Paul Caneiro Found Guilty in Brutal Colts Neck Family Murders After Years of Delays

More than seven years after the shocking massacre of Keith Caneiro and his family, his older brother, Paul Caneiro, was found guilty of 15 counts of murder, aggravated arson and other offenses.

He received four consecutive life sentences for the four murders, without the possibility of parole. The family of Keith’s wife, Jennifer, looked on with tired faces.

Paul “stole the source of joy and happiness in our lives and replaced it with bottomless sadness, sorrow and grief,” Jennifer’s mother told the court during the sentencing hearing. “A thousand years would not be enough.”

The verdict puts an end to a saga that prosecutors said stemmed from Paul’s financial problems and a soured business relationship between the two brothers.

Paul and Keith grew up in New York City, where Keith started a computer business in the 1980s. He hired Paul, and they eventually became business partners. Together they owned Square One, a technology consulting firm, and EcoStar Pest Management, a pest control company, running both companies out of Asbury Park, N.J.. 

The businesses became lucrative. Both brothers married and later moved to Monmouth County, N.J. Paul lived with his wife and children in Ocean Township, while Keith, Jennifer and their two children, Jesse and Sophia, took up a larger residence in Colts Neck. With a population of roughly 10,000, Colts Neck is one of the highest-income communities in the United States. It hosts Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf club and is home to celebrities like musician Bruce Springsteen and TV host Jon Stewart.

But while the Caneiro brothers’ paths seemed to line up on paper, their trajectories had begun to diverge. Keith went back to school, with an interest in exploring other career options.

Paul, meanwhile, was left disabled from a car accident, suffered from back pain and later briefly separated from his family. He also faced mounting financial problems. Despite this, in 2018, the same year as the murders, Paul spent more than $300,000 on Tiffany & Co. jewelry and roughly $26,000 on three Porsches.

A family friend described Paul as “frustrated.” Investigators provided evidence that Keith was frustrated, too.

Text messages between the brothers show that Keith and Paul argued about their financial situation just months before the murders. Prosecutors said Paul apparently owed Keith money, and Keith threatened to cut him off.

But the relationship between the brothers hit a nadir the day before the killings. Decades before, Keith established a trust and made Paul the trustee. Prosecutors accused Paul of stealing at least $75,000 from the trust. 

A phone call between the brothers on November 19 showed Keith’s reaction to the discovery.

“I need to see where the money went,” Keith said, according to prosecutors.

Jennifer’s family made similar financial misconduct allegations against Paul. In a 2021 lawsuit, they alleged that Paul misappropriated funds for his and Keith’s businesses for personal use and claimed the charges as insurance reimbursement.

On November 20, 2018, a fire started in the early morning in Paul’s home, while his wife and daughters were sleeping. No one was injured. Later that day, first responders heard that there was another fire, this time at Keith’s home in Colts Neck. There they found Keith outside with gunshot wounds. Inside, Jennifer was found shot and stabbed. Jesse and Sophia, badly burned from the fires, had also been stabbed.

Police eventually arrested Paul in connection with the fire set on his own home. However, on November 29, investigators announced that they were adding charges, including four counts of murder, for the deaths of Keith, Jennifer, Jesse and Sophia.

Investigators believed Paul tried to cover up for the murders by setting his own home on fire, but the cases were quickly linked. In addition to the sequential fires, a knife was recovered at the Colts Neck home bearing Sophia’s blood. It matched bloody clothing found in Paul’s basement.

Though Paul was indicted in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the trial. It was delayed again when defense attorneys took issue with the reliability of a DNA tool that prosecutors wanted to use as evidence in the trial. The forensic software tool, STRmix, has been used in various court cases around the country, but in each case, it had been up to the judge to decide whether it could be admissible as evidence. In Paul’s case, the judge eventually allowed the tool to be used.

The trial was also delayed over whether the police had the right to take Paul’s security cameras without a warrant, which they obtained while the fire was still ablaze at his home. That question went up to New Jersey’s Supreme Court, which ruled that the active fire gave police the right to secure potential criminal evidence.

The murder trial began a few weeks after that decision in January 2026. Prosecutors focused on Paul’s financial troubles as a motive, arguing that he stood to benefit from a $3 million life insurance policy for Keith if the entire family died.

The defense attempted to point to another suspect: Keith and Paul’s younger brother, Corey, who also would’ve benefited from the life insurance policy.

But the jury sided with prosecutors. 

On February 13, Paul was found guilty on all murder counts and counts of aggravated arson, theft, misapplication of entrusted property and other charges.