The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Enclave on edge as mystery persists in mansion fire, deaths
COLTS NECK, N.J. >> W hen a landscaper alerted Boris Volshteyn to smoke pouring out of a nearby mansion, the plastic surgeon hurried home and found his friend and neighbor lying face down out front. His first thought was to try CPR, but it was no use.
Keith Caneiro, a 50-yearold technology executive, had been shot in the head.
Hopes that Caneiro’s wife and two young children weren’t inside as the inferno raged from early afternoon the Tuesday before Thanksgiving until at least midnight were dashed when they failed to turn up elsewhere. Friends who had gathered outside called the children’s school and Jennifer Caneiro’s cellphone.
“When the kids were not in school, and Jennifer was not answering, it all became a grim picture,” Volshteyn told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “To the very last minute, all the neighbors were hoping that the kids were spared.”
As they puzzled over the bizarre crime in pastoral Colts Neck, a wealthy enclave for horse breeders, hedge fund managers and celebrities near the northern New Jersey coast, Caneiro’s business partner and brother, Paul, was charged with setting his own family home on fire earlier the same day.
But no one has been charged yet in the Colts Neck slayings, Paul Caneiro was seen elsewhere during the fire there, and authorities have not said how the other family members died.
“We have a lot of jittery people that have questions that we don’t have answers to,” said Mayor J.P. Bartolomeo, who nonetheless said that he believes the crime was an isolated one and that the community is safe.
Paul Caneiro, 51, who remains in custody, had a detention hearing moved from Wednesday to Friday so his lawyer can review new evidence from prosecutors. His wife and young adult daughters may testify, to say he saved them from the 5 a.m. fire by awakening them, lawyer Robert A. Honecker Jr. said.
“His family is supportive of him and wants to see him come home,” said Honecker, a former prosecutor in Monmouth County. “He’s been living in that house for over 20 years. He’s got two businesses that need to be run. And he’s got no prior record.”
Police say Paul Caneiro used gasoline to fuel the fire at his two-story Colonial in Ocean Township, about 10 miles from his brother’s jarringly modern, all-white $1.5 million home in Colts Neck, which sits next to a small organic farm with sheep dotting the pasture.
Paul Caneiro was seen outside his own burning home with his family throughout that morning, visibly upset. Honecker said he went from there to the police station for an interview around noon and was there when he learned his brother’s family had been killed.
“He’s never been charged with anything in Colts Neck,” Honecker said. “He is obviously still devastated by the news of his brother and his family’s deaths.”