‘Someone just got whacked.’ Colts Neck neighbor recalls night of Caneiro family massacre at trial

📞 Jurors hear a chilling 911 call reporting gunshots in Colts Neck, timed closely to the killing of Keith Caneiro.
🔥 Surveillance footage and fires at two homes remain central evidence in the quadruple murder case.
💰 Testimony highlights trust fund withdrawals and financial disputes prosecutors say fueled the killings.

FREEHOLD BOROUGH — Jurors in the quadruple murder trial of Paul Caneiro heard another chilling 911 call, this one reporting gunshots in Colts Neck around the time that Keith Caneiro was killed.

“I woke up, I heard the shots, and I said to myself, someone just got whacked,” Dr. Dennis Corpora, of Colts Neck, testified on Wednesday in Superior Court.

Corpora said he said those “exact words” to himself as he sat up in bed, waited, and then felt compelled to call the police.

That 911 call was logged around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2018, which defense attorneys have been circling back to.

Timeline of gunshots and discovery of Keith Caneiro’s body

Paul Caneiro, now 59, has been accused of brutally killing his own brother, sister-in-law, 11-year-old nephew and 8-year-old niece, which prosecutors say was motivated by financial desperation.

Investigators have testified that Keith Caneiro went outside in the darkness that morning to figure out why his stately home’s power was off and why their generator had failed.

Read More: Testimonies and 911 calls shape the Caneiro murder trial 

On Monday, jurors heard a 911 call made hours later the same day, when a different Colts Neck neighbor discovered Keith’s bullet-riddled body lying outside his house.

Keith was shot five times. His wife, Jennifer, was shot in the head and stabbed in the torso, left inside the burning home along with their children, both repeatedly stabbed.

Surveillance video and fires central to prosecution’s case

Investigators also accused Caneiro of then driving back and setting his own Ocean Township home on fire — before he, his own wife and two daughters safely escaped.

Another key piece of evidence shown to jurors on Wednesday was a brief glimpse of what prosecutors say is a shirtless Paul Caneiro, approaching the garage-mounted security camera system, as it shuts off around 1:30 a.m. that same morning.

The clip was seen in a recovered message sent to Paul Caneiro’s email from Nest.com, notifying the account owner of an interruption in service, Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office Captain Brian Weisbrot testified.

Before that, the last time the security system had been off was in October, Weisbrot said.

On Wednesday, Monmouth County investigators shared more surveillance footage from Ocean Township neighbors of the Caneiros.

Cameras show headlights leaving and returning to the area of the Tilton Drive home, early the day of the killings and fires.

Irrevocable trust and money trail under courtroom scrutiny

Much of Wednesday morning was spent breaking down the legal parameters of an irrevocable trust.

Paul Caneiro was the trustee of such an estate planning tool, a status that is very complicated to change.

Typically, a person chooses an "irrevocable" trust for tax purposes to reduce the taxable estate of the “trustor” when they die, attorney Lazaro Cardenas testified.

Loyalty prohibits trustees from using funds for their own benefit, Cardenas also testified, adding that typically trustees “should” on a regular basis share a financial look with beneficiaries at the funds in a trust account.

Testimony last week outlined that bank records show that Paul Caneiro made multiple withdrawals from the trust over two years, draining roughly $78,000 between 2017 and 2018.

Read More: Inside Paul Caneiro's big expenses before Colts Neck killings

In 2017, $19,880 was paid back into the trust from Paul Caneiro’s personal accounts, but no deposits were made the following year, a Monmouth County investigator testified.

Paul and Keith Caneiro spoke at least twice the day before the Colts Neck killings — with Keith demanding the trust account log-in information in calls recorded by a security system and played for jurors last week.

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