Brother of man killed in suspicious New Jersey fire is charged in another fire

pulse 19:45 - 21 November 2018

The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office announced Wednesday that Paul J. Caneiro, 51, of Ocean Township, New Jersey, was charged with aggravated arson in connection with the fire at his home.

The brother of a technology consultant in New Jersey whose home was the site of a suspicious fire Tuesday where four people were found dead has been arrested and charged with setting his own house on fire earlier that day, officials said.

The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office announced Wednesday that Paul J. Caneiro, 51, of Ocean Township, New Jersey, was charged with aggravated arson in connection with the fire at his home. He is being held at the Monmouth County jail.

He lives about 12 miles from the stately Colts Neck, New Jersey, mansion where Keith Caneiro, 50, and Jennifer Caneiro, 45, lived with their two young children, according to public records. The bodies of two adults and two children were found there, officials said, but they have not yet been publicly identified.

The prosecutor, Christopher J. Gramiccioni, will be speaking to the press Wednesday afternoon to provide more information about the arrest and any connection to the deaths at the Colts Neck mansion.

On Tuesday, Gramiccioni said three of the bodies had been found inside the home in Colts Neck, about 50 miles southwest of New York City. The fourth, that of a man, was found dead outside the burning house.

The Colts Neck fire started in the four-bedroom home on Willow Brook Road just after 12:30 p.m. A cloud of gray smoke hung over the house hours later, as firefighters continued to battle it Tuesday evening.

Keith and Paul Caneiro co-owned a technology consulting firm, Square One, as well as EcoStar Pest Management, a pest control firm, both on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey, said David Natelson, the business manager of the pest control firm.

“I am shocked,” Natelson said in a phone interview. “And saddened.”

Natelson said a candlelight vigil for the Caneiro family was planned for Wednesday. According to a Facebook event page, it will be held at 5 p.m. at the town hall in Colts Neck.

The brothers also co-owned a consulting business, Jay-Martin Consulting, which derived from their middle names, and shared an address in Staten Island in New York City for more than a decade.

Keith Caneiro served as the best man at Paul Caneiro’s wedding in 1991, according to the Staten Island Advance, which ran the wedding announcement. The announcement also said Paul Caneiro graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College.

Pictures posted on Keith Caneiro’s Facebook page showed him smiling in a Columbia University cap and gown, where he had recently been enrolled in an executive master’s degree program in technology management. He also wrote that he had attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyn.

Colts Neck is an affluent community where the median household income was $162,083 in 2016, census data shows. Rock musician Bruce Springsteen has a home there, as does David Bryan, who plays keyboard in the band Bon Jovi.

The New York Times