Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags With Joseph Scott Morgan: The New Jersey Mansion Murders - Part 1

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Paul and Keith Caneiro are brothers and business partners. They live 10 minutes from one another in New Jersey and on November 20, 2018,  both of their homes were on fire.  About 5 a.m. the police received a report of a fire burning at 27 Tilton Drive in Ocean Township, Paul Caneiro's home.  Arriving on the scene police and fire fighters find Paul, his wife, and two adult daughters , all safe outside the home.  In the first hours of the investigation officials determine the fire at Paul Caneiro's home appears to have been intentionally set and gas cans are found on the premises. While the investigation is taking place at Paul Caneiro's home, a fire is reported at the home of Keith Caneiro.  While the fire at Paul Caneiro's home consisted of two fires near the perimeter of the home,  the fire at Keith Caneiro's home takes 20 fire companies hours to get under control.  Investigators quickly discover the fire at Keith Caneiro's mansion was staged to cover up the murder of Keith Caneiro, his wife, Jennifer, and their two young children, Jesse, 11 and Sophia, 8.  Keith's body is found in the front yard, dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and back.  The body of Jennifer Caneiro is found inside the house with a gunshot wound to the head and multiple stab wounds. The bodies of the children are found inside with multiple stab wounds.  Joseph Scott Morgan will explain the different scientific disciplines used in solving a murder or multiple murders when fire is used to destroy evidence.     Transcript Highlights 00:00.54 Introduction, 02:00.69 Joe's respect for firefighters 04:55.44 Fire and murders took place in November 2018 10:04.10 Fire started on purpose  15:16.22 DNA expert from New Zealand  21:01.75 A financial motivation to the murders 24:56.51 Paul accused of taking money from college accounts for Keith's children 30:13.51  Data presented in court will be very complex 35:10.18 Fire at Paul Caneiro home, two set in perimeter areas of home 39:59.24 Mansion is not close to neighbors 42:43.90 Keith shot multiple times, no gun found  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Vibes with Joseph Scott Moore. As many of you know, I've always had a fascination with the fire service. I think that maybe a lot of it has to do with a little boy in me. When I was a little boy, actually, my uncle, my dearly loved, bought me a Texaco Fire Chief fire helmet that actually had a radio inside of it. Now, this is in the 60s. This was really high-tech stuff. But just the pure bravery of what these people do. The old adage of while everyone else is running away

from a burning structure, they're running into it. But just for a moment, think about this. A fire at a home, a mansion as it's been referred to, was so big that it took almost 20 fire companies to come and

knock this thing down. And when they finally got it knocked down, they discovered the bodies of three individuals inside of that home and oh by the way outside of that mansion another decedent lying in the front yard with five gunshot wounds I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags is body bags. I've got a pretty good relationship with the fire, uh, the firefighters here in, uh, in where Kim and I live in Jacksonville, Alabama. And I have taken my grandson who is six years old, um, to the fire station when he comes and visits Papa and Gammy. And he thinks that he is in heaven.

And it brings me joy because I always felt the same way when I was a little boy. And, you know, they'll let him stand on the rails on the side of the thing and get inside the cab and look at all the hoses. They'll show him how everything works. That's a little boy's dream right there. Oh my gosh. But the only thing Dave is there's no Dalmatian. They all became fur coats. Yeah,

I guess so. Yeah. If you watch that, Oh God, that, that, that movie, I'm glad you brought that up. That movie really disturbed me.

Oh my gosh, who would do that? I'm such a dog lover. Um, but yeah, yeah. Always been fascinated by firefighters. I've had the privilege and the honor of teaching firefighters relative to death investigation because it's a unique skill set that you have to acquire along the way, being able to assess bodies that have been burned. And so anyway, I said unique skill set. And all I can think of is whenever I see one of these now.

Yeah. From what you've told me, it really is. I've always had a great feeling for those who serve others, whether it's police, fire, rescue, but knowing how involved they are in the process after the fact, there's so much information that you get from a fire and what happens to people. It just is really beyond. It's a whole lot more than just pouring water on the fire. Yeah, it is. And here's another little insight into fire service, folks. It's not just arson investigators that are out there. I have learned just as much from the most junior person

that's on a truck when I'm inside of a dwelling and working a case about points of origin or they're not really designating points of origin. They're saying they'll say, hey, look here, there's a lot of damage. And of course, for most of us, you know, when you're in that environment, if you can kind of suss out those particular areas where there is the most damage at a location, that gives you an idea that that's where the fire burned the hottest. And most of the time, by deduction, you believe that that's where it's been burning longest. Ergo, that's where the say a quadruple homicide. How many of these do we actually cover? Dave, this is something that's been lingering since 2018.

And just let me just let's take a step back and just think about this. First off, this podcast did not exist when these events went down. Secondly, the if I'm not mistaken, the current administration we have in Washington was not in power at the time. This is before the covid lockdowns. And I mean, just go on and on. So we're talking now, we're six years downrange from a quadruple homicide that still has not gone to trial. And of course, we're talking about the mansion murders, what has become the mansion murders in New Jersey, Dave. We're almost six years to the day that the events that we're going to talk about happened in November 20th of 2018. Six years ago, Donald Trump was in office.

You mentioned the administrations and how things have changed. But six years is a long time to go to trial. And the reason is it's a complicated case. And there are a lot of different personalities running in here, family members, what have you. We have Keith Canero, his wife, Jennifer, their children, Jesse, 11 at the time, and Sophia, 8 at the time. Those are the victims. It even gets a little worse when you look at Keith Canaro was actually shot in the head. Multiple times. His wife was shot and stabbed.

The two children were stabbed and. Full disclosure, I reached out to Joe and talking about this and I said, what does that all mean? I mean, does this mean there's a closeness when we've talked about killing, you know, strangling and stabbing and things like that? Those seem to be so much more personal than shooting somebody. But the case didn't end right there with the quadruple homicide, because on the same day, at the same time, roughly, another fire took place at another house, but it was Keith Canaro's older brother, Paul. Yeah. His wife and two daughters, daughters adult daughters were at home in bed when the fire breaks out at their house early in the morning and paul canaro in their eyes is a hero paul saved his family from the fire that was engulfing their home didn't take fire department

long to realize this is not the same as what took place at the other canara home part one part two there's a bunch of gas cans at this house yeah yeah there were dave and uh first off i got to tell all of our friends i've got the best producer in the business. You would not believe the detail that my buddy Dave Mack went into and kind of laying out the show. And it's incredible. And one of the things that, Dave, that you actually pointed out, which is very insightful in this case, is the fact that when you look, when you look at Paul's house, where the secondary fire was set, which by the way, is 10 miles away, um, from the mansion. Um, and it's no small house either. I mean, it's, it's, it's a house that most people would be proud to have. But you mentioned something very specifically about the fires because there were multiple fires.

And you zeroed in on the idea that these are kind of peripheral. These fires are. They're externalized. They're peripheral. It doesn't look like what you have at the mansion on any level. And I think that that and, you know, when when you begin to see. This kind of complex and buddy, is it complex, this relationship that these two brothers had with one another? It's going to I'll put it to you this way, as mildly as I can,

it will give investigators pause, you know, because they're going to be running down the list, running down the list of, you know, who in the world, you know, would want to do this. And early on, I think that at Paul's home, they determined pretty quickly that this is a fire that was started with purpose by an individual. This is not an act of God. This is not a malfunction with an electrical outlet. This is not somebody that had an oil heater that's adjacent to a bunch of old dirty, dry rags. That's not what this is. And so the police are looking for this thing very carefully. And they're going to look at all the principles because, Dave, the fire back at the mansion.

Remember, I was talking about how extensive this thing is and how vast it is. You're calling in all of these companies, fire companies, to put this thing out. They're going to, you know, they'll say, my Lord in heaven, how intense was this thing and how did it get so big that it would take all of this power to put this fire out. I'm glad you pointed that out, Joe, because the difference in the size of the homes actually explains the difference of the brothers in the dynamic we have. Oh, Paul Canero is the older brother. Keith Canero is the younger brother. They're close in age, though.

They're like a year and a half apart kind of thing like my brother and i in that regard and that brings about a very different scenario for both men keith is a very smart man intellectually guy this is a man's man first of all loves his family but he's very very smart the same cannot be said for the older brother, Paul, not saying he's a dullard or anything like that, but there was some jealousy that was right there because the brothers together owned a company called EcoStar Pest and EcoStar Pest Management. This was a company they owned together. It's the kind of job that you could put together based on studying, you know, insects and basic things around your house that you have to get rid of, that kind of thing. It doesn't require a mental giant to do this.

It does require some effort on the part of both men, and they put the time in. It's the second business that actually requires intelligence. It requires education it requires an ongoing learning experience to stay on top talking about an it business called venture it's an it venture that is called square one now square one was started by keith canaro i say started by Keith Canero. I say started by Keith Canero because it's very important to this. Together, they had EcoStar Pest Control Management. But Keith started Square One by himself and hired his brother.

So the older brother now is an employee of the younger brother. They are not partners and from the looks of everything that we're going to tell you about today that has everything to do with motive and i have to ask you this joe you've been around so many homicides and you know the legal aspects of what the prosecutors are looking for and what the defense is looking for. In your discussions with these guys, do they ever talk about motive with you? No, it's something, you know, and our friend Nancy Grace always says, you don't have to prove motive. But in order to many times understand the dynamics of everything that are going on you know at a scene that the motive will float around in the air all right the courts don't require you

to prove motive but when you're trying to put together a case and particularly one that is so very complex as this as a matter of of fact, on a little aside, I'd like to just say this. I was listening to a motion that was before the court, and one of Paul Canero's attorneys, one of his public defenders, was saying to the judge, judge, we, we have to have the prosecution tell us what their goal is that they're going to prove. We, we can't, we don't have the ability to sort through what she, uh, she referred to as a term I'd never heard before as a dump truck approach where they have got she she termed it as terabytes of data that are being dumped. And the the data is so vast because you're talking about, you know, obviously the scenes. We've got bodies. Right. We've got methods of homicide here.

We've got fires, multiple fires in multiple locations. And oh, by the way, we've got complex finance considerations. And just a little add on here that just occurred a few days ago with this case is the validity of whether or not certain types of DNA testing can be admissible. They've got a guy that's offering a pretrial testimony that's all the way in from New Zealand. And so it gives you an idea how complex this thing is. But yeah, I mean, you think about motive and, you know, motive is kind of this, this house, if you, if you think about it this way, um, that is created, you know, with, you know, the, the, what, how do you purpose this death and all of the little, you know, uh, um, peripheral items that come along the forensics and the financials and financials can be forensics, even electronic

data. They're kind of the murals that are painted on the wall of this house, you know, that you're walking through and you're looking at it. So, you know, the motive, though it does not have to be proved, is sometimes that singular bit of data or information that kind of frames everything out. The shocking part of all this, Joe, is when you have family members that do have a relationship and you start talking about DNA and where it's collected, isn't it expected that people you have a relationship with

that you would have, especially if you're dealing with children, where you pick children up and you hold them and things like that. Wouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that your DNA could end up on their clothing or on their toys or anything else? I mean, wouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that the DNA from the suspect here could be found on or around the victims because they're related. Yeah, it is. But, you know, people make so much of that and we have to go back to sourcing, right? I mean, yeah, there's an expectation. I don't know if you're holding, you know, your niece or your nephew and they sneeze on you, for instance. Okay. Well, you're going to have, you know, obviously mucus and saliva and everything that's mixed

with that. Okay. But it's intellectually dishonest, I think, for someone to say, well, DNA is DNA. Well, you have to go back to the sourcing. In this particular case, you're talking about commingling of Keith and his wife's DNA. Oh, and by the way, the source is blood. All right. So even if you're related, you know, and of course, Keith is related to his sister-in-law by marriage. You don't expect to find his sister-in-law's blood on an item of clothing commingled with your with his brother's blood.

Right. So you have to be very exacting about this, you know, because we're off in this land now relative to DNA where we're talking about touch DNA, these partial bits that are out there. And, yeah, you know, probably the richest source that you can obtain it from. It is dishonest, I think, intellectually to say that, oh, this is just a passive deposition of this. No, that's not the case. And I think, but defense attorneys do the defense attorney thing, and they're going to try to raise reasonable doubt in case of a misdemeanor. Dave, I know for a fact that you have been a business person your entire adult life. This is something that runs completely contrary to the course of my career that I have had. You know, if you're a government employee, which I essentially have been my entire life, you know, even starting, you know, in the army at 18 years old, you know that you're going to have a steady paycheck coming in.

But when you're a businessman, there's fast and there's famine. You're right. There's feast and famine, Joe. You're throwing the dice on your own paycheck. Yeah, there's feast and famine. And so you take the highs with the lows, right? And so there's not always going to be a guarantee that you're going to be kicking it in the Beverly Hillbillies mansion every day of your life. You know, you have hard times.

The old adage my granny used to use, we're going to have poking grits tonight. You poke your head under the table and grit your teeth. Sometimes you run short. But, you know, you have to prepare, you know, prepare for those times. And one of the things that I'm hearing over and over and over again with the mansion murder case or cases again, is that there is a financial motivation, you know, behind, let's just face it, the slaughter that has taken place at this time, Dave.

And that's why I was asking you earlier about motive, because I'm conditioned to as a as someone who follows along with crime related news and things. I need to know why something happened, not that the court needs it. I need it personally. I have to know what made this person decide this was the best course of action for them. And in this case, I actually at first looking at it, I went, this is way beyond. And it still is, by the way, way beyond what I would have thought, because we do have a jealousy scenario playing out. It happens with brothers a lot. These two men are in business and there is a separation of money. As I mentioned earlier, Joe, the brothers are partners in the pest control company. They are not equal partners in square one, the tech company. The tech company is beyond what Paul Canaro could actually be involved in at the inception but keith brought his brother along and paid him a quarter of a million dollars a year to be a part of this company now not too shabby by the way no not too shabby they do live in new

jersey so it's a little bit different than it is in you know know, where you and I live, but it's still not bad income. But he still has an income. He's sharing, he's profit sharing in the insect or the extermination business, obviously. So we're talking more money than simply what would come from the IT business, right? Yes. And there was something else going on in their dynamic that Keith, well, Keith didn't feel like Paul was pulling his own weight when it came to the IT company. He felt like Paul was spending too much money. And this is a divide because Keith came up with the company. Keith was the brains behind the company. He brought his brother in as a partner to help him out, but his brother was not pulling his fair share of the weight.

And his brother was spending money that Keith didn't think he was entitled to spend from the companies. So there was a real thing going. But when you look at it, it even goes a step further. Keith and his wife were putting, they were, I say younger brother, but he wasn't that much younger. I mean, their ages are a year and a half separated. Okay. But still, it means something. In this regard, Keith Canero and his wife, Jennifer, actually had accounts set up for their children's college education.

And Keith, Ivy League education. So he's putting the money away so his children can experience the same type of education he did. That is not small change. Holy smokes. It's not. And they had found out they being Keith and Jennifer, they found out that over the last several months, maybe years that Paul was actually siphoning money from his niece and nephew, his brother's children. He was siphoning money from their college accounts and putting it into his own college accounts for his children. He has two adult daughters, Paul does. It came to the tune of about $90,000, Joe. $90,000 that Paul is accused of taking from his brother's children. It's a lot of money. Let's focus on within the family dynamic response.

Any father that has been squirreling away nickels to fund the education of their child or children moving forward. necessarily, you know, toddlers, but they're at that critical point where if you don't have a fund set up by this time, you're really behind the curve, particularly when you're talking about an Ivy League education. Yeah. And just the fact that he is working at this in order to put money toward his children's education. Can you imagine when he finds out and his wife finds out the rage that would be involved in this and the anger, you know, that comes about because this is not, it's one thing if somebody comes after you, but, but you're not just siphoning money away from, you know, paying some, you from paying the registrar's office for tuition. You're actually ruining their opportunity in the future.

I mean, that's the way I would look at it as a dad. And I'd have a pretty robust response to anybody that had tried to go in and pick my pocket. I don't care if they're my brother, sister, or my granny. I don't care. There will be a robust response. And do you think, perhaps, Dave, that this is what had occurred? Absolutely. One hundred percent, because it was bad enough being talked about by Jennifer and Keith that Jennifer talked to her dad about it. It was beyond just we're not just discussing it as a couple now.

It's now gone to I'm telling my daddy kind of thing. You know, Jennifer was telling her father and her father and this is where you mentioned earlier we've got a six-year difference between when this happened and where we are now and i want to throw something out there that there is a civil suit that is being filed along with this hadn't even got to the criminal trial yet of Paul Canero. But there's a civil suit that has been filed by Jennifer's father. And it's about the money that was taken. And so Paul Canero has been accused of the murders of his brother and his brother's family. And he's accused of arson. He's now accused of stealing money from his own niece and nephew's college fund.

Paul Canero is not in good shape right now, Joe. And this is what was happening in the world. At that time of 2018, in November, on November 20th, Paul Canero was staring right down the highway. And there are a number of lights heading towards him. And he decided to stage two fires, one to take out to cover up the murder of his brother and his brother's wife and children, and the other to make it look like he also was a victim, like somebody was coming after both of the Canaro brothers and their families, Joe. Yeah.

And I've heard I've heard people allude to various things. There's there's been chatter, you know, in social media. Lord, there's never chatter. And so it's all true. Yeah. And it's all true oh yeah and it's all true um you you know of course one of the things that always raises his head it raises its head is the specter of organized crime you know that has been hinted at over a period of time other individuals within the circle that had felt slighted in business deals, all these sorts of

things, you know, and that swirl around this case, you know, goes to, you know, whatever defense is being offered up on behalf of the accused, where you can generate enough reasonable doubt to put that into the minds of potential jurors. And, you know, this case, which, by the way, again, has still yet to come to trial, which we believe now there will be a date set, and we will see this thing come to fruition unless it gets delayed again. You think about this, Dave, we're talking six years. How many people, you know, these two cases, these two fires happened only 10 miles apart. Do you think the people that are going to occupy the jury space up there have heard about these cases?

It's six years. You know, we talk about a lot of cases where, you know, the defense will say, well, the jury pool is going to be tainted because it's been inflamed by, you know, media coverage and all that. Dude, this is like media coverage. Now add on to this, this idea of time and how much more impactful that's going to be to the pool that will be brought in. And some of this, some of this data that they're going to be presenting in this trial, particularly the forensic data is going to be very, very complex. The financials are going to be very complex, or they will be made at least to appear very complex, which to me, I mean, if you sit me down in a lab and you start talking to me about toxicology

and DNA, though I'm not an expert in DNA, I understand it and I can communicate it. You start talking to me about financials and I first off, I'll go to sleep. And secondly, I don't I don't I don't understand it most of the time and understand the movement of monies, though, you know, in that way. So you're talking about bringing in a whole nother group of experts that are going to have to you know, there will be a pantheon of these people that will come across the stage in the courtroom. And that's very important to remember. You know, it's just like I mentioned earlier, there's actually a gentleman from New Zealand that's offering, you know, pretrial testimony right now in these motions relative to admissibility of this rather complex DNA. Well, how much more do they have that they're going to be talking about? Well, we're going to have ballistic information that's going to be coming out because, you

know, two of the victims in this case, one has shot multiple times, another has shot a single time, and oh, by the by, we've also got stab wounds that are involved in this case. And oh, by the way, we're going to have to have opinions rendered about the complexity of fire and how fires initiate and how they're maintained. And oh, by the way, were they alive or were they dead when the fires were started? You know, all of those dynamics are going to come into play here, Dave. And this is not, I don't think that this trial, just from an evidentiary standpoint, just from the forensic stuff, this is not something that is going to be over and done with really, really quickly. This is going to be something that will take quite a while to kind of make it through everything that happened that night in New Jersey. Hey, Dave, look, let's just back up a little bit.

Can you, in the way you do things, can you take us back to that night in November 20th, 2018? When, you know, this whole thing just kind of, it develops out of nowhere. Because, you know, you've got kind of a wonky timeline here uh it is and it's very uh it's very confusing i think for many folks well joe it it was very confusing to me and i was making notes on the timeline because what we have is November 20th is the day, 2018. And at 1230 in the afternoon, Keith Canero, his wife, Jennifer, son and daughter, Jesse and Sophia, they live in the mansion. That's why it's called the New Jersey Mansion Murders.

A next-door neighbor around 1230 sees smoke coming from the Canaro Mansion. At first, it was noticed earlier, but they thought maybe they had just lit a fire. We are talking about New Jersey in late November and thought it was that. But as the fire continued to get bigger, that's when they looked, Hey, there's more smoke than should be. And they call police.

That's at 1230 in the day, 10 minutes away or 10 miles away at five 30 that morning. Paul Canaro's home has a fire going on and police are called, police and fire are called to his house. The reason I'm telling it to you that way is because that's how it was reported. You had the mansion murder that they get, the coverage begins at 1130, 1230 that day, but actually everything started much earlier. And this was my question to you, Joseph Scott Morgan. We have Paul Canero, the older brother of Keith.

His house, Paul's house, is on fire at 530 in the morning. He gets his wife and kids out of the house, kids, his adult daughters. He gets his family out of the house. To them, he's a hero. I mean, he heroically got them out before sunup, saved their lives. The fire company came in, extinguished the blaze. There were two specific places of fire at this house, Joe. And one was near the garage on the outside perimeter. The other was in the opposite direction, but in the perimeter. Neither one of these fires was particularly large. Neither one of the fires caused a lot of damage. They did flame and smoke smoke but there wasn't a lot of damage done to the home and as i mentioned paul his wife and two adult daughters got out of the house as the firemen are walking around the

house and looking around they notice a bunch of gas cans at this home joe and that immediately makes them curious as they're investigating this fire at the home of paul canaro 10 miles away the mansion fire is reported six hours later and it's a much different fire joe whereas the fire at paul canero's home was put down and put out pretty quickly. Yeah. Wasn't even completely damaged. The fire 10 miles away at his brother's house, Keith Canero, this fire has engulfed the mansion, and it is so bad.

It's not something they can put out by one group. As a matter of fact, it took 20 different departments involved, 20 different fire plate that have had to be involved in putting out this fire, Joe. Granted, it is a mansion. It is a big home. But the fire was so intense and burned for so long. It took hours of these guys working and by the way they found keith canaro out in the front yard murdered he was dead from a gunshot wound multiple gunshot wounds to the head they don't know he's got one round in the back too right so he got four to the head and one to the back right or something along something along those lines. He's got multiple gunshots. And he's out in the front yard.

Keith Canero is. They don't know, they being the fire department, they don't know where his wife and two children are. Because, Joe, it's too messed up inside the house for them to go in and find out. The home was not safe for six or eight hours after they got the fire not just under control but got it knocked down they were afraid the roof line was going to fall the floors it was that bad of a fire they could not even get in to find out what happened yeah and this i was taking uh took a look at quite a quite a number of the photos from from the mansion and you know when

i you know most of us i think that when we think about new jersey um we think about um we think about uh an area that's very very congested and that you've got people living on top of one another. And I appeared on a podcast two years ago, I think with my friend, Julian Dory. If you get a chance, check out his podcast. And I talked about my career on there and he was actually, and Julian is still in, in Jersey, but his, he had picked me up from the airport, I think in Philly. And we went to his home in South Jersey. And he said that people refer to it as the Alabama

of New Jersey, that area where he lived. And, you know, me, I'd never really spent that much time flown in and out of airports, flown into Newark, flown into Trenton before. And my gosh, when he was taking me through the countryside, I was like, wow, this I understand why you say this. You know, there's like agricultural fields and it's it's beautiful. You know, it's not what I mean. They call it the Garden State for a reason. And wow. And I thought that was kind of like a marketing thing.

No, no, no. Iceland and Green greenland you know no no uh jersey's jersey's quite quite beautiful i mean it really is and you know he when i saw these images dave i don't know if people have had time to take a look to see what this looks like why any no one noticed really this this mansion as they're calling it and it is big i mean it's massive it's isolated i can you can see one house kind of off in the periphery the house itself the structure itself is so vast it literally has wings to it, you know, and they're kind of it's kind of horseshoe shaped in a way. So you've got multiple levels to this thing. Obviously, there's a basement and then there's multiple floors in this thing. And then it's out on its own big plot of land. And here's the thing that kind of struck me about this is that if this had been in a really congested area, you would think that with the report of multiple gunshots being fired outside that house.

Early in the morning. Someone would have heard it. But it didn't raise an alarm necessarily. You know, this time of year, I don't know. I think that you can deer hunt in, you know, in New Jersey. You can hunt for, you know, other game perhaps. Where in November, when this is going on, maybe it didn't draw the attention of anyone.

It's not like, you know, it's like a, you know, some kind of brownstone walk-up you know that you might see in you know closer to the city closer to New York you know like over in Hackensack or something like that where if you fire a gun you know multiple times like that somebody's going to take note of it but the fact that this man is found executed and I'll go ahead and use that term, he's apparently executed on his front lawn, would draw the attention. Here's another thing, too, Dave. Because, you know, I've had cases in the past where I've had an individual that has killed their family, set the house on fire, and then gone out onto the lawn and taken their own life. Okay? Oh. And that does happen. set the house on fire and then gone out onto the lawn and taken their own life. Okay.

Oh. And that does happen. And so I would imagine that firefighters, first off, if you happen to see a dead body at the scene and it's laying out in the yard, the first goal of a fire company is to get the fire put out. I'm not saying they're going to, you know, disrespect the dead, but they're, you know, somebody, a paramedic might roll up and check and see if this individual has a pulse. If they're dead, they're not going to start processing the scene while you've got this raging inferno that's going on. And that's very important to understand. But I can tell you this,

when they approached this gentleman's body, they knew from the beginning that this was, in fact, not a self-inflicted gunshot wound because there wasn't just one gunshot wound. There were multiple gunshot wounds in atypical regions and no weapon to be found. This is episode one. Please join us for episode two. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.