Monmouth County Judge Marc Lemieux sentenced Paul Caneiro to four life sentences without the possibility of parole on Tuesday for the killings of his brother and three other family members in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Caneiro, 59, was convicted by a jury in February.
The murders took place on Nov. 20, 2018, when Caneiro shot his brother, Keith Caneiro, 50, outside the family’s Colts Neck mansion, then went inside and shot and stabbed Keith’s wife, Jennifer, 45. He also stabbed his niece, Sophia, 8, and his nephew, Jesse, 11, before setting the home on fire. Prosecutors said he later returned to his Ocean Township house and lit a blaze there too, in an apparent bid to make it seem as if he were also being targeted. His wife and two daughters were unscathed.
The sentence brings to a close the latest phase of a case that has shadowed new jersey courts for years and centered on the deaths of four innocent people in an upscale family home. Lemieux said the evidence showed a “callous, heartless, brutal killer” and called the killings “an annihilation of an entire family, a mass murder carried out by a person who should have protected them the most … because the defendant constructed lies that were collapsing down around him.” He also said Caneiro “was and continues to be a manipulative, cold-blooded killer.”
Before the judge ruled, Jennifer Karidis’s mother, Bette Karidis, told the court that “a thousand years would not be enough,” and called Caneiro a “monster” and “pure evil.” Jennifer Karidis’s sister, Bonnie Karidis, asked for the harshest punishment and said he “must be removed from society.” She said the “sheer malice and betrayal is unbearable,” and described the victims as having been “executed and tortured by someone who was family.”
Defense lawyer Monika Mastellone said Caneiro “maintains his innocence” and added, “There is nothing I can say to mitigate that tragedy.” Lemieux said the punishment was mandatory and ended with a line that underscored how final the sentence is for Caneiro: “His address will forever be the Department of Corrections.”
