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Tonight on Dateline.
I still dream about it.
I dream about them.
Still.
A house fire.
A family.
A horrific doesn't even begin to describe what it is.
What it still is.
You've got a mansion that you're responding to.
Yes.
It's an urgent response.
Looked like a combination of the fire and something more sinister.
It's a crime scene.
It seems that the entire family is gone.
Your best friend's just absolutely devastating.
I was just so sad and heartbroken.
When I found out it was murder, I was like, who did it?
Can we catch this person?
There was a camera.
You could see this figure through the garage door.
Is it a hitman?
Was it revenge?
You find out there has been another fire in a neighboring town.
Yes, and it's the brothers' home.
Two brothers' houses are on fire.
Alarm bells going off?
They're starting to, yes.
What is going on in this family that we need to know?
It's like evil washed over the town.
Absolutely.
Evil washed over the town.
Two fires, four deaths, and one terrifying twist.
Murders at the mansion.
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
Here's Andrea Canning with Slow Burn.
With its sprawling estates and quiet country roads, there's a little town in New Jersey called Colts Neck, not too far from the hustle and bustle of New York City.
It's a great town.
Lots of horse farms, lots of golf courses, lots of open space, great people.
Affluent town.
It's where Keith Canero, a successful entrepreneur, lived with his wife Jennifer and their young children.
They built their lives, they built their business, they built their home, they built their family.
They made a positive impact on the community.
For Keith and his two brothers who live nearby, it was a world away from their humble beginnings in working-class Brooklyn.
The kind of community where people felt safe.
Until November 20, 2018, just before Thanksgiving, a call came in to dispatch at 12.33 p.m. Keith's house was on fire.
911, where's the emergency?
Hi, my name is across the street.
There's a lot of smoke coming out of the house.
A minute later, a different caller.
I opened the door and there is smoke coming out and there's a person laying down.
Where are they laying down?
On the property.
There's somebody dead here.
Multiple fire crews responded, including the all-volunteer Adelphia Company, firefighters Carmelo LaMarca and Mike Whitehill.
What are you told is going on with this fire at this point?
It was announced over the radio that there was a mother and two children in the house.
It was probably as urgent as it gets.
And this is sirens blaring.
You're peeling out of this fire station.
That's correct.
Local and county investigators also raced to the scene, including Lieutenant Patrick Petrozzillo and Sergeant Stephen Vogt with the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office and Colts Neck Detective Richard Zarrillo.
What do you see as you arrive at the house?
Saw the house, we saw smoke coming out.
Once we entered the property, there was possibly a deceased victim in the front yard of the house.
When you hear that there's someone dead in the front yard, does your mind go to it could be a fire victim that maybe was trying to escape the fire?
It could be a victim of any kind.
We don't know who the person is, how they got there, what the circumstances were.
This is a full-on active crime scene at this point.
It's also a very active fire going on with all these fire trucks.
So we're trying to do our job, but also not get in the way of fire suppression.
Yes, and it's not a small scene.
The house itself is a couple of acres of property.
There's access points.
We're trying to control a large scene, shutting down traffic, airspace.
Word quickly reached then-Mayor J.P. Bartolomeo.
You had an instinct as you were driving to the scene that there was something really big to this.
There was more than meets the eye.
Yes, when the information was provided to me that there was a dead body, a lot was going through my head.
Confusion, concern.
I was puzzled as to what was really kind of unwinding.
Monica Guy, Colts Neck resident and on-air news reporter, also got wind of the commotion.
I was on assignment about 30 minutes away and my assignment editor called and said, there's a really bad fire in your town.
He gave me the address and I knew it was near my house.
Monica also knew it was the home of Keith, Jennifer, and their son and daughter, Jesse and Sophia.
My daughter went to the same school as Sophia.
And Jesse was just a little bit older than my son.
Neighbors told first responders that the children weren't in school, and their mom Jennifer wasn't answering her phone.
As soon as we entered through the front door, there was a very, very heavy smoke condition.
So you're looking for, hopefully, survivors in this house, and you can't see a thing?
No.
Outside, Detective Zarrillo took a closer look at the body on the lawn.
I examined him, briefly rolling him, checking to see for any signs of life.
When I rolled him, I found his hands underneath his body and blood underneath him.
And it appeared that he had sustained a gunshot wound.
It was Keith Canero.
He'd been shot in the head.
Investigators had a mystery on the front lawn.
And inside the house, an unthinkable horror.
This one is the most brutal case that I've seen in my experience here.
The level of planning and the level of violence was just sickening.
This is like the story of Cain and Abel.
It's hard for anyone to process.
Hardened criminal defense friends of mine, judges that I'm friends with, no one's ever seen anything like this.
It comes down to greed.
I think it comes down to jealousy.
There's a murderer in our town.
Do we stay inside?
Do we lock the doors?
Just any kid would freak out and not know what to do.
50-year-old Keith Canero lay dead outside his house with a gunshot wound to the head.
While detectives combed for clues, firefighters searched for his family inside.
It was zero visibility.
As we climbed the stairs and got to the landing, that's when we encountered the first victim.
Is this person alive?
There was no way for us to tell.
Do you scoop this person up and get out of there as fast as you possibly can?
As fast as we could.
Once outside, he glanced down.
What did you see?
I was able to see that it was a small female who was badly, badly injured.
It was the Caneros' eight-year-old daughter, Sophia.
She was dead.
Seconds later, another horrific discovery.
The bodies of 45-year-old Jennifer and 11-year-old Jesse.
It was one of the worst things investigators had ever seen.
Was it apparent to you right away how everyone had died?
Jennifer, no, certainly.
Because of the amount of fire injuries throughout her body, you really couldn't see anything.
What injuries did the children have that were apparent?
It looked like they had multiple stab wounds.
What's that moment like when you realize this isn't just Keith on the lawn?
This is the whole family.
We try to maintain that professional aspect of it.
You try to leave your emotions out of it and rework the scene.
Word of the murders and apparent arson spread through Colts Neck.
Mayor Bartolomeo couldn't help but speculate.
Your brain starts to wander.
Is it a hitman?
Did they have a bad way with someone?
Was it revenge?
All of the above?
None of the above?
Even as she covered the breaking story, Monica struggled to process the loss of a family she'd known for years.
It was the worst day of my career.
I quickly had to shut that off and go to work.
She had her own initial theory about what happened.
The first thing that came to my mind was maybe it was a domestic violence situation that had escalated.
Like a murder suicide?
Yes, absolutely.
But the more she thought about it, the less sense that made.
Keith and Jennifer seemed to be so in love.
I'll tell you this story, and it was shared with me.
Keith and Jennifer were out on a date, and Keith said, draw me the house you want to live in.
And Jennifer said, okay.
And it was used as the inspiration for the house that they built and lived in.
He gave her her dream house.
He did.
What were Keith and Jennifer like as parents?
Because you saw them really in that parent environment.
They were great parents.
See them at different school events.
I'd often see them getting their kids off the school bus.
Sometimes Keith would be there, and he would just be beaming.
Jennifer, was she a stay-at-home mom?
She was.
She was involved in Girl Scouts, and Sophia was a Brownie.
She was involved with the PTA and things at school and within the community.
Ripley and Asher Burgess went to school with Sophia and Jesse.
They remember the moment their parents shared the heartbreaking news.
We had like a family meeting and my dad said we had some hard news to say.
Some of our really close friends have passed away.
Your parents are crying.
This is real.
When they first told me, I was so confused.
I just did not know how to process any of this information.
Really, I just was blank and I was confused.
Drowning everything out.
They met the Canero siblings four years earlier and became instant best friends.
My friendship with Sophia started off with doing soccer when we were little.
We both did it together and then we both hated it.
So then we tried cheer, gymnastics.
Where were you in the cheer order?
We were kind of on the sidelines.
Instead of actually doing the cheer that we're supposed to, we went on the side and danced to our own thing.
And then we'd get yelled at.
What do you think connected you with Jesse?
We both really liked history.
He got me into history.
He had posters all in his room of World War I, World War II.
We liked to climb around and just do stupid things.
Why would anyone want to harm this loving family?
Investigators needed to find out everything they could about the Caneros.
We weren't drawing any conclusions.
And not knowing who the Caneros were, there was a lot of questions.
Who is this family?
What do they do?
Who are they involved with?
They learned that Keith got his start at a Brooklyn computer store working as a janitor.
All he asked for in return was a chance to study the software manuals.
From there, he launched his own IT consulting business.
His first employee?
His older brother, Paul.
They joined their middle names to create J. Martin Consulting.
Sounds like they're both smart.
Keith was described more as like a business smart and Paul more tech smart.
That could complement each other nicely in a business like that.
Sure.
They renamed the company Square One and moved it to New Jersey.
Early on in the tech boom times, they had substantial clients and the company was extremely successful.
Keith owned 90%, Paul 10%, and they took over a second business they split 50-50, EcoStar Pest Management.
Monica says the brothers were also close personally.
When Keith married Jennifer in 2000, Paul was in his wedding party.
And when Paul married in 1991, Keith was his best man.
Both went on to have two kids and were doting uncles to each other's children.
Jesse had even asked Paul, his Uncle Paul,
To go to school with him for special persons day.
Now, Keith and his family were gone.
Investigators had their work cut out for them.
But before the Colts Deck fire was even out, they got word of another blaze in a nearby town.
One that would cast a whole new light on the investigation.
Now you have two fires very close to each other, same day.
Are you starting now to feel like, wow, this can't be a coincidence?
Yes.
As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmin Vesugian.
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Investigators raced to collect evidence from Keith and Jennifer Canero's house in Colts Neck, but the fire was still raging.
There could be evidence going up in smoke.
100%.
We immediately were discussing, like, what can we do to preserve the evidence?
We did the best we could at that point, worked on securing the exterior as best we could.
Right away, they noticed there were a number of things that were out of place, starting with the electric meter.
I found the meter not in its place on the side of the wall.
That's odd.
That's one of the oddities.
Another was the generator.
It was turned off.
You feel like the generator should have been kicked on?
If there's no meter, there's no power going to the residents, you know, you would hope that the generator would come on.
Detectives weren't sure what it meant, but they dusted both the meter and the generator for fingerprints.
Then a firefighter spotted a lone bullet.
A cartridge, which is an unspent live round, was found on the back deck.
And near Keith's body, six fired shell casings.
Was there a murder weapon anywhere?
No.
Was it possible that this could be a home invasion?
They had a lot of money, the Caneros.
At that point, anything was possible.
Who is this family?
What do they do?
Who are they involved with?
As detectives tried to make sense of the murders, they wondered if they had something to do with another suspicious house fire that was reported hours earlier in the town of Ocean Township, 10 miles away.
Officers from that local police station responded to the scene before dawn.
A 911 call comes in that there's a fire in Ocean Township.
Lieutenant Christopher Brady with the Ocean Township Police Department jumped out of bed and headed to the fire.
Police body cameras captured the growing blaze.
Hey, is everybody out of that house?
Officers talked to the family of four who lived in the home.
They were across the street, watching everything unfold.
Hey, how you doing?
You all right?
Everyone okay?
No one was injured.
Just shaken?
Just shaken, yeah.
Do they have any idea of how this fire...
No, they had no idea how the fire started.
They described waking up to the smoke detectors and seeing smoke in the house, and they ran outside the house.
Captain Brian Weisbrot and Lieutenant Nicholas Cataluna with the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office arrived to assist in the investigation.
First things that were concerning to me was there was multiple points of origin of the fire.
What were all the points?
The first point was in the back of the home, adjacent to the gas meter.
The second was in the area of one of the garage doors on the other side of the house.
And then there was a third on the top of one of the Porsche vehicles that was parked in the driveway.
They believed it was arson and that whoever set the fire left this behind.
There was also a gas can found on scene with a burnt nozzle.
This gas can is possibly a gold mine.
You know, maybe it has DNA.
Maybe it has a fingerprint.
Yeah, and what was interesting about the gas can is the nozzle was burnt, which was indicative that it was in close proximity to a fire source.
Right next to the gas can, they noticed something else.
We found a partially burnt black nitrile glove.
Whoever lit this fire was probably wearing gloves.
That would be a possibility, a very strong possibility.
The county fire marshal examined the evidence and determined the fire was set intentionally.
He told me that there was presence of an accelerating liquid outside the residence.
Investigators spotted security cameras and went back to the family to ask about them.
You know, sir, it's your house?
Yes.
Where is all the DVD stuff for the cameras and everything in the house?
An officer grabbed the box for the camera system anyway.
Maybe they'd get lucky.
They also asked the family to come down to the station.
Did they have any idea who might have wanted to hurt them?
Had there been an argument with someone recently?
No, they had said they had no problems with anyone.
And then, the detectives got an alert on their phones.
Indicating that there was a fire in Colts Neck.
This was the first they were hearing about it, and they made a stunning connection.
The last name at that home was Canero, just the same as the incident that we have at Ocean Township.
The owner of the Ocean Township house was Paul Canero, older brother of Keith Canero, the man found dead outside his burning house in Colts Neck.
Wow.
I mean, what are the odds?
That doesn't sound like a coincidence.
It was very odd and suspicious and strange.
At the police station, Paul Canero, his wife and two daughters got the awful news that Keith and his family had died.
Did they just look absolutely devastated?
Yeah, they appeared just as you would expect.
They were devastated.
You have two suspicious fires.
You have four people murdered in one of the homes.
Great concern for this family, is fair to say?
Yes, yes.
Do you think that they're being targeted, all of them?
It was a fear.
Was the fire at Paul's house a failed murder attempt?
If so, it could mean someone was trying to kill the entire Canero family.
But who?
With no arrests or answers about who killed Keith Kinero and his family and set their house on fire, the town of Colts Neck was gripped by fear.
There's a murderer in our town.
Do we stay inside?
Do we lock the doors?
Just any kid would freak out and not know what to do.
Residents looked to Mayor Bartolomeo for reassurance he couldn't yet give them.
This crime needed to be solved.
It did, because at the moment, we didn't know if we had a monster walking the beautiful streets of Colts Neck or if it was something else.
The Monmouth County prosecutor tried to quell those fears.
We have no reason to believe that the community is in any danger at this point in time.
But investigators knew that the third Canero brother, Corey, had heard about the fires and was still worried.
He took it upon himself to go outside of New Jersey because we didn't know what was going on.
He said he was concerned for his safety?
Sure, sure.
Corey had gone to Pennsylvania with his children.
He agreed to meet the detectives at a local police station there.
We interviewed him for probably a couple hours that night.
This was not a situation of Corey fleeing or trying to... Not at all.
How was Corey handling the death of his brother and his brother's family?
He was trying to piece it together himself as well.
I'm sure he was concerned that this may be a targeted event.
They asked Corey about his brother's businesses.
Corey, obviously, being a brother, had a wealth of information.
He knew about the dynamics of the business.
Was there a thought that a possible suspect could be something related to the business?
You know, a business deal gone bad or an employee who's angry at them, maybe?
Yeah, anytime you have that common denominator of the business, I think you have to look into, could that be part of something?
Corey couldn't think of anything, but he did reveal this.
Keith and Paul's IT company was losing clients and about to collapse.
He had mentioned there was some emails going back and forth, things about the business, concerns that Keith had, plans that Keith had.
Those plans included selling their second business, EcoStar Pest Management.
Keith emailed Paul, make the deal.
Paul responded, no, we can wait a quarter and see how much more we can get.
Keith wrote back, I'm not interested in waiting.
Meanwhile, back at the Ocean Township police station, detectives looked through the neighborhood surveillance footage and saw something odd.
They believed these clips showed the headlights of Paul's SUV reversing out of his driveway.
What we believe to be a Porsche vehicle departing from his house and driving down the street.
Around what time is that?
Shortly after two o'clock in the morning.
This was strange too.
The story Paul told police about his security cameras.
Do you have them running right now?
I've been having problems with stuff in the garage.
It turned out they had been working just fine.
Investigators went straight to the most recent recording, hours before the fire.
Was there anything on the cameras that caught your attention?
Yes.
We saw Paul Canero walk directly towards the location where the DVR was located, and then the power was cut to the DVR system.
You're seeing Paul in the middle of the night, and then the power goes off.
My first response was something of surprise because never did I expect to see the homeowner walking into his garage and turning off his camera system.
Why would you need to turn off your camera system in the middle of the night?
Right.
Paul was still at the station with his family.
But when investigators tried to question him...
He had requested to contact an attorney.
Less than 24 hours after this fire started, Paul Canero, does he seem to be your biggest lead?
Yeah, at that point, we had believed that Paul Canero was responsible for setting the fire at his own home.
What do you do with that?
As a result of all that, we arrested Paul Canero.
The next day, the county prosecutor publicly announced Paul's arrest.
But when asked about a possible connection to the murders in Colts Neck, he gave few details.
I can't confirm or deny whether he's a suspect.
The only thing I can tell you is we are exploring the possibility that these two incidents are linked.
That night, the people of Colts Neck came together to mourn Keith and his family.
A grassroots group got together and said, let's all go to town hall and hold a candlelight vigil.
A lot of people are asking for answers.
There's no answers.
And the one thing he said that I really remember is,
Was our town lost a family of really good people.
And they were.
They were really good people.
Everyone was like sad or crying.
I just remember feeling really sad and broken there.
A devastating possibility was taking shape.
Could Paul Canero have murdered his own brother and sister-in-law, his young niece and nephew?
It's kind of like your intuition says to you, there's more to the story than we know.
Is your gut telling you now at this point that he could be involved in the murder of his brother's family and the fire?
Yes.
But could investigators prove it?
A search inside Paul's home might lead them to the answer.
What's going through your mind when you see that?
My first reaction was like disbelief.
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For what?
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Paul Canero had been arrested for setting his own house on fire.
Investigators worked around the clock to determine if Paul was also responsible for the deaths of his brother and his family.
We got a lot of search warnings.
Where does that lead you?
Back to his home.
His cell phone led us to all of his electronics.
They collected more video, sent forensic evidence for testing, and conducted interviews with the Caneros' inner circle.
A week later, investigators were convinced they had their man.
We have charged defendant Canero with four counts of murder.
This is like the story of Cain and Abel, these two brothers.
It's hard for anyone to process.
Hardened criminal defense friends of mine, judges that I'm friends with, no one's ever seen anything like this.
Paul pleaded not guilty, and then the public waited for the details.
They would not come quickly.
Pretrial hearings took years.
It's been courtroom maneuvering.
Back and forth a change of venue request a changing of attorneys finally in january 2026 the trial got underway
Paul's family was there to support him jennifer canaro's family to hold him accountable
Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce you to the defendant paul canaro
Nicole Wallace opened for the prosecution.
She told jurors how in the months before the murders, the failing businesses put the Canaro brothers on a collision course.
Friend Ben Paolucci said three days before the murders, Keith vented that he was tired of supporting Paul financially.
I told Keith he needed to start worrying about himself and his family, stop supporting everybody else.
Prosecutor Chris Decker suggested that selling the IT company, the more successful of the two businesses, would especially hurt Paul.
He'd lose a steady income and only profit 10% from the company's sale.
At the end of the day, it's still 90% Keith's business.
Unfortunately for Paul, he wouldn't have been able to replace that income as easily as Keith would have.
Paul made a lot of money, but he spent a lot of money too.
He had a lot of debt.
Him and his wife both had Porsches.
His one daughter had a Porsche.
The other daughter had a Jeep.
They said he was also spending a lot on this woman, Gisele Restrepo.
Would it be fair to say that you and Paul Canero had a friendship?
Say.
Yes.
We didn't get into the relationship.
We don't really want to speculate on the relationship.
She said the two met at a local restaurant.
Since then, Paul had helped pay for her car and her daughter's college applications.
What was he spending money on then?
I know that they had fancy cars, a nice house, $20,000 at Tiffany's.
There was a lot of money spent at Tiffany's.
There was a lot of money spent at Restoration Hardware.
The state argued that Paul needed another source of cash, so he stole from his brother.
Keith had set up what's called an irrevocable life insurance trust.
A $3 million payout for his wife Jennifer and the children in the event of his death.
He made Paul the trustee.
Part of Paul's responsibilities were to pay the premiums to the insurance company on a quarterly basis.
Instead, a forensic detective testified that Paul put that money into his own account.
So he was taking this money meant to protect the trust.
And giving it to himself.
But Keith found out the premiums weren't being paid.
This is home security footage from Keith's kitchen the day before the murders.
In a heated call, he confronted Paul, asking for access to the online account.
If you could just see a way to send me the password, I'll do the research myself.
Later, he called him back.
I need it.
I need it.
I need it.
Give me the f***ing login, Paul.
Do you believe Paul knew he was going to be exposed, that he was stealing?
I think there's no, there's no other way to look at it.
You know, Paul just ultimately decided at that point in time that night that he was just gotta, he's gotta make a move.
The prosecution said Paul had another incentive to kill.
If Keith and his family were dead, he stood to inherit from that trust.
How much did Paul Canero stand to gain if he was not caught for this?
The trust itself, just that alone, would have been $1.5 million.
Investigators laid out a chilling timeline for what followed.
Captain Weisbrot said it all began when Paul turned off his garage camera in the middle of the night.
The screen immediately goes black.
But he couldn't control the neighbors' cameras.
A detective testified that one of them showed what looked like Paul's Porsche leaving his house at 2.07 a.m.
It was heading west in the direction of Colts Neck.
He said the Porsche, with its distinctive features, was picked up again at 2.23 on Keith Street.
I could see the vehicle's tail lights.
At 2.35, the camera in Keith's garage recorded a burst of light from an outside motion sensor.
And then... Detective, did you just see a silhouette up here?
Yes, ma'am.
Prosecutors believe that was Paul making his way toward Keith's electrical panel and generator.
Their theory, Paul ripped out the panel and turned off the generator.
At 3.18, Keith texted Paul this.
The generator says AC failure.
Going outside to see if the generator is in the right mode.
Keith, kind of despite being still angry at Paul for the discovery of the facts, he still needs him.
Which is really scary.
That Keith is essentially walking into a trap, you argued.
Yeah, he was, I mean, ultimately Paul's sitting out there lying in wait.
Prosecutors argued that by 5 a.m., Paul had shot Keith five times, shot and stabbed Jennifer, and killed the children.
He set a slow burning fire to destroy any evidence, then drove away to do the same to his own house for the same reason.
He just didn't ultimately succeed.
A pile of clothing in Paul's basement remained almost intact after the fire.
Water from fire hoses had frozen the clothes, which included a pair of men's jeans.
They were stained with what looked like blood.
You could see blood?
Yes.
I mean, what's going through your mind when you see that?
That's huge.
DNA analysts testified the blood came from both of Keith's children.
Paul's DNA was also found on the jeans.
Chris Decker asked jurors to think about that and every other gruesome detail from that night.
What kind of a brother lies in wait for his brother to come outside in the dark, place a gun to the back or side of his hooded head, and pull that trigger?
What kind of a man then chooses to go inside that house in the darkness?
To go and find his sister-in-law and 11-year-old Jesse Canero and 8-year-old Sophia Canero.
He rested, saying the evidence in this case did not lie.
The only just verdict in this case, the only one that follows the evidence, is that Mr. Canero is guilty of all these crimes.
Or was it possible the evidence just as easily pointed elsewhere?
Who should they have investigated?
They didn't really mention him, but there's a third brother.
The prosecution vilified Paul as a monster, willing to kill his own family to satisfy his greed.
The defense introduced jurors to a totally different Paul Canero.
Mr. Canero, as he sits here now, as he sits here today, he's innocent.
He's an innocent man.
For those who knew Paul best, it made no sense.
It made no sense that he could ever commit such heinous crimes against his loved ones.
Paul's attorney, Monica Mastalone.
Paul would refer to Keith as his person, that they had been through so much together personally, professionally with the businesses.
And they had the type of brotherly relationship where they might bicker about something, whether it's work-related, personal-related, and then immediately thereafter go out to lunch and call it a day.
Paul's wife and two daughters were in court to support him as his attorney shifted the focus to investigators.
They ignored things that didn't make sense.
They ignored things that did not add up.
They ignored things that did not fit with their theory.
The defense boils down to this.
The investigation in this case was not complete.
It was derived by tunnel vision that focused...
Essentially exclusively on Paul Canero.
She said investigators should have considered other suspects.
For example, Paul's neighbor testified she saw two men in baseball caps before first responders arrived.
You described the two men as wearing dark colored clothing.
Yes.
We don't know who the two people were outside of Paul Canero's home at 4.30 in the morning, approximately a half hour before the fire was set to his house.
There's a lot of missing pieces here.
The defense argued it was possible those two men killed Keith and his family and went to Paul's to plant evidence.
And is there any security cameras from the neighborhood to see if you could spot these two people anywhere else?
Law enforcement only obtained surveillance video from one side of the street.
And there was no investigation into the other side of the street.
As for the footage police did collect, the defense said prosecutors could not prove that was Paul behind the wheel heading toward his brother's house.
There's no video of who's driving that car.
There's no video of
Paul Canero specifically lighting either house on fire.
There's no definitive, direct video evidence or eyewitnesses who can tell us who did this.
You were about to throw a curveball into this trial.
It was a alternative theory.
About an alternative potential suspect.
There's a third brother.
His name is Corey Panera.
Corey was also to gain financially from the death of Keith and his family.
Absolutely.
A lot of money.
$1.5 million.
Up to possibly three.
If...
If Paul is out of the picture, that doubles to $3 million.
That's right.
Paul's lawyers didn't call Corey to the stand, but they did challenge investigators, including Detective Zarrillo.
At that point, any efforts to additionally investigate Corey?
No.
Police defended their decision.
At no point did...
Not even, they said, to those two mystery men.
Police believed they were actually first responders.
The defense pressed on, implying investigators also misinterpreted key evidence, like this video of Paul just before the murders.
That's what the jurors are seeing when he said he was sleeping.
And there he is, the state says, turning off the cameras.
Just because Paul Canero walks up to the video and the video cuts out doesn't mean he's disconnecting the video system specifically.
Under Cross, Captain Weisbrot said Paul did tell police at the scene that he'd been having problems with his Wi-Fi.
His attorney suggested he could have accidentally disconnected the camera while trying to fix the system.
You don't know if that DVR system was plugged directly into a wall or plugged into a power strip or something like that, right?
I don't have that information, no.
It could mean that he's disconnecting any one of things that were all plugged into the same power strip or the same outlet.
The defense then attacked the DNA testing.
One of Paul's attorneys pointed out police never got a sample of Corey's DNA to see if it might be on those clothes.
The lawyers brought their case full circle with two final witnesses.
Paul's daughter Katie testified her dad adored his brother Keith and considered his nephew Jesse a son.
They had a great relationship.
They had a lot of things in common.
Jesse loved history.
My dad loves history.
So they would do a lot of things like that.
Her sister Marissa said their father's grief over the murders was genuine.
He fell to the floor and I was sitting across from him at that point.
So I got up and I was on the floor with him, just holding him.
The defense rested by repeating its opening mantra, police got the wrong man.
You have a man who loved his family.
Jurors went to deliberate.
Jesse and Sophia's friends, Asher and Ripley, waited in the courthouse for the verdict.
I needed closure.
I felt like I really hated him.
Five hours later... How do you find as to count one of the indictment charging the defendant, Paul Canero, with the murder of Keith Canero?
Guilty.
Guilty on all four counts of murder and two counts of arson.
When that verdict came in, it was such a relief.
Such a relief.
Someone gasped in the courtroom.
And we all
Did you feel like this is what Colts Neck needed?
Yes.
Yes.
Colts Neck needed a verdict to heal.
The judge sentenced Paul Canero to four life sentences with this parting reminder.
Today, defendants greet.
Manipulation, and selfish conduct ends.
His address will forever be the Department of Corrections.
And as for the dream home that once symbolized the Caneros' success, what happened to Keith and Jennifer's house?
It was taken back by the banks, I believe, and ultimately knocked down.
Then again, people here will tell you the Caneros were more than what they built in stone.
They'll be remembered for what they put into this town.
Enthusiasm, kindness, and generosity.
There's no way this family will ever be forgotten.
Their loss is felt, but their legacy lives on.
That's all for this edition of Dateline.
And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 Central.
I'm Lester Holt.
For all of us at NBC News, good night.
I'm Craig Melvin.
Cheers.
Cheers.
I've always been a glass half full kind of guy.
And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too.
Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges.
Their stories are funny and quite candid.
So I hope you'll join me each week.
And who knows?
You might just come away with your own glass half full.
Search Glass How Full with Craig Helton from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
