Paul Caneiro convicted of all charges in Colts Neck quadruple family murder trial

⚖️ Paul Caneiro faces a jury on over a dozen charges, including murder, felony murder and aggravated arson

⚖️ He was accused of killing his brother's family and setting fire to their Colts Neck house and his own in Ocean Township

⚖️ Trial ran for five weeks before deliberations began Friday

FREEHOLD BOROUGH — After five weeks, the jury in the Paul Caneiro quadruple murder trial reached a verdict in less than five hours.

The 59-year-old Ocean Township resident was found guilty of murdering his brother, Keith Caneiro, Keith’s wife, Jennifer, and their two young children on Nov. 20, 2018, as well as setting two fires to cover his crimes.

No emotion from Paul Caneiro

Jurors convicted Caneiro on all charges, delivering their verdict on Friday afternoon. They began deliberating at 8:10 a.m. Caneiro sat stonefaced and expressionless next to his attorney as the jury foreman read the verdict and his fellow jurors were polled by the judge, who had Caneiro quickly taken into custody to await sentencing in May.

His conviction included four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree aggravated arson and two counts of first-degree felony murder, for the deaths of Sophia and Jesse partly due to the Colts Neck fire that was intentionally set.

The defense had tried to sow seeds of doubt, arguing that police rushed to point the finger at Caneiro instead of looking elsewhere — including at the youngest brother, who was never charged with a crime in this case. At the end of the trial — as in the beginning of the investigation — the evidence against Caneiro was too overwhelming.

Read More: Key evidence in Paul Caneiro murder trial

Just a few days before Thanksgiving in 2018, the family of four was found brutally killed at their sprawling Colts Neck home on Willow Brook Road, amid a raging fire.

Keith Caneiro was shot five times on the lawn. Inside, his wife, Jennifer was shot and stabbed — and their children, 11-year-old Jesse and 8-year-old Sophia, were repeatedly stabbed and left to die in the flames, according to Monmouth County investigators.

As first responders discovered that grisly scene, Paul Caneiro and his own wife and two adult daughters were at the Ocean Township police station, after a 5 a.m. fire at their own house at 27 Tilton Drive.

On Nov. 21, 2018, law enforcement charged Paul Caneiro with aggravated arson, accusing him of setting fire to his own home.

A week after Thanksgiving, on Nov. 29, 2018, prosecutors filed additional charges of four counts of murder, a second charge of aggravated arson and other offenses, related to both scenes.

Caneiro was indicted by a grand jury in February 2019.

The trial only got underway in January, after more than seven years.

Prosecutors cited financial desperation as a motive, outlining the high expenses and lack of sufficient income for Paul Caneiro’s household.

He struggled with overdrafts and missed insurance and mortgage and iPhone payments in the months before the killings.

Faced with his own accounts in the red, Paul Caneiro made a string of money transfers in 2017 and 2018 from the trust bank account linked to a $3 million life insurance policy that Keith Caneiro opened in 1999.

Prosecutors said that Paul Caneiro treated that trust account as a piggy bank, also dipping into the account of one of the two businesses that Keith and Paul co-owned.

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