will soon have his day in court. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

This is an iHeart Podcast.