Mystery as tech boss and family found dead in New Jersey mansion

New Jersey police are investigating the quadruple murder of a tech chief executive, his wife and their two young children.

Keith Caneiro, 50, was found dead from a gunshot wound on the lawn of his burnt-out $1.8m (£1.4m) mansion in the upscale Colts Neck neighbourhood of New Jersey yesterday.

Firefighters discovered the severely burned bodies of his 45-year-old wife Jennifer and their son and daughter. The names and ages of the children have not been released, but The New York Times reports that both were under the age of ten.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Despite early press speculation about the possibility of a murder-suicide, police have established that Caneiro’s fatal gunshot wound was not self-inflicted.

Speaking at a press conference, Monmouth County prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni said investigators are now treating the incident as murder and arson by a third-party.

Gramiccioni declined to say if a weapon had been recovered from the scene, and a motive for the attack has not yet been established.

Caneiro was the chief executive of web development firm Square One, which he founded in 1987. He and his wife purchased the nine-acre lot in Colts Neck in 1998, and built their sprawling 5,700sq ft family home there five years later.

“Adding to the mystery surrounding the mansion blaze is the fact that Caneiro’s brother’s home caught on fire just hours beforehand,” says the Daily Mail.

Paul Caneiro, co-owner of Square One and a pest control business, which the brothers also operated together, called emergency services to report a fire at his home in nearby Ocean Township hours before the blaze at the murder scene.

Gramiccioni said that a potential link between the two fires was “an angle we continue to pursue”.

The deaths have come as a shock to the community, a well-to-do neighbourhood whose proximity to New York City has attracted several famous residents. “Bruce Springsteen owns a home in the area and Queen Latifah recently sold her mansion there,” Heavy reports.