Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The New Jersey Mansion Murders - Part 2

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

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 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks, you'll so fear us and thought executing fires. That's actually from Act 3, Scene 2 of King Lear. This is Part 2 of the New Jersey Mansion Murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. In the first episode with the Mansion Murders, we kind of laid the groundwork, didn't we, Dave, for 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. 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. It's really hard to take the measure of it, isn't it, Dave? That it is. 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, we're going biblical on this. This is book of Genesis stuff, brother killing brother over, you know?

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 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, the tech business. That was the business that had a big future. Paul was not a profit sharing participant in that. He, well, he may have been,

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. Yeah, there was. However, I have to say a quarter mil per year is nothing to sneeze at.

No, it's not. And, you know, I don't know. I guess I'm very theatrical today. I'm thinking about it. There's 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, but look, success is success and it's earned most of the time through hard work. And it creates an underlying jealousy. And look, we've known this for ages, right? And you go back to Cain and Abel, you know, it's underlying jealousy. Um, and look, we've known this for ages, right? And you go back to Cain and Abel, you know, it's about jealousy. Uh, it's about envy, you know, those sorts of things, but my Lord, to, to come to the point where you've decided to,

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. This 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 if the shooting wasn't enough. And then go into the bedroom of these children

because they they they are children they're eight and eleven little kids and eleven they're 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 you know, maybe had gone on vacation with him. Can you imagine that? His face illuminated there, you know, in that moment, and he's wielding a knife and repeatedly stabbing them. I don't know. It's, 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 just absolute pure evil, Dave. 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 Canero is 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, what happened Joe from this crime scene? What do you see? Yeah, 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 there was a phone call preceding this. Maybe there was a knock at the door. It's early morning, 5 a.m. Yeah, and maybe it's known that this man is an early riser.

He gets up. He's having his cup of coffee. The rest of the family is inside the house. It would have to be someone that would be familiar with the environment, with this dwelling, certainly. And how do you draw them out of the 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, 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, um, and, uh, pumped

rounds into them and left their body. I mean, how many cases have we, have we covered that involve concealment of a homicide and not just the body, but actually the act, you know, um, 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 that has, that has drawn me into this idea. Did the individual run out of, uh, 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 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 withstand this vigorous utilization of it, where you're constantly just 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 the mansion murder is the fact that you've got husband, father laying dead in the front yard. I don't recall us ever covering a case like this, where it's almost like, you know, 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. 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 homes. 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 dave

and happening early in the morning and i 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 Canero is allegedly the guy that ended an entire family's life. Now, front yard, Keith Canero is shot once in the lower back and four times in the head. You got five bullets there. Assuming he 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, 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 1230 in the day. Okay. This began at 5 a.m. before sunup. But nobody knows about it until 1230 in the day when the next door neighbor calls the fire department.

So how did the murder? And let's just start with Keith Canero. How did his murder occur in the front yard, assuming that he was the first one killed? And that's probably not even a good assumption, is it? No. And it's hard to it's hard to. 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 pathologist to sit on the stand and 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? Let's just say, for instance, this dynamic where you actually have Keith turning his back on the perpetrator to walk away. This is just one scenario. And the perpetrator fires center mass into his back and knocks him down. Well, at autopsy, one of the things 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 perimortem 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 perimortem and post-mortem. So you've got this gunshot wound 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 melon on top of my shoulders, but heads are not something that are to score headshot on anybody from a firearms perspective is indeed a quite the feat. And particularly with a handgun.

OK, handguns are not noted for for great accuracy at distance. So you have to think about the relationship 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, which means do you have, you know, a round that enters, say, in the back of the head and exits out 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 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 graze wound 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 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, you've got these kind of little, they look like, for those that have never seen it, they'll kind of, if you take a hard-boiled 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 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 critical in a case like this because you're trying to tie back those projectiles to the same weapon. 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 somebody more than one time 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 if he's already shot in the back. What's the need for, and of of course with that idea in mind dave this goes to overkill and overkill always goes to passion doesn't it So Keith is lying on the front lawn, multiple 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 individual that would provide safety, that 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 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 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, Dave, doesn't mean that the people inside the house, just because the neighbors didn't hear this, Dave, doesn't mean that the people inside the house, and I'm talking about Keith's family, his wife and those precious children, you know, did they hear the report 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 is so vast, it's so large, that they're positioned in a place where they might not hear it? I think these are all salient questions 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 45 years old she's mother she's not going to let you know we're talking about the dad being there to stop you know protecting all that well hey when dad's not there it's mom yeah mama bear yeah she's gonna protect those babies and so she is shot once and then knifed not knowing because it hasn't gone to trial yet we don't have all of the information but we do know that jennifer canaro was shot and stabbed multiple times 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 gunshot wound, that can be cold. It doesn't have to be up close and personal but when you talk 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 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

yeah 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, they saw smoke earlier in the day and assume some, they were just, Hey, got a fire in the fireplace, have 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 Canero on the front yard debt. You mentioned in our 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 on to the house to see what else they've got in there

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 that when you say freeze the crime scene you're talking about yeah that's 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 um maybe they're in 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 where you have to knock this thing down.

So the fact that he is 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, they are aware of what they've got on their hands here. This house is a tinderbox, 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 U.S. It's not like springtime where you've got storms that are rolling through and super saturated ground and all this stuff. You've got dry leaves about, there's tinder everywhere. And not to mention everything is, if you've got this neighborhood that's adjacent to a wooded area if they don't get this thing knocked down this thing can spread and so they're

thinking about all the rest of the area you know to try to keep it contained as best they can and then they will return or the scene will be turned over to 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 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 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 a fire? Again, another explosion. Is there a propane tank adjacent to the house? Do they work on natural gas 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 happened in this case. It has happened. You're dragging hose and equipment

over a decedent in the front yard. You make note of it, but let me tell you something. 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 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 that scene? Isn't that 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. She's getting interviewed. So everybody that rolls out to that scene is going to be interviewed. We want to know 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've seen this thing before it got completely,

you know, 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 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 is very complex. All right. So this that actually explains. This is from the actual timeline put together by the prosecutor. Sometimes before 5 a.m., Paul Canero allegedly removed certain items of evidence. That's a direct quote. Certain items of evidence from his brother's place and set fire to the house. We don't know what these certain items of evidence are.

They will come out at trial. But police knew enough. Investigators determined he actually removed certain items of evidence. Then the fire was not discovered until 1238 p.m. that day when a neighbor's groundskeeper reported it to authorities. Direct quote again. Based 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 he's on the front yard the rest of the family's in the house the entry was made by firefighters that went inside to see they see

the smoldering they see what's going on and 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 1238. And what we believe caused the fire to catch on from there is likely the feeding of oxygen as the house was entered into. Yeah. Yeah. That's a beautiful explanation. 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 petroleum items, for instance. OK, 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, you know, those sorts of things. Then you can have electrical origins. And then you have to have a fuel source. Well, in this case, the fuel source would be, if anything had been drug into the house, like dry wood. Uh, you had, uh, you know, people will take piles of clothing and put them about every now and then, or it can just be furniture. It can be, uh, because you don't know what the structure of that basement was for all I know is a super duper man cave.

And you've got wood paneling everywhere. You've got wooden floors that's lacquered or whatever. And it's 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 when that door opens and oxygen blows into that room, you can have this kind of flashover 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. 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 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 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 well versed in forensics uh it's not just my doing it's just everything that you hear in true crime uh and i'm so glad that we 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 or deaths where fire has been introduced into an environment are some of the body in its pristine state at the scene.

Document those things that seem so convoluted because it is, fire scenes are so messy. You're dealing with, um, 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. Um, and all of this ash has fallen down on the bodies. If there's any remnant left of something that may be 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, Dave, you can actually set a body on fire or have fire adjacent to a body and the clothing burn 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 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. When we get these bodies into the morgue, where do you begin? Well, the first place that we begin is going to be with the x-rays that, that has, that's, that is key here because when you look at a body that has been consumed partially by fire, first off the external the external uh observations that you're making um are going to be like any nothing else that you see on crime scenes the bodies will be uh cracked

the surfaces will be burned to the point where the bodies are literally charred uh 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 bludgeoned with something. So it is very, very complex, my friend. All right. So we've got the three bodies in the house, Jenniferifer 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 we know that it took 20 different

fire you i don't know if that's fire departments or if that's just fire you know i think it's companies and each one of those is yeah fire companies yeah yeah that's what i but we've got 20 of those involved and they're not involved for just an hour we've got 20 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 is nicked or something along those lines, I would think that your evidence on the body is going to be pretty much burned, right? 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 to turn coals and all those sorts of things. Did you know, Dave, that once a body is burned, 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 almost harden to a certain extent. And you might not be able to appreciate the injuries externally. However, once 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, say you reflect the chest tissue, for lack of a better term, On the underside of the tissue, you 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. It'll track through the organs because the organs are still, depending upon how soon they get to the body, there will be areas of hemorrhage and the defect itself that you'll be able to track through all the way, 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. If you're very, very careful, you can in some circumstances. And here's the other thing.

Just because 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 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 aflame. You will, sometimes that flame will just flash over. And once the accelerant is burned off, then you're not going to have a lot more damage

done to the body, okay? Post-mortem, all right? Now, 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 wood, then 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. 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 6,000 square 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 911 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 find this out at trial, his description becomes more frantic as he's relating this to 911 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 a, there's blood. There's, there's a dead body. You know, 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 drug right over the body because you got to get to the fire. 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 and determine whether or not you can come in and look at what's left? What point

is that decision made? 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 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 that I was friends with those guys, they didn't actually invite me over to eat every now and then when I was on duty. 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 find those kind of classic fire helmets that people think of, you know, and there'll be the badge on the front of them will actually say medical examiner now. Oh, 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 didn't happen as much. So you,

you're, you know, in a case like this, your safety is preeminent because you, you know, if anybody is 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 it'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 knowating the body is going to go into the bag as well into into the uh body bag at the scene um and when that is x-rayed uh you'll find nuts screws springs you'll find all kinds of stuff that's in there and you kind of have to make when you're looking at the 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, is this 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 already got evidence, can you imagine the shock of that neighbor? He's rolling up, he sees smoke, and he rolls up, and here's a guy that he's probably, you know, leaned over the proverbial fence with and chatted 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, at this moment in time, um, you, 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 wounds. 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 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 by, if they are stabbed, guess what happens to blades many times?

Blades chip, blades break. I found the tips of knives broken off in spines before. You see that perfect little opaque triangle that's resting there, you know, in the spine. And you're going to have to go in an autopsy and dissect out that vertebral body and 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 autopsy is, were they alive? Were they alive when the fire started? You know, how are you going to tell that, Joe? Oh, it's it's actually quite simple.

They tell the truth. It'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 tissues within the mouth, the pharynx, 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 smoky environment, you're going to take in those particulate bits, 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 carboxyhemoglobin 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 draw the blood, guess what color the blood is if there's carbon monoxide? It's pink. Think about the brightest artificially made candy that's out there. It's got that kind of weird pinkish, reddish hue to it. And that gets into the organs as well. Well, the only way that happens is if there's an uptake of oxygen or an uptake of air, rather, not 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, the interesting point here is 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 a stab wound where they were left in this space, slowly bleeding out all the while breathing in the smoke that was coming up from the basement? 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 to trial he is the sole defendant in the wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of the estate of Sophia Canero by Blasis Carides, her maternal grandfather.

The suit is seeking damages from Paul Canero on behalf of the girl's estate. How is that possible? Keith, Jennifer, and Jesse Canero 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 the wrong is filing the wrongful death lawsuit says that's why they're filing it this way, because Sophia survived her parents. She inherited their estates and died interstate, passing the estates to her grandparents. And Vlasic Carides has standing to now bring this claim of wrongful death against Paul Canero. So now we know while Keith, Jennifer, and Jesse Canero all

died instantly, little Sophia lived for nine hours and died of smoke inhalation. There's so much more left here with this case to be able to unpack, 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 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 Body Bags.