Colts Neck Murder Suspect Took From College Fund, Lawsuit Alleges

COLTS NECK, NJ - Just months before she was killed in her Colts Neck home alongside her husband and children, Jennifer Caneiro discovered that her brother-in-law was diverting nearly $90,000 in funds from her children’s joint college fund into an account for his own children, a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week alleges.

“[He] managed to “accidentally” put $25,000 towards student loans instead of our trust last year alone,” Caneiro wrote in a text message to her sister Bonnie in April 2018, referring to brother-in-law Paul Caneiero, according to the lawsuit. “He’s basically stealing from us.”

The suit, filed Monday in Monmouth County Superior Court, comes from Sophia Caneiro’s maternal grandfather, Vlassis Karidis. The complaint alleges that Paul had charged “excessive and improper” expenses to credit cards issued to businesses that he and his brother Keith, Jennifer’s husband, operated together. Keith also mentioned in emails that he was going to nix Paul’s $225,000 annual salary.

Three days before the murders, Keith also told Vlassis that Paul took $90,000 from his children’s college funds, according to the suit.

The Cabniero family, including Keith, Jennifer and their two children Jesse and Sophia, were found brutally murdered at their home in Colts Neck, which had also been set on fire, on Nov. 20, 2018.

The Colts Neck Police Department responded to a 9-1-1 report of a fire at around 12:30 p.m. Responding units found Keith’s body, which sustained five gunshots, on the front lawn of the residence, according to the suit. A neighbor later told police that four to five loud “cracks” consistent with the sound of gunshots were heard at 3:10 a.m. that day.

Jennifer, Jesse and Sophia were found inside the burning home, with Jennifer found on the stairs. Her cause of death, according to the suit, was listed as “gunshot wound to head and stab wounds of torso.”

11-year-old Jesse was found in the kitchen, with the autopsy revealing his cause of death as “stab wounds of torso and upper left extremity." A contributing cause of death was listed as smoke inhalation, the lawsuit reads.

Eight-year-old Sophia’s autopsy lists her cause of death as “sharp force injuries and smoke inhalation”. She was the only family member to sustain “[r]adiant thermal burns”, including “searing of the hair and eyebrows.” She also showed signs of breathing difficulty and leukocytosis, an increase in white blood cells, which denotes the onset of high-level stress: all signs pointing to the notion that Sophia survived her parents with multiple stab wounds for “an unimaginable period of time,” the lawsuit alleges.

The wrongful death lawsuit alleges that Paul Caneiro’s negligence and recklessness led to the murders and that Sophia Caneiro experienced “great pain and mental suffering” before she died, as she was the last to die and the only victim to severely suffer inside the burning home.

Paul Caneiro, now 53, was charged with the murders days after the Nov. 20 tragedy. He was charged with four counts of murder and weapons offenses, as well as arson and insurance fraud for fires set at his brother’s home and his own (investigators believe the self-inflicted home fire was an attempt to make it look like a third party was targeting the Caneiro family).

He has been lodged in Monmouth County Jail for two years, awaiting a trial that has been indefinitely postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

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