November 27, 2024 • 49 mins
In part two of the New Jersey Mansion Murders, Joseph Scott Morgan explains how investigators determined the fire in the mansion is actually arson to coverup the brutal murders of Keith and his family. The fire at Paul Caneiro's home is quickly determined to be arson and Paul Caneiro is arrested the day after the fire. Paul Caneiro's wife and adult daughters think he is a hero for waking them up and getting them out of the house safely and vow to testify on his behalf. A few days after Paul Caneiro is charged with setting fire to his own home, he is charged with the murder of his brother and Keith Caneiro's family. Prosecutors say Paul Caneiro was motivated by greed. Three days before the killings, Keith Caneiro told his father-in-law, Vlassis Karidis, that Paul had stolen $90,000 from the children's college funds, and that he was planning to cut off the $225,000 salary that Paul drew from a family business. Autopsies show that Keith, Jennifer, and Jesse Caneiro all died instantly, but Sophia lived for 9 hours and died from smoke inhalation. This has led Sophia Caneiro's maternal grandfather, Vlassis Karidis, to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Paul Caneiro. Because Sophia survived her parents, she inherited their estates and died intestate, passing the estates to her grandparents, and Karidis has standing to bring the claim.
Transcribe Highlights
00:02.96 Introduction Part Two, New Jersey Mansion Murders
04:53.02 Shooting adults, stabbing the children, 8 and 11
10:17.82 Keith Caneiro shot in head and lower back
15:06.25 Projectile investigation
20:17.30 Fire started in early morning, not reported until after 12 noon
25:45.68 Fire Hose would go right over a body in the yard if needed
30:28.94 When door opens, fire hit with oxygen
35:04.17 20 different fire companies involved for hours to put out mansion fire
40:15.09 Investigators knew the scene was more than just a fire
47:02.93 Autopsy determines Sophia lived 9 hours, died from smoke inhalation
49:41.57 Conclusion - waiting for trial
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Dars with Joseph Scott Morgan. Blow winds and crack
your cheeks, rage, blow you cataracts, hurricanoes, spout till you
have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks. You'll so fur
us and thought executing fires. That's actually from Act three,
(00:29):
Scene two of King Lear. This is part two of
the New Jersey Mansion Murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Bodybags. In the first episode with the Mansion murders,
we kind of laid the groundwork, didn't we day for
(00:54):
this unbelievable familial tragedy that has occurred. And it would seem,
just as in the case of King Lear, that there
were storms all about that you can curse the storms
as much as you want, but they're still going to come.
(01:14):
And in this case it has ravaged this family and
this community. We're talking about four innocent people executed by shooting,
by stabbing, and then to make matters even worse, burned.
(01:36):
It's really hard to take the measure of it, isn't it,
Dave that it is.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And Joe in this case where we are dealing with
a family being destroyed, and I mean that in the
general sense of the entire Canaro family. And we're going
Biblical on this. This is Book of Genesis stuff. Brother
(02:05):
killing brother over you know, yeah, yeah, And that's what
we have. We have the older brother accused of killing
the younger brother, and it comes down to brains and money.
Jealous of brains and a disagreement about money. I've been
here since the beginning. I deserve the same thing you do,
and that's just not the case. It happens in a
lot of businesses, but it's not the case. And they
(02:29):
saw things differently. Keith was at the point where he
had decided that since his brother Paul was spending too
much money on things he didn't that Keith did not
believe need to be spent, he was going to cut
Paul's salary. I mentioned this in the first episode. They
were equal partners in one business, but not in Square one,
(02:50):
the tech business that was the business that had a
big future. Paul was not a profit sharing participant in that.
He wildly made it ben, but he was not an
equal partner. Be clear on that. He was an employee
and as his boss, Heath was getting ready to cut
his salary. A little demotion you could tell by how
they lived. That there was a big discrepancy in finance.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, there was. However, I have to say quartermill per
year is nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, it's not.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And you know, I I don't know. I guess I'm
very theatrical today. I'm thinking about it. There there's that
that scene you know from Wall Street where Charlie Sheen's
character is asking Michael Douglas's character, you know, how many
yachts can you ski behind? And I don't know, you know,
(03:46):
but look, success is success, and it's earned most of
the time through hard work, and it it creates an
underlying jealousy. And look, we've known this for ages, right,
and you go back to canaan Abel. You know, it's
about jealousy, it's about envy, you know, those sorts of things.
(04:07):
But my Lord, to come to the point where you've
decided to execute a man in his front yard, and
I think it's rather emblematic of jealousy, because again, this
is all allegedly occurring at the hands of one brother
(04:29):
has not gone to trial yet. But to execute a
man in the front yard of this what has been
called a mansion, a mansion by New Jersey standards, and
then to go into a home wielding a pistol and
executing a wife, shooting her and then stabbing her as
(04:55):
if the shooting wasn't enough, and then go into the
bedroom of these because Dave, they they are children. Reminder,
they're eight and eleven, their little kids. You go in
and and you know, you hope that they didn't wake
up to see the man that they had spent Thanksgiving
with and you know, Christmas, and you know, maybe had
(05:19):
gone on vacation with him. Can you imagine that his
face illuminated there, you know, in that in that moment,
and he's wielding a knife and repeatedly stabbing them. I
don't know, it's uh, you know, I use the term
it's hard to take the measure of, but it truly is.
And when it comes down to it, it's it's just
absolute pure evil, Dave.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
When the details of this case came out, I was
looking at the murder of Keith Canero on his front
yard and I wondered how everything took place. I'm thinking
he was probably the first victim. Because Paul Canaro is
(06:06):
accused of going into the home and killing Jennifer, the
wife and mother and the two children differently than he
killed allegedly killed Keith. So did he run out of bullets?
I mean from the scene, what do you see?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, that's that's what I'm thinking here. And you know,
you got to think dad's the gatekeeper here, right, because
if he sees someone in his yard, maybe maybe there
was a phone call preceding this, Maybe there was a
knock at the door early morning five A yeah, and
maybe maybe it's known that this man is an early riser.
(06:44):
He gets up, he's having this cup of coffee. Arrest
the families inside the house. It would have to be
someone that would be familiar, you know, with the environment
with this dwelling certainly, And how do you draw them
out of the house? House? Do you do you have
a key to the house? Did you force entry into
the house? Uh? Did you take this man at gunpoint?
(07:09):
Take him into the front and Dave, this is the
front yard? Think about that, the front yard. You're going
to execute somebody in their front yard. This is not
like you've done it in cover. Okay, you know you
haven't marched somebody out into the woods and uh pumped
rounds into them and left their body. I mean, how
(07:30):
many cases have we have we covered that involved concealment
of a homicide and not just the body but actually
the act. You know, you know, you think about this
when this dynamic of of having someone in their front
yard and then unloading a weapon into their body, and
(07:53):
that has that has drawn me into this idea. Did
the individual run out of of live rounds at this
point in time or were they down to one? And
then you come armed also with a knife that is
sufficient to the task. And what I mean by that
it's not you're not talking about a steak knife, because
(08:16):
now you're utilizing a knife in order to facilitate not
the death of just one person, but an additional two
though they are children. You need something that's going to
be robust enough, that will that will withstand this vigorous
utilization of it where you're you're constantly, you know, just
(08:38):
stabbing over and over and over again. It has to
be robust enough to maintain that. So, yeah, I think
that what's so eye catching about about the mansion murder
is the fact that you've got husband, father laying dead
(09:01):
in the front yard, don't I don't recall us ever
covering a case like this where it's it's almost like,
you know, it's it's done in plain view, if you will. Now,
granted we have to go back to what we talked
about in the first episode. This mansion is very isolated.
(09:23):
I say isolated. It's not encumbered by you know, you're
not talking about where you've got a division of two
to three feet between holmes. You know how they'll go
into a subdivision, they'll build homes this way, And it's
not like this. This is on a substantial plot of
land up there, David.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And happening early in the morning. And again, Joe, I'm
I'm really befuddled by what took place because it is
so close. You're talking about brothers here, and you're talking
about nieces, nephews, sister in law. You're talking about the
things that make life life. And Paul Canaro is allegedly
(10:04):
the guy that ended an entire family's life. Now front yard,
Keith Canaro is shot once in a lower back and
four times in the head. You got five bullets there,
assuming you didn't miss. I don't know how many shots
he fired, but you did mention you know they are
It's not like it's out in the middle of nowhere,
(10:25):
but it is isolated enough that gunshots at that time
of the day might not wake the neighbors because they're
a little bit further away than needed. But we've got
him dead on the front yard. You arrive. You mentioned
this in the previous show about when the firemen get there.
It's twelve thirty in the day. Okay, this began at
five am, before sun up, but nobody knows about it
(10:50):
until twelve thirty in the day when a next door
neighbor calls the fire department. So how did the murder
And let's just start with Keith Canara. How did his
murder occur in the front yard, assuming that he was
the first one killed, And that's probably not even a
(11:10):
good assumption, is it.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
No, And it's hard to it's hard to put and
again with with whether it's stabbing or shooting. All right,
it's very difficult to sequence cases. And I think that
many times jurors come in to a trial and they
expect the forensic pathologists to sit on the stand and
(11:32):
be able to say, Okay, this is the order that
the injuries took place in. There are those cases where
that can be accomplished. However, in a case like this,
the big question is well, I'm very interested in this
GSW to the back. Was there any hemorrhage in that wound?
Like let's just say, for instance, this dynamic where you
(11:57):
actually have you actually have Keith turning his back on
the perpetrator and to walk away, and this is just
one scenario, and the perpetrator fires center mass into his
back and knocks him down. Okay, Well, at autopsy, one
(12:19):
of the things that that we would do, and this
has not been revealed yet, is that at autopsy you
would check that wound to see if there's hemorrhage in there,
because even in a perry mortem state where the individual
is in the midst of dying as opposed you know,
I've talked about this before in between you know, we've
talked about anti mortem and perry mortem and post mortem.
(12:41):
So you've got this gunshot one to the back. Was
this used to knock him down to get him under control?
And then you approach him, you get closer and Dave,
you know, now, granted I've got a rather large melt
and on top of my shoulders, but heads are not
(13:02):
something that are to score headshot on anybody from a
firearm's perspective is indeed quite the feet, and particularly with
a handgun. Okay, handguns are not noted for great accuracy
at distance, So you have to think about the relationship
(13:24):
between the end of that muzzle and where these bullet
defects or projectile defects are in the head. So after
he's on the ground, maybe shot in the back. We
don't know this. I'm just kind of throwing this out there.
Then you approach him and you pump the rest of
these rounds in to his head. Are they through and through?
(13:47):
Which means do you have you know, around that inner
say in the back of the head and exits out
of the front. Are all these rounds still contained within
the head? And when they say head, it doesn't necessarily
mean like the cranial vault, because if they say head,
it can mean face, it can mean jaw, It can
be something that is just kind of a grays wound
(14:11):
that you have, maybe that runs along one aspect of
the neck, that is a separate gunshot wound from everything else.
This is another thing I've talked about through and through.
You know, many times when you fire into well most
of the time when you fire into a skull, there
is going to take place a fracturing of the plates
(14:36):
of the skull, so that compromises the structural integrity. So
maybe you will fire into a skull a single time
and that first round will not exit the skull. But
once that structural integrity of the skull is compromised, and
you've got these kind of little they look like for
those that have never seen it, they'll kind of if
(14:57):
you take a hard boled egg and you dropped it
on the surface and look at how the shell will fracture.
You get these multiple floating areas in there. Well, that's
the integrity of the egg being compromised. So you can
fire into a skull that's already fractured. Now, whereas you
may have been able to contain the first shot, those
(15:20):
subsequent shots might pass through and through, so you might
have wherever he is laying, you might have these projectiles
that have passed through the skull. They've had to go
in and excavate these, you know, from beneath the body,
and that would be something that would be quite quite
(15:41):
critical in a case like this, because you're trying to
tie back those projectiles to the same weapon, okay, or
you know, if you're thinking that maybe you got multiple shooters. Well,
why would multiple shooters shoot a guy multiple times in
the head. This is not Hollywood. And why is it
that anyone would shoot some body more than one time
(16:01):
in the head, Because if you have an understanding of firearms,
then you would understand that it's probably only to take
one right, particularly he's already shot in the back. What's
the need for And of course, with that idea in mind, Dave,
(16:21):
this goes to overkill, and overkill always goes to passion,
doesn't So Keith is lying on the front lawn multiple
(16:43):
gunshot wounds. I think that anybody that has the least
bit of perception on their part can tell that Keith
is not getting up from this. That line of the home,
if you will, that visual that would provide safety, that
(17:03):
would protect his family is down. Now. Any perpetrator that
wanted to could go into the home and they're going
to be face to face with Keith's wife. Well, did
Keith's wife hear anything, did she alert to it, or
did the perpetrator seek her out in a specific location
(17:24):
within the home and then attack her. Well, we know
that she has sustained at least one gunshot wound to
her body and multiple stab wounds. Once you've eliminated the adults,
the children are easy prey. But you run the risk
by discharging a firearm in that house to alert everyone
(17:47):
in there. What happened with the kids? Did the kids
know that a weapon had been fired from within the house?
Did they wake up? Now? Just because the neighbors didn't
hear this day doesn't mean that the people inside the house.
And I'm talking about Keith's family, his wife and those
precious children, I'm you know, did they hear the report
(18:11):
of the firearm over and over and over again outside?
Did they hear? And I say they, I mean the children?
Did they hear their mother being shot? Inside of the house?
Did they alert to this? Or is this house, this
structure so vast, it's so large, that they're positioned in
a place where they might not hear it. I think
(18:33):
these are all salient questions.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Day and powerful when you actually look at the dynamic here.
Assuming that we have Keith Canaro dead on the front yard,
and then going in you have his wife, Jennifer forty
five years old. She's mother. She's not going to let
you know what talking about the dad being there to stop,
you know, protecting all that, well, hey, when dad's not there,
(18:56):
it's mom. Yeah, mama bear, Yeah, she's going to protect
the babies. And so she is shot once and then
knifed not knowing. Because it hasn't gone a trial yet,
we don't have all of the information. But we do
know that Jennifer Canaro was shot and stabbed multiple times.
(19:19):
We know that the children were not shot, they were
only stabbed, which is an up close and personal murder.
Talk to you about this on the phone as I
was prepping this, because I was trying to get my
head wrapped around all of this that when we talk
about a gun shot wound that can be cold, doesn't
have to be up close and personal.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But when you talk.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
About strangulation or stabbing, you've got to be right there
on the person. And so I was thinking, perhaps maybe
the alleged shooter killer only had one round left in
the gun and he used that on Jennifer and that
immobilized her enough so that he could finish the job
(20:03):
with the knife. And then he takes on the children
who are only eight and eleven, assuming a lot because
we don't know. But here's my bigger question, Joe. We
know that a fire in this house began early in
the morning. We know that it wasn't reported until the
next door neighbors, as you mentioned a little ways away,
(20:24):
they saw smoke earlier in the day and assume they
were just hey, got a fire in the fireplace, asked smoke.
But when that smoke continued and got bigger and got bigger,
that's when they called police and fire and said, hey,
we got a fire next door, you know, come on.
And so now that we have looked at this, the
fire crews show up on the scene. They find Keith
Canaro on the front yard debt. You mentioned in our
(20:48):
last episode that once they are positive he is gone,
they no life saving measures can be taken. They basically
cover the body and move onto the house to see
what else they've gone in there.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right, Yeah, yeah, they would, and they'll they will freeze.
They will freeze the processing of the crime scene. Okay,
until that moment. And here's something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That when you say frees the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that's really inaccurate. They
will forego processing the crime scene at that moment. Tom.
It's just like if you come across if you come
across somebody that is bled out somewhere. Maybe they're in
(21:39):
one area of the house. Well, you're you have to
go through the rest of the house in order to
assess if there is someone that is still there, they've
been injured and perhaps you can save them. But at
an even higher level here, we're not talking about that.
We're actually talking about a fully involved fire at this point,
(22:01):
where you have to knock this thing down. So the
fact that he has deceased, that Keith is deceased on
his front lawn is trumped by the necessity of knocking
down this fire because you don't know. I mean, keep
in mind, Dave this thing and trust me, firefighters structurally,
(22:24):
they are aware of what they've got on their hands here.
This house is a tinder box, okay, of all the
household items, everything, and they know that this thing can
get out of hand really quick. And most of the time,
you know, November when this case happened, November is a
very dry month over pretty much most of the US.
(22:46):
It's not like springtime where you've got storms that are
rolling through and supersaturated ground and all this stuff. You've
got dry leaves about. There's tender everywhere, and not to mention,
everything is if you've got this neighborhood that's adjacent to area.
If they don't get the scene knocked down, the sink
can spread, and so they're thinking about all of the
rest of the area, you know, to try to keep
(23:09):
it contained as best they can, and then they will
return or the scene will be turned over two investigators
following getting this thing knocked down and secured to the point,
and they'll have to go through the home to see
if you know, maybe a kid crawled inside of a
closet and just by the grace of God, they have
(23:32):
survived this inferno. You never know what you're going to find.
Maybe they ran into the basement, you know, maybe they're there,
they're sequestered down there, away from all of this damage
that's going on. They have to go through and assess
all of this. They have to know do they have
a gas leak on their hands? Is there something in
this house that could kick off where now you're not
(23:54):
just dealing with a fully involved fire, now you're going
to deal with a potential explosion. You've got motor vehicles
there that presumably are gas operated. Are they going to
be you know, are they going to be involved in
the fire again? Another explosion. Is there a propane tank
adjacent to the house. Do they work on natural gas
(24:17):
or is it propane tank that's operating everything within the home?
Is this thing going to explode? There's so many other
considerations when firefighters are assessing an area. And I know
a lot of people think, well, you're dragging a hose
and this could happen. I'm not saying it happen this case,
it has happened. You're dragging hose and equipment over a
(24:38):
decedent in the front yard. Well, you try, you make
note of it. But let me tell you something. If
if there is a decedent in the front yard of
a structure and you're trying to pull a hose from
the curb that's attached to a pumper or directly to
a fire hydrant, if the body is there, that hose
(24:59):
is going right over the body. They're going to get
to the house to knock this fire down. So it's
a real intricate dance, and you have to take account
of this when you're processing the scene. And here's something
interesting that many people might not know. Did you know
that investigators will take statements from everybody that's present at
(25:22):
that scene and that's something you know. So you'll go
back and you'll interview the firefighters, you'll interview the paramedics,
you'll interview the lieutenants and the captains that rode in
on those trucks. If a chief shows up in a
car and he crossed that tape, he's getting interviewed or
she's getting interviewed. So everybody that rolls out to that
scene is going to be interviewed. We want to know
(25:43):
what you have to say, because in most cases like this,
the police will be there, but the police are not
running into the house. That's what the firefighters do. So
when the firefighters make their way into that house, they're
going to have the first snapshot of what's going on
in this environment. Okay, some of them might have seen
(26:04):
this scene before got completely obliterated by fire, so their
remembrances are so critical to this case, Dave, that they
can appreciate what happened, what level of destruction, Where did
you see the most intense areas of flame? Did you
hear anything when you entered the house. So all of
that plays into all of this as very complex.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
All right, So that actually explains this is from the
actual timeline put together by the prosecutor. Sometimes before five am,
Paul Knaro allegedly removed certain items of evidence that's a
direct quote, certain items of evidence from his brother's place
(26:47):
and set fire to the house. We don't know what
these certain items of evidence are. They will come out
of trial, but police knew enough. Investigators determined he actually
removed certain items of evidence. Then the fire was not
discovered until twelve thirty eight PM that day when a
neighbor's groundskeeper reported it to authorities. Direct quote, again, based
(27:08):
on what we know about the cause and origin of
that fire, it was started in the basement, It continues
to smolder until there was entry made into the home.
Entry is not made by Keith, his wife, his children,
because they're all dead, Keith on the front yard, the
(27:30):
rest of the families in the house. The entry was
made by fire fighters that went inside to see They
see the smoldering, they see what's going on, and this
is what he says. The prosecutor says, quote a great
deal of oxygen coming into the home effectively fed the fire.
So it wasn't reported until twelve thirty eight. And what
(27:50):
we believe caused the fire to catch on from there
is likely the feeding of oxygen as the house was
entered into.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful exp do nation. It's actually
something that we use in fire science to teach our
students with because fire itself is what's referred to as
an uninhibited chemical chain reaction. So you have to have
a heat source striking a match, You have to have
an accelerant. Well, that could be any number of different
(28:21):
petroleum items. For instance, Okay, some are a bit more
unstable than others. Gasoline is very unstable, whereas if you
have diesel, for instance, it'll burn a bit slower. Kerosene
kind of rest in the middle there. And there's other
things that you can start fires with, you know, road flares,
(28:42):
you know those sorts of things. And then you can
have electrical origins, and then you have to have fuel source. Well,
in this case, the fuel source would be if anything
had been drug into the house, like dry wood you had,
you know people, we'll take piles of clothing and put
(29:02):
them about every now and then, or it can just
be furniture. It can be because you don't know what
the structure of that basement was. For all I know
is a super duperman cave and you've got wood paneling everywhere,
You've got wooden floors that's lacquered or whatever, and it's
(29:23):
smoldering in there, and it's seeking out oxygen. But if
it's sealed up so tightly that all you're getting is
kind of the seepage of smoke that's pouring out, and
then you have to have a supply of oxygen, an
uninhibited supply of oxygen. So let me tell you this,
We're very lucky we don't have deceased firefighters, okay, because
(29:46):
when that door opens and oxygen blows into that room,
you can have this kind of flash over that takes
place with this introduction of the source of oxygen, and
all of a sudden, you've got this blast that initiates.
And that's quite fascinating that the prosecutor framed it that way.
(30:09):
I'm very curious as to the mechanism that this individual
went with in order to get this thing to You've
got a slow burn that's going on. How do you
maintain that slow burn to the point where this thing
is not going to kick off for several hours, perhaps
(30:29):
after it's been set, maybe it's been kind of slowly
burning down there, and then all of a sudden boom,
the door opens up, and you're in a raging inferno
at this point in time, which is critical here. What's
going to be fascinating in this case, Dave, is to
listen to the arson investigators talk about this. One other
thing I'd like to know is was there any accelerant
(30:54):
splashed about the house? You see what I'm saying. So
did the perpetrator take multiple cans of an accelerant like
gasoline and go floor by floor, room by room and
body by body. So many of our friends are very
(31:28):
well versed in forensics, and it's not just my doing,
it's just everything that you hear in true crime. And
I'm so glad that we have friends like that that
listen to the show. And if you've listened to True
Crime for any period of time, you know that fire
deaths are deaths where fire has been introduced into an
(31:51):
environment are some of the most complex things that we work,
I mean, and you have to take account of of
the body in its pristine state at the scene document
those things that seem so convoluted because it is fire
(32:13):
scenes are so messy. You're dealing with burned remnant that
is not necessarily just the body, but you're talking about
ceilings collapsing on bodies that are burning. Not just the bodies,
but the ceilings are burning, smoke damage, and all of
(32:35):
this ash has fallen down on the bodies. If there's
any remnant left of something that maybe clothing, maybe a
blanket a body was wrapped in, you have to be
able to appreciate all the little boundaries that have been
burned away in order to get everything up out of
that area, because you can, dave, you can actually set
(32:58):
a body on fire or have fire into a body
and the clothing burned up, and of course the clothing
that is beneath the body will be to a certain extent,
don't run too far with this. To a certain extent,
it's going to be preserved. Say, if you've got a
couple of kids laying in a bed and their bodies
are burned, well, if they're wearing pajamas, if they're laying
(33:21):
face down, then the surface on their chest is going
to be protected from totally being burned away, whereas everything
on the back is going to be gone. And this
goes to injury assessment too. You know, when we get
these bodies into the morgue, where do you begin, Well,
the first place that we begin is going to be
(33:43):
with the X rays that has That is key here
because when you look at a body that has been
consumed partially by fire, first off, the external the external
observations that you're making are going to be like any
(34:05):
nothing else that you see on crime scenes. The bodies
will be cracked, the surfaces will be burned to the
point where the bodies are literally charred, just like any
other item that you might have in a fire. And
you can't make heads or tails if you're looking at
a bullet defect, or if you're looking at a knife wound,
if you're looking at someone that has been pludging with something.
(34:29):
So it is very very complex, my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
All right, So we've got the three bodies in the house,
Jennifer and both children, Jesse and Sophia. And we know
that this fire smoldered for a number of hours before
it exploded into an inferno, with the oxygen being poured
into the building by doors being open and what have you.
(34:53):
We know that it took twenty different fire I don't
know if that's fire departments or if that's just fire,
you know.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I think it's companies and those yeah, fire companies.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I But we've got twenty of
those involved, and they're not involved for just an hour.
We've got twenty fire companies involved for hours trying to
extinguish this fire. We know that the bodies were burned,
but how are you going to determine based on the
burning and everything else? When somebody is stabbed, unless bone
(35:24):
is nicked or something along those lines, I would think
that your evidence on the body is going to be
pretty much burned, right.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Not necessarily. Here's the beauty of it is that you know,
this is not like a cremation where you have bodies
that have been burned for a protracted period of time.
You're having turned coals and all those sorts of things.
Did you know, Dave, that once a body is burned,
the exterior of the body, See how can I put this?
(35:53):
The exterior of the body will actually form almost a
hardened shell. Okay, with and again this is quite ghastly,
but with the skin and the underlying subcutaneous fat, it'll
it'll almost harden to a certain extent, and you might
not be able to appreciate the injuries externally. However, once
(36:17):
you open up that body, let's just say someone has
been stabbed. Did you know that you can still appreciate
the wound tract because once you open the body, so
you reflect the the the chest tissue for lack of
a better term, on the underside of the tissue, you
(36:38):
can actually still see like a slit like mark there
that a knife has passed through. You overlay that and
you can track that through it passing through maybe between
the ribs, you can. It'll track through the organs because
the organs are still and depend upon how soon they
get to the body, there will be areas of hemorrhage
(37:02):
and the defect itself that you'll be able to track
through all the ways, say through like the solid organs
like a heart or the lungs, and still be able
to say, okay, this is in fact a stab wound. Okay. Now, externally,
because of that kind of crust that's built up externally
on the body, you can't really see it that well
(37:24):
if you're very, very careful, you can in some circumstances.
And here's the other thing. Just because of the top
of a body is burned. And when I say top,
I mean like the top of the trunk. Okay, the
top of the Torso just because that portion of the
body is burned extensively doesn't mean the lower half is
(37:46):
going to be burned as much. Okay, this is very
randomized kind of thing. Even I've had bodies where people
have dumped gas on bodies and set them a flame.
You will sometimes that flame will just flash over and
once the accelerant is burned off, then then you're not
(38:11):
going to have a lot more damage done to the body. Okay,
post mortem, all right, And it's gruesome if somebody gets
gas splashed on them and they catch fire in life,
but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about
the dead. Whereas if you have the upper portion of
the body, say overlying a fuel source like a mattress
or clothing or some kind of cloth or a wood,
(38:34):
than that, because it again you have that fuel source
that's there that's constantly burning, that area of the body
will be more extensively burned. So you just have to
be very very careful. And that's why it's important to
document where the bodies are at the scene so that
you can appreciate their relationship, the body's relationships to any
other kind of items that might be surrounding that body.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
This is amazing what you are able to break down
from something that doesn't seem to have it. I want
to say this the right way. There is so much
information that you bring to the table and talking about
a situation like this that I'm dumbfounded by what I've
never even thought of kind of thing. Because we know,
we have a massive home, it's almost six thousand square
(39:20):
feet and is on fire that has been smoldering for
hours before it finally really takes off. We've got one
man dead on the front yard, which, by the way,
I was noting his the nine one one call from
the neighbor. He actually called when he realized the smoke
was more intense than he had originally thought. And he's
getting closer to the home and as he gets in,
you can actually hear, according to the description, and we'll
(39:43):
find this out at trial, his description becomes more frantic
as he's relating this to nine one one about the fire.
And then he gets to the yard and he finds Keith,
and he said that's when he freaks out, Oh my god,
there's blood, there's there's a dead body.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
That's what the fire crews were and police were coming
into They knew this is something more than just a
big house on fire, and so I was wondering about,
you know, the fire hoses. I maybe it might seem
like I don't care, but I was wondering about that
when you talked about the hoses would be drugged right
over the body because you got to get to the fire.
(40:21):
There's more danger in there too. But it took them
several hours before they could even actually go into the structure,
all the while knowing they probably have bodies inside. Joe,
do the fire crews as they go through the house
and they're putting out the fire, do they kind of
do a quick analysis of the structure of the building.
It determined whether or not you can come in and
(40:42):
look at what's left. What point is that decision made?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, yeah, well you will have to have there will
be a senior person with the fire service that will
walk through and they'll check the structural integrity of the
scene itself. And a little aside here I've had I've
(41:07):
had a rafter collapse on my head that was still
on fire. It had coals burning on top of it.
I got the back of my neck burned, and as
kind of a joke, but I was greatly appreciative of it.
At that time. I used to wear a hard hat
when I would go out one of the fire stations
(41:28):
that I was friends with. Those guys, they didn't actually
invite me over to eat every now and then when
some duty they gave me a h they gave me
a fire helmet at one point, and as it turned out,
you know, now it's pretty common practice if you go
to a medical examiner's office, you'll fire you'll find those
kind of classic fire helmets that people think of, you know,
(41:51):
and they'll be the badge on the front will actually
say medical examiner, now wow, And you know the heavier
jackets that they wear, those sorts of things. That's kind
of common practice back in my day, early on in
my career that that didn't happen as much. So you
you're you know, in a case like this, your safety
is pre eminent because you you know, if anybody is
(42:13):
in there that is deceased, you're not going to bring
them back to life by virtue of your presence. However,
you can die because that's a very unstable, dangerous environment,
and you want to make sure that it's safe when
you go in there to begin to process the scene,
you know, before you're going to remove anything. And here's
another thing. When you have bodies that are kind of
semi rendered down as a result of fire, all of
(42:37):
the area that is approximating the body is going to
go into the bag as well into into the body
bag at the scene, and when that is X rayed,
you'll find nuts, screws, springs, You'll find all kinds of
(42:58):
stuff that's in there, and you kind of have to
make when you're looking at the x ray, you're kind
of having to make your way through it and try
to understand is this important, is that something or is
this within the body as opposed to outside of the body,
Because you know, with a case like this where you've
you've already got evidence. Can you imagine the shock of
that neighbor. He's rolling up, he sees smoke, and he
(43:21):
rolls up and here's a guy that's probably you know,
leaned over the you know, proverbial fence with and chatted
you know with before, and he's laying dead in the
front yard. You know, you're looking upon him and you're thinking, oh,
my Lord in heaven, you know what what's happening? You know,
(43:41):
at this moment in tom you never know what you're
going to find at a crime scene involving a fire.
You never know what you're going to find with the bodies.
Because you're talking about gunshot womens. You can find a
projectile in there, you know, I'm thinking about Keith's body
right now. You've got multiple gunshot wounds. So are there
(44:02):
multiple projectiles? Well with the wife, is the projectile still
in her body and where is it located? That would
be essential And I think some people would think, well,
what's the purpose of doing an X ray on a
body that's been stabbed? How do you know they've been stabbed,
particularly in a fire scene. Oh and by the bye,
(44:23):
if they are stabbed, guess what happens to blades? Many
times blades chip, blades break. I found the tips of
knife of knives broken off in spines. Before you know,
you see that perfect little opaque triangle that's resting there,
you know, in the in the spine, and you're going
(44:44):
to have to go in an autopsy and dissect out
that vertebral body and retrieve, retrieve that tip of that.
So there's a lot to be considered, and most importantly,
I think here one of the assessments that you're going
to do with the autopsy is were they alive? Were
they alive when the fire started? You know, how are
(45:07):
you going to tell that? Joe, Oh, It's it's actually
quite simple day tell the truth. That's actually one of
the most simple things that we do. First off, there's
two things. There's actually multiple, but I'll just I'll try
to keep it simple and brief. But first off, the
(45:28):
tissues within within the mouth, the fairynex, going down the
throat into the airway, you'll see them be highly irritated, obviously,
and then you're thinking about taking on soot because every
time you breathe in like that and you're in a
smoking environment, you're going to take in those particulate bits
(45:50):
and you'll find those again in the airway and certainly
down into the lungs. The other thing that we do
at autopsy is we run a test called a carboxy
globin level, and it's something that you see with carbon
monoxide poisoning. Well, carbon monoxide is a byproduct of a fire,
and when you do the autopsy, just even when you
(46:13):
draw the blood, guess what color the blood is if
there is if there's carbon monoxide. It's pink. Think about
the brightest artificially made candy that's out there. It's that
got that kind of weird pinkish, reddish hue to it,
and that gets into the organs as well. Well. The
(46:34):
only way that happens is if there's an uptake of
oxygen or an uptake of air, rather not an oxygen,
but air in this environment that's got carbon monoxide in it,
So you're taking that on board. So there's multiple ways
that we can tell if the individual was still in
the land of the living when they died. And you know,
(46:59):
the the interesting point here is this, and this is
what we will eventually hopefully find out. First off, how
much did these victims suffer? What was their absolute cause
of death? Was it a stab wound or was it
(47:20):
a stab wound where they were left in the space
slowly bleeding out all the while breathing in the smoke
that was coming up from the basement.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Joe, the way you've just phrased all that is so important.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed by the maternal
grandfather of Sophia Canaro. Follow me here, friends. Paul Canaro
has been charged in the killings and is awaiting trial
after six years, We're now looking at possibly next March
before this goes a trial. He is the sole defendant
(47:54):
in the wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of the
estate of Sophia Canaro by Vlassis Coreedes, her maternal grandfather.
The suit is seeking damages from Paul Canaro on behalf
of the girl's estate.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
How is that possible.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Keith, Jennifer and Jesse Canaro died instantly, but an autopsy
now shows Sophia survived for nine hours after the attack
before she died of smoke inhalation. And the lawyer that
files is filing the wrongful death lawsuit says that's why
they are filing it this way, because Sophia survived her parents,
she inherited their estates and died into state, passing the
(48:34):
estates to her grandparents, and Vlassis Coreedes has standing to
now bring this claim of wrongful death against Paul Canaro.
So now we know, while Keith, Jennifer, and Jesse Canaro
all died instantly, little Sophia lived for nine hours and
died of smokeingalation.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
There's so much more left here with this case to
be able to unpacked, to be able to understand, and
to be able to put together this mosaic that seems
very very complex, and you know, to kind of paraphrase
a quote from the defense attorney that is handling this
case for Paul brother Paul, this is a dump truck
(49:22):
load of forensic evidence and there are terabytes of it.
The question is what kind of tale will be told
in the New Jersey murder Mansion. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Body Dars with Joseph Scott Morgan. Blow winds and crack
your cheeks, rage, blow you cataracts, hurricanoes, spout till you
have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks. You'll so fur
us and thought executing fires. That's actually from Act three,
(00:29):
Scene two of King Lear. This is part two of
the New Jersey Mansion Murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Bodybags. In the first episode with the Mansion murders,
we kind of laid the groundwork, didn't we day for
(00:54):
this unbelievable familial tragedy that has occurred. And it would seem,
just as in the case of King Lear, that there
were storms all about that you can curse the storms
as much as you want, but they're still going to come.
(01:14):
And in this case it has ravaged this family and
this community. We're talking about four innocent people executed by shooting,
by stabbing, and then to make matters even worse, burned.
(01:36):
It's really hard to take the measure of it, isn't it,
Dave that it is.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And Joe in this case where we are dealing with
a family being destroyed, and I mean that in the
general sense of the entire Canaro family. And we're going
Biblical on this. This is Book of Genesis stuff. Brother
(02:05):
killing brother over you know, yeah, yeah, And that's what
we have. We have the older brother accused of killing
the younger brother, and it comes down to brains and money.
Jealous of brains and a disagreement about money. I've been
here since the beginning. I deserve the same thing you do,
and that's just not the case. It happens in a
lot of businesses, but it's not the case. And they
(02:29):
saw things differently. Keith was at the point where he
had decided that since his brother Paul was spending too
much money on things he didn't that Keith did not
believe need to be spent, he was going to cut
Paul's salary. I mentioned this in the first episode. They
were equal partners in one business, but not in Square one,
(02:50):
the tech business that was the business that had a
big future. Paul was not a profit sharing participant in that.
He wildly made it ben, but he was not an
equal partner. Be clear on that. He was an employee
and as his boss, Heath was getting ready to cut
his salary. A little demotion you could tell by how
they lived. That there was a big discrepancy in finance.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, there was. However, I have to say quartermill per
year is nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, it's not.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And you know, I I don't know. I guess I'm
very theatrical today. I'm thinking about it. There there's that
that scene you know from Wall Street where Charlie Sheen's
character is asking Michael Douglas's character, you know, how many
yachts can you ski behind? And I don't know, you know,
(03:46):
but look, success is success, and it's earned most of
the time through hard work, and it it creates an
underlying jealousy. And look, we've known this for ages, right,
and you go back to canaan Abel. You know, it's
about jealousy, it's about envy, you know, those sorts of things.
(04:07):
But my Lord, to come to the point where you've
decided to execute a man in his front yard, and
I think it's rather emblematic of jealousy, because again, this
is all allegedly occurring at the hands of one brother
(04:29):
has not gone to trial yet. But to execute a
man in the front yard of this what has been
called a mansion, a mansion by New Jersey standards, and
then to go into a home wielding a pistol and
executing a wife, shooting her and then stabbing her as
(04:55):
if the shooting wasn't enough, and then go into the
bedroom of these because Dave, they they are children. Reminder,
they're eight and eleven, their little kids. You go in
and and you know, you hope that they didn't wake
up to see the man that they had spent Thanksgiving
with and you know, Christmas, and you know, maybe had
(05:19):
gone on vacation with him. Can you imagine that his
face illuminated there, you know, in that in that moment,
and he's wielding a knife and repeatedly stabbing them. I
don't know, it's uh, you know, I use the term
it's hard to take the measure of, but it truly is.
And when it comes down to it, it's it's just
absolute pure evil, Dave.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
When the details of this case came out, I was
looking at the murder of Keith Canero on his front
yard and I wondered how everything took place. I'm thinking
he was probably the first victim. Because Paul Canaro is
(06:06):
accused of going into the home and killing Jennifer, the
wife and mother and the two children differently than he
killed allegedly killed Keith. So did he run out of bullets?
I mean from the scene, what do you see?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, that's that's what I'm thinking here. And you know,
you got to think dad's the gatekeeper here, right, because
if he sees someone in his yard, maybe maybe there
was a phone call preceding this, Maybe there was a
knock at the door early morning five A yeah, and
maybe maybe it's known that this man is an early riser.
(06:44):
He gets up, he's having this cup of coffee. Arrest
the families inside the house. It would have to be
someone that would be familiar, you know, with the environment
with this dwelling certainly, And how do you draw them
out of the house? House? Do you do you have
a key to the house? Did you force entry into
the house? Uh? Did you take this man at gunpoint?
(07:09):
Take him into the front and Dave, this is the
front yard? Think about that, the front yard. You're going
to execute somebody in their front yard. This is not
like you've done it in cover. Okay, you know you
haven't marched somebody out into the woods and uh pumped
rounds into them and left their body. I mean, how
(07:30):
many cases have we have we covered that involved concealment
of a homicide and not just the body but actually
the act. You know, you know, you think about this
when this dynamic of of having someone in their front
yard and then unloading a weapon into their body, and
(07:53):
that has that has drawn me into this idea. Did
the individual run out of of live rounds at this
point in time or were they down to one? And
then you come armed also with a knife that is
sufficient to the task. And what I mean by that
it's not you're not talking about a steak knife, because
(08:16):
now you're utilizing a knife in order to facilitate not
the death of just one person, but an additional two
though they are children. You need something that's going to
be robust enough, that will that will withstand this vigorous
utilization of it where you're you're constantly, you know, just
(08:38):
stabbing over and over and over again. It has to
be robust enough to maintain that. So, yeah, I think
that what's so eye catching about about the mansion murder
is the fact that you've got husband, father laying dead
(09:01):
in the front yard, don't I don't recall us ever
covering a case like this where it's it's almost like,
you know, it's it's done in plain view, if you will. Now,
granted we have to go back to what we talked
about in the first episode. This mansion is very isolated.
(09:23):
I say isolated. It's not encumbered by you know, you're
not talking about where you've got a division of two
to three feet between holmes. You know how they'll go
into a subdivision, they'll build homes this way, And it's
not like this. This is on a substantial plot of
land up there, David.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And happening early in the morning. And again, Joe, I'm
I'm really befuddled by what took place because it is
so close. You're talking about brothers here, and you're talking
about nieces, nephews, sister in law. You're talking about the
things that make life life. And Paul Canaro is allegedly
(10:04):
the guy that ended an entire family's life. Now front yard,
Keith Canaro is shot once in a lower back and
four times in the head. You got five bullets there,
assuming you didn't miss. I don't know how many shots
he fired, but you did mention you know they are
It's not like it's out in the middle of nowhere,
(10:25):
but it is isolated enough that gunshots at that time
of the day might not wake the neighbors because they're
a little bit further away than needed. But we've got
him dead on the front yard. You arrive. You mentioned
this in the previous show about when the firemen get there.
It's twelve thirty in the day. Okay, this began at
five am, before sun up, but nobody knows about it
(10:50):
until twelve thirty in the day when a next door
neighbor calls the fire department. So how did the murder
And let's just start with Keith Canara. How did his
murder occur in the front yard, assuming that he was
the first one killed, And that's probably not even a
(11:10):
good assumption, is it.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
No, And it's hard to it's hard to put and
again with with whether it's stabbing or shooting. All right,
it's very difficult to sequence cases. And I think that
many times jurors come in to a trial and they
expect the forensic pathologists to sit on the stand and
(11:32):
be able to say, Okay, this is the order that
the injuries took place in. There are those cases where
that can be accomplished. However, in a case like this,
the big question is well, I'm very interested in this
GSW to the back. Was there any hemorrhage in that wound?
Like let's just say, for instance, this dynamic where you
(11:57):
actually have you actually have Keith turning his back on
the perpetrator and to walk away, and this is just
one scenario, and the perpetrator fires center mass into his
back and knocks him down. Okay, Well, at autopsy, one
(12:19):
of the things that that we would do, and this
has not been revealed yet, is that at autopsy you
would check that wound to see if there's hemorrhage in there,
because even in a perry mortem state where the individual
is in the midst of dying as opposed you know,
I've talked about this before in between you know, we've
talked about anti mortem and perry mortem and post mortem.
(12:41):
So you've got this gunshot one to the back. Was
this used to knock him down to get him under control?
And then you approach him, you get closer and Dave,
you know, now, granted I've got a rather large melt
and on top of my shoulders, but heads are not
(13:02):
something that are to score headshot on anybody from a
firearm's perspective is indeed quite the feet, and particularly with
a handgun. Okay, handguns are not noted for great accuracy
at distance, So you have to think about the relationship
(13:24):
between the end of that muzzle and where these bullet
defects or projectile defects are in the head. So after
he's on the ground, maybe shot in the back. We
don't know this. I'm just kind of throwing this out there.
Then you approach him and you pump the rest of
these rounds in to his head. Are they through and through?
(13:47):
Which means do you have you know, around that inner
say in the back of the head and exits out
of the front. Are all these rounds still contained within
the head? And when they say head, it doesn't necessarily
mean like the cranial vault, because if they say head,
it can mean face, it can mean jaw, It can
be something that is just kind of a grays wound
(14:11):
that you have, maybe that runs along one aspect of
the neck, that is a separate gunshot wound from everything else.
This is another thing I've talked about through and through.
You know, many times when you fire into well most
of the time when you fire into a skull, there
is going to take place a fracturing of the plates
(14:36):
of the skull, so that compromises the structural integrity. So
maybe you will fire into a skull a single time
and that first round will not exit the skull. But
once that structural integrity of the skull is compromised, and
you've got these kind of little they look like for
those that have never seen it, they'll kind of if
(14:57):
you take a hard boled egg and you dropped it
on the surface and look at how the shell will fracture.
You get these multiple floating areas in there. Well, that's
the integrity of the egg being compromised. So you can
fire into a skull that's already fractured. Now, whereas you
may have been able to contain the first shot, those
(15:20):
subsequent shots might pass through and through, so you might
have wherever he is laying, you might have these projectiles
that have passed through the skull. They've had to go
in and excavate these, you know, from beneath the body,
and that would be something that would be quite quite
(15:41):
critical in a case like this, because you're trying to
tie back those projectiles to the same weapon, okay, or
you know, if you're thinking that maybe you got multiple shooters. Well,
why would multiple shooters shoot a guy multiple times in
the head. This is not Hollywood. And why is it
that anyone would shoot some body more than one time
(16:01):
in the head, Because if you have an understanding of firearms,
then you would understand that it's probably only to take
one right, particularly he's already shot in the back. What's
the need for And of course, with that idea in mind, Dave,
(16:21):
this goes to overkill, and overkill always goes to passion,
doesn't So Keith is lying on the front lawn multiple
(16:43):
gunshot wounds. I think that anybody that has the least
bit of perception on their part can tell that Keith
is not getting up from this. That line of the home,
if you will, that visual that would provide safety, that
(17:03):
would protect his family is down. Now. Any perpetrator that
wanted to could go into the home and they're going
to be face to face with Keith's wife. Well, did
Keith's wife hear anything, did she alert to it, or
did the perpetrator seek her out in a specific location
(17:24):
within the home and then attack her. Well, we know
that she has sustained at least one gunshot wound to
her body and multiple stab wounds. Once you've eliminated the adults,
the children are easy prey. But you run the risk
by discharging a firearm in that house to alert everyone
(17:47):
in there. What happened with the kids? Did the kids
know that a weapon had been fired from within the house?
Did they wake up? Now? Just because the neighbors didn't
hear this day doesn't mean that the people inside the house.
And I'm talking about Keith's family, his wife and those
precious children, I'm you know, did they hear the report
(18:11):
of the firearm over and over and over again outside?
Did they hear? And I say they, I mean the children?
Did they hear their mother being shot? Inside of the house?
Did they alert to this? Or is this house, this
structure so vast, it's so large, that they're positioned in
a place where they might not hear it. I think
(18:33):
these are all salient questions.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Day and powerful when you actually look at the dynamic here.
Assuming that we have Keith Canaro dead on the front yard,
and then going in you have his wife, Jennifer forty
five years old. She's mother. She's not going to let
you know what talking about the dad being there to stop,
you know, protecting all that, well, hey, when dad's not there,
(18:56):
it's mom. Yeah, mama bear, Yeah, she's going to protect
the babies. And so she is shot once and then
knifed not knowing. Because it hasn't gone a trial yet,
we don't have all of the information. But we do
know that Jennifer Canaro was shot and stabbed multiple times.
(19:19):
We know that the children were not shot, they were
only stabbed, which is an up close and personal murder.
Talk to you about this on the phone as I
was prepping this, because I was trying to get my
head wrapped around all of this that when we talk
about a gun shot wound that can be cold, doesn't
have to be up close and personal.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But when you talk.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
About strangulation or stabbing, you've got to be right there
on the person. And so I was thinking, perhaps maybe
the alleged shooter killer only had one round left in
the gun and he used that on Jennifer and that
immobilized her enough so that he could finish the job
(20:03):
with the knife. And then he takes on the children
who are only eight and eleven, assuming a lot because
we don't know. But here's my bigger question, Joe. We
know that a fire in this house began early in
the morning. We know that it wasn't reported until the
next door neighbors, as you mentioned a little ways away,
(20:24):
they saw smoke earlier in the day and assume they
were just hey, got a fire in the fireplace, asked smoke.
But when that smoke continued and got bigger and got bigger,
that's when they called police and fire and said, hey,
we got a fire next door, you know, come on.
And so now that we have looked at this, the
fire crews show up on the scene. They find Keith
Canaro on the front yard debt. You mentioned in our
(20:48):
last episode that once they are positive he is gone,
they no life saving measures can be taken. They basically
cover the body and move onto the house to see
what else they've gone in there.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right, Yeah, yeah, they would, and they'll they will freeze.
They will freeze the processing of the crime scene. Okay,
until that moment. And here's something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That when you say frees the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that's really inaccurate. They
will forego processing the crime scene at that moment. Tom.
It's just like if you come across if you come
across somebody that is bled out somewhere. Maybe they're in
(21:39):
one area of the house. Well, you're you have to
go through the rest of the house in order to
assess if there is someone that is still there, they've
been injured and perhaps you can save them. But at
an even higher level here, we're not talking about that.
We're actually talking about a fully involved fire at this point,
(22:01):
where you have to knock this thing down. So the
fact that he has deceased, that Keith is deceased on
his front lawn is trumped by the necessity of knocking
down this fire because you don't know. I mean, keep
in mind, Dave this thing and trust me, firefighters structurally,
(22:24):
they are aware of what they've got on their hands here.
This house is a tinder box, okay, of all the
household items, everything, and they know that this thing can
get out of hand really quick. And most of the time,
you know, November when this case happened, November is a
very dry month over pretty much most of the US.
(22:46):
It's not like springtime where you've got storms that are
rolling through and supersaturated ground and all this stuff. You've
got dry leaves about. There's tender everywhere, and not to mention,
everything is if you've got this neighborhood that's adjacent to area.
If they don't get the scene knocked down, the sink
can spread, and so they're thinking about all of the
rest of the area, you know, to try to keep
(23:09):
it contained as best they can, and then they will
return or the scene will be turned over two investigators
following getting this thing knocked down and secured to the point,
and they'll have to go through the home to see
if you know, maybe a kid crawled inside of a
closet and just by the grace of God, they have
(23:32):
survived this inferno. You never know what you're going to find.
Maybe they ran into the basement, you know, maybe they're there,
they're sequestered down there, away from all of this damage
that's going on. They have to go through and assess
all of this. They have to know do they have
a gas leak on their hands? Is there something in
this house that could kick off where now you're not
(23:54):
just dealing with a fully involved fire, now you're going
to deal with a potential explosion. You've got motor vehicles
there that presumably are gas operated. Are they going to
be you know, are they going to be involved in
the fire again? Another explosion. Is there a propane tank
adjacent to the house. Do they work on natural gas
(24:17):
or is it propane tank that's operating everything within the home?
Is this thing going to explode? There's so many other
considerations when firefighters are assessing an area. And I know
a lot of people think, well, you're dragging a hose
and this could happen. I'm not saying it happen this case,
it has happened. You're dragging hose and equipment over a
(24:38):
decedent in the front yard. Well, you try, you make
note of it. But let me tell you something. If
if there is a decedent in the front yard of
a structure and you're trying to pull a hose from
the curb that's attached to a pumper or directly to
a fire hydrant, if the body is there, that hose
(24:59):
is going right over the body. They're going to get
to the house to knock this fire down. So it's
a real intricate dance, and you have to take account
of this when you're processing the scene. And here's something
interesting that many people might not know. Did you know
that investigators will take statements from everybody that's present at
(25:22):
that scene and that's something you know. So you'll go
back and you'll interview the firefighters, you'll interview the paramedics,
you'll interview the lieutenants and the captains that rode in
on those trucks. If a chief shows up in a
car and he crossed that tape, he's getting interviewed or
she's getting interviewed. So everybody that rolls out to that
scene is going to be interviewed. We want to know
(25:43):
what you have to say, because in most cases like this,
the police will be there, but the police are not
running into the house. That's what the firefighters do. So
when the firefighters make their way into that house, they're
going to have the first snapshot of what's going on
in this environment. Okay, some of them might have seen
(26:04):
this scene before got completely obliterated by fire, so their
remembrances are so critical to this case, Dave, that they
can appreciate what happened, what level of destruction, Where did
you see the most intense areas of flame? Did you
hear anything when you entered the house. So all of
that plays into all of this as very complex.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
All right, So that actually explains this is from the
actual timeline put together by the prosecutor. Sometimes before five am,
Paul Knaro allegedly removed certain items of evidence that's a
direct quote, certain items of evidence from his brother's place
(26:47):
and set fire to the house. We don't know what
these certain items of evidence are. They will come out
of trial, but police knew enough. Investigators determined he actually
removed certain items of evidence. Then the fire was not
discovered until twelve thirty eight PM that day when a
neighbor's groundskeeper reported it to authorities. Direct quote, again, based
(27:08):
on what we know about the cause and origin of
that fire, it was started in the basement, It continues
to smolder until there was entry made into the home.
Entry is not made by Keith, his wife, his children,
because they're all dead, Keith on the front yard, the
(27:30):
rest of the families in the house. The entry was
made by fire fighters that went inside to see They
see the smoldering, they see what's going on, and this
is what he says. The prosecutor says, quote a great
deal of oxygen coming into the home effectively fed the fire.
So it wasn't reported until twelve thirty eight. And what
(27:50):
we believe caused the fire to catch on from there
is likely the feeding of oxygen as the house was
entered into.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful exp do nation. It's actually
something that we use in fire science to teach our
students with because fire itself is what's referred to as
an uninhibited chemical chain reaction. So you have to have
a heat source striking a match, You have to have
an accelerant. Well, that could be any number of different
(28:21):
petroleum items. For instance, Okay, some are a bit more
unstable than others. Gasoline is very unstable, whereas if you
have diesel, for instance, it'll burn a bit slower. Kerosene
kind of rest in the middle there. And there's other
things that you can start fires with, you know, road flares,
(28:42):
you know those sorts of things. And then you can
have electrical origins, and then you have to have fuel source. Well,
in this case, the fuel source would be if anything
had been drug into the house, like dry wood you had,
you know people, we'll take piles of clothing and put
(29:02):
them about every now and then, or it can just
be furniture. It can be because you don't know what
the structure of that basement was. For all I know
is a super duperman cave and you've got wood paneling everywhere,
You've got wooden floors that's lacquered or whatever, and it's
(29:23):
smoldering in there, and it's seeking out oxygen. But if
it's sealed up so tightly that all you're getting is
kind of the seepage of smoke that's pouring out, and
then you have to have a supply of oxygen, an
uninhibited supply of oxygen. So let me tell you this,
We're very lucky we don't have deceased firefighters, okay, because
(29:46):
when that door opens and oxygen blows into that room,
you can have this kind of flash over that takes
place with this introduction of the source of oxygen, and
all of a sudden, you've got this blast that initiates.
And that's quite fascinating that the prosecutor framed it that way.
(30:09):
I'm very curious as to the mechanism that this individual
went with in order to get this thing to You've
got a slow burn that's going on. How do you
maintain that slow burn to the point where this thing
is not going to kick off for several hours, perhaps
(30:29):
after it's been set, maybe it's been kind of slowly
burning down there, and then all of a sudden boom,
the door opens up, and you're in a raging inferno
at this point in time, which is critical here. What's
going to be fascinating in this case, Dave, is to
listen to the arson investigators talk about this. One other
thing I'd like to know is was there any accelerant
(30:54):
splashed about the house? You see what I'm saying. So
did the perpetrator take multiple cans of an accelerant like
gasoline and go floor by floor, room by room and
body by body. So many of our friends are very
(31:28):
well versed in forensics, and it's not just my doing,
it's just everything that you hear in true crime. And
I'm so glad that we have friends like that that
listen to the show. And if you've listened to True
Crime for any period of time, you know that fire
deaths are deaths where fire has been introduced into an
(31:51):
environment are some of the most complex things that we work,
I mean, and you have to take account of of
the body in its pristine state at the scene document
those things that seem so convoluted because it is fire
(32:13):
scenes are so messy. You're dealing with burned remnant that
is not necessarily just the body, but you're talking about
ceilings collapsing on bodies that are burning. Not just the bodies,
but the ceilings are burning, smoke damage, and all of
(32:35):
this ash has fallen down on the bodies. If there's
any remnant left of something that maybe clothing, maybe a
blanket a body was wrapped in, you have to be
able to appreciate all the little boundaries that have been
burned away in order to get everything up out of
that area, because you can, dave, you can actually set
(32:58):
a body on fire or have fire into a body
and the clothing burned up, and of course the clothing
that is beneath the body will be to a certain extent,
don't run too far with this. To a certain extent,
it's going to be preserved. Say, if you've got a
couple of kids laying in a bed and their bodies
are burned, well, if they're wearing pajamas, if they're laying
(33:21):
face down, then the surface on their chest is going
to be protected from totally being burned away, whereas everything
on the back is going to be gone. And this
goes to injury assessment too. You know, when we get
these bodies into the morgue, where do you begin, Well,
the first place that we begin is going to be
(33:43):
with the X rays that has That is key here
because when you look at a body that has been
consumed partially by fire, first off, the external the external
observations that you're making are going to be like any
(34:05):
nothing else that you see on crime scenes. The bodies
will be cracked, the surfaces will be burned to the
point where the bodies are literally charred, just like any
other item that you might have in a fire. And
you can't make heads or tails if you're looking at
a bullet defect, or if you're looking at a knife wound,
if you're looking at someone that has been pludging with something.
(34:29):
So it is very very complex, my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
All right, So we've got the three bodies in the house,
Jennifer and both children, Jesse and Sophia. And we know
that this fire smoldered for a number of hours before
it exploded into an inferno, with the oxygen being poured
into the building by doors being open and what have you.
(34:53):
We know that it took twenty different fire I don't
know if that's fire departments or if that's just fire,
you know.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I think it's companies and those yeah, fire companies.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I But we've got twenty of
those involved, and they're not involved for just an hour.
We've got twenty fire companies involved for hours trying to
extinguish this fire. We know that the bodies were burned,
but how are you going to determine based on the
burning and everything else? When somebody is stabbed, unless bone
(35:24):
is nicked or something along those lines, I would think
that your evidence on the body is going to be
pretty much burned, right.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Not necessarily. Here's the beauty of it is that you know,
this is not like a cremation where you have bodies
that have been burned for a protracted period of time.
You're having turned coals and all those sorts of things.
Did you know, Dave, that once a body is burned,
the exterior of the body, See how can I put this?
(35:53):
The exterior of the body will actually form almost a
hardened shell. Okay, with and again this is quite ghastly,
but with the skin and the underlying subcutaneous fat, it'll
it'll almost harden to a certain extent, and you might
not be able to appreciate the injuries externally. However, once
(36:17):
you open up that body, let's just say someone has
been stabbed. Did you know that you can still appreciate
the wound tract because once you open the body, so
you reflect the the the chest tissue for lack of
a better term, on the underside of the tissue, you
(36:38):
can actually still see like a slit like mark there
that a knife has passed through. You overlay that and
you can track that through it passing through maybe between
the ribs, you can. It'll track through the organs because
the organs are still and depend upon how soon they
get to the body, there will be areas of hemorrhage
(37:02):
and the defect itself that you'll be able to track
through all the ways, say through like the solid organs
like a heart or the lungs, and still be able
to say, okay, this is in fact a stab wound. Okay. Now, externally,
because of that kind of crust that's built up externally
on the body, you can't really see it that well
(37:24):
if you're very, very careful, you can in some circumstances.
And here's the other thing. Just because of the top
of a body is burned. And when I say top,
I mean like the top of the trunk. Okay, the
top of the Torso just because that portion of the
body is burned extensively doesn't mean the lower half is
(37:46):
going to be burned as much. Okay, this is very
randomized kind of thing. Even I've had bodies where people
have dumped gas on bodies and set them a flame.
You will sometimes that flame will just flash over and
once the accelerant is burned off, then then you're not
(38:11):
going to have a lot more damage done to the body. Okay,
post mortem, all right, And it's gruesome if somebody gets
gas splashed on them and they catch fire in life,
but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about
the dead. Whereas if you have the upper portion of
the body, say overlying a fuel source like a mattress
or clothing or some kind of cloth or a wood,
(38:34):
than that, because it again you have that fuel source
that's there that's constantly burning, that area of the body
will be more extensively burned. So you just have to
be very very careful. And that's why it's important to
document where the bodies are at the scene so that
you can appreciate their relationship, the body's relationships to any
other kind of items that might be surrounding that body.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
This is amazing what you are able to break down
from something that doesn't seem to have it. I want
to say this the right way. There is so much
information that you bring to the table and talking about
a situation like this that I'm dumbfounded by what I've
never even thought of kind of thing. Because we know,
we have a massive home, it's almost six thousand square
(39:20):
feet and is on fire that has been smoldering for
hours before it finally really takes off. We've got one
man dead on the front yard, which, by the way,
I was noting his the nine one one call from
the neighbor. He actually called when he realized the smoke
was more intense than he had originally thought. And he's
getting closer to the home and as he gets in,
you can actually hear, according to the description, and we'll
(39:43):
find this out at trial, his description becomes more frantic
as he's relating this to nine one one about the fire.
And then he gets to the yard and he finds Keith,
and he said that's when he freaks out, Oh my god,
there's blood, there's there's a dead body.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
That's what the fire crews were and police were coming
into They knew this is something more than just a
big house on fire, and so I was wondering about,
you know, the fire hoses. I maybe it might seem
like I don't care, but I was wondering about that
when you talked about the hoses would be drugged right
over the body because you got to get to the fire.
(40:21):
There's more danger in there too. But it took them
several hours before they could even actually go into the structure,
all the while knowing they probably have bodies inside. Joe,
do the fire crews as they go through the house
and they're putting out the fire, do they kind of
do a quick analysis of the structure of the building.
It determined whether or not you can come in and
(40:42):
look at what's left. What point is that decision made?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, yeah, well you will have to have there will
be a senior person with the fire service that will
walk through and they'll check the structural integrity of the
scene itself. And a little aside here I've had I've
(41:07):
had a rafter collapse on my head that was still
on fire. It had coals burning on top of it.
I got the back of my neck burned, and as
kind of a joke, but I was greatly appreciative of it.
At that time. I used to wear a hard hat
when I would go out one of the fire stations
(41:28):
that I was friends with. Those guys, they didn't actually
invite me over to eat every now and then when
some duty they gave me a h they gave me
a fire helmet at one point, and as it turned out,
you know, now it's pretty common practice if you go
to a medical examiner's office, you'll fire you'll find those
kind of classic fire helmets that people think of, you know,
(41:51):
and they'll be the badge on the front will actually
say medical examiner, now wow, And you know the heavier
jackets that they wear, those sorts of things. That's kind
of common practice back in my day, early on in
my career that that didn't happen as much. So you
you're you know, in a case like this, your safety
is pre eminent because you you know, if anybody is
(42:13):
in there that is deceased, you're not going to bring
them back to life by virtue of your presence. However,
you can die because that's a very unstable, dangerous environment,
and you want to make sure that it's safe when
you go in there to begin to process the scene,
you know, before you're going to remove anything. And here's
another thing. When you have bodies that are kind of
semi rendered down as a result of fire, all of
(42:37):
the area that is approximating the body is going to
go into the bag as well into into the body
bag at the scene, and when that is X rayed,
you'll find nuts, screws, springs, You'll find all kinds of
(42:58):
stuff that's in there, and you kind of have to
make when you're looking at the x ray, you're kind
of having to make your way through it and try
to understand is this important, is that something or is
this within the body as opposed to outside of the body,
Because you know, with a case like this where you've
you've already got evidence. Can you imagine the shock of
that neighbor. He's rolling up, he sees smoke, and he
(43:21):
rolls up and here's a guy that's probably you know,
leaned over the you know, proverbial fence with and chatted
you know with before, and he's laying dead in the
front yard. You know, you're looking upon him and you're thinking, oh,
my Lord in heaven, you know what what's happening? You know,
(43:41):
at this moment in tom you never know what you're
going to find at a crime scene involving a fire.
You never know what you're going to find with the bodies.
Because you're talking about gunshot womens. You can find a
projectile in there, you know, I'm thinking about Keith's body
right now. You've got multiple gunshot wounds. So are there
(44:02):
multiple projectiles? Well with the wife, is the projectile still
in her body and where is it located? That would
be essential And I think some people would think, well,
what's the purpose of doing an X ray on a
body that's been stabbed? How do you know they've been stabbed,
particularly in a fire scene. Oh and by the bye,
(44:23):
if they are stabbed, guess what happens to blades? Many
times blades chip, blades break. I found the tips of
knife of knives broken off in spines. Before you know,
you see that perfect little opaque triangle that's resting there,
you know, in the in the spine, and you're going
(44:44):
to have to go in an autopsy and dissect out
that vertebral body and retrieve, retrieve that tip of that.
So there's a lot to be considered, and most importantly,
I think here one of the assessments that you're going
to do with the autopsy is were they alive? Were
they alive when the fire started? You know, how are
(45:07):
you going to tell that? Joe, Oh, It's it's actually
quite simple day tell the truth. That's actually one of
the most simple things that we do. First off, there's
two things. There's actually multiple, but I'll just I'll try
to keep it simple and brief. But first off, the
(45:28):
tissues within within the mouth, the fairynex, going down the
throat into the airway, you'll see them be highly irritated, obviously,
and then you're thinking about taking on soot because every
time you breathe in like that and you're in a
smoking environment, you're going to take in those particulate bits
(45:50):
and you'll find those again in the airway and certainly
down into the lungs. The other thing that we do
at autopsy is we run a test called a carboxy
globin level, and it's something that you see with carbon
monoxide poisoning. Well, carbon monoxide is a byproduct of a fire,
and when you do the autopsy, just even when you
(46:13):
draw the blood, guess what color the blood is if
there is if there's carbon monoxide. It's pink. Think about
the brightest artificially made candy that's out there. It's that
got that kind of weird pinkish, reddish hue to it,
and that gets into the organs as well. Well. The
(46:34):
only way that happens is if there's an uptake of
oxygen or an uptake of air, rather not an oxygen,
but air in this environment that's got carbon monoxide in it,
So you're taking that on board. So there's multiple ways
that we can tell if the individual was still in
the land of the living when they died. And you know,
(46:59):
the the interesting point here is this, and this is
what we will eventually hopefully find out. First off, how
much did these victims suffer? What was their absolute cause
of death? Was it a stab wound or was it
(47:20):
a stab wound where they were left in the space
slowly bleeding out all the while breathing in the smoke
that was coming up from the basement.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Joe, the way you've just phrased all that is so important.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed by the maternal
grandfather of Sophia Canaro. Follow me here, friends. Paul Canaro
has been charged in the killings and is awaiting trial
after six years, We're now looking at possibly next March
before this goes a trial. He is the sole defendant
(47:54):
in the wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of the
estate of Sophia Canaro by Vlassis Coreedes, her maternal grandfather.
The suit is seeking damages from Paul Canaro on behalf
of the girl's estate.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
How is that possible.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Keith, Jennifer and Jesse Canaro died instantly, but an autopsy
now shows Sophia survived for nine hours after the attack
before she died of smoke inhalation. And the lawyer that
files is filing the wrongful death lawsuit says that's why
they are filing it this way, because Sophia survived her parents,
she inherited their estates and died into state, passing the
(48:34):
estates to her grandparents, and Vlassis Coreedes has standing to
now bring this claim of wrongful death against Paul Canaro.
So now we know, while Keith, Jennifer, and Jesse Canaro
all died instantly, little Sophia lived for nine hours and
died of smokeingalation.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
There's so much more left here with this case to
be able to unpacked, to be able to understand, and
to be able to put together this mosaic that seems
very very complex, and you know, to kind of paraphrase
a quote from the defense attorney that is handling this
case for Paul brother Paul, this is a dump truck
(49:22):
load of forensic evidence and there are terabytes of it.
The question is what kind of tale will be told
in the New Jersey murder Mansion. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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