Acting normal on ‘slay day’
Worker recalls NJ ‘killer bro’ behavior
It was less than 24 hours before authorities say he slaughtered his brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew and then torched their Colts Neck, NJ, mansion, but for Paul Caneiro, it was just another ordinary Monday.
Caneiro, 51 — who on Friday pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder and other charges — was his “usual self ” as he went about the mundane tasks of the day, an employee of his recalled to The Post.
“Paul was Paul,” said David Natelson, the business manager for EcoStar Pest Management, a pestcontrol company the two brothers owned.
Caneiro arrived at the Asbury Park, NJ, office at around 10 a.m. and left at around 3 p.m., spending, as he often did, much of the day with his nose in his iPad, Natelson said.
“Nothing I saw on Monday was any different than anything I had seen any other day,” he recalled.
About 14 hours later, Caneiro was driving to his brother Keith Caneiro’s sprawling mansion, where he would fatally shoot the 50-year-old man on his own front lawn, authorities contend.
Walking past his brother’s bullet-riddled corpse, Paul Caneiro stormed inside and shot and then fatally stabbed his brother’s wife, Jennifer Caneiro, before turning the knife on the couple’s two children, 8-year-old Sophia and 11year-old Jesse, police said.
Paul Caneiro then set the mansion ablaze and retreated to his own home in Ocean Township, NJ, where he ignited another fire to make it seem that he, too, was under attack, authorities allege.
Prosecutors said Caneiro’s motivation was “financial in nature, stemming from [Paul] and [Keith’s] joint business ventures,” but did not provide details about how money came between the two men, who both appeared to live quite comfortably.
Natelson said there were no signs EcoStar was struggling.
“I wasn’t aware of any pressures or amounts of money that were sitting in an account,” he said, stressing he was not privy to the company’s financial workings.
“It was no gold mine. We were growing our revenue and investing in additional expenses . . . It was a growing business that, like any growing business, has cashflow pressures but nothing serious . . . no business-threatening pressures.”
Neither brother was intimately involved in operating the nine-employee company, which has been up and running since Paul’s arrest on Nov. 21, Natelson said.
The youngest Caneiro brother, Corey, 44, who was close to both older brothers, has been “carrying out administrative details” for the business, Natelson said.
“Our instructions are to operate as usual,” he added.
Keith oversaw a tech company, Square One, that the brothers coowned — and which shares the same second-floor space as EcoStar — and he rarely came into the office, Natelson noted.
“Three and a half years ago, it seemed they were both more involved in both businesses, and over time Paul became more the brother handling the pest control and Keith became the brother more involved in the technology business,” Natelson said. “I don’t think I’ve seen Keith probably in a year.”
On Saturday, a post-fire restoration company was spotted outside Paul Caneiro’s charred two-story home. Orange evidence stickers were pasted on the front door, as a worker carried out bags of clothes and loaded them into a van.