A jury will soon decide the fate of accused murderer Paul Caneiro. Jurors heard closing arguments from both the defense and the prosecutors on Wednesday.
Paul Caneiro is accused of killing his brother, Keith Caneiro and Keith's family back in 2018 and then trying to cover it up.
Defense attorney Monika Mastellone spent nearly five hours analyzing witness after witness, hoping to convince at least one juror that there's enough reasonable doubt in her arguments for a not guilty verdict.
“Him taking or borrowing money from the trust and even trying to hide that from Keith temporarily does not make him a vicious, monstrous murderer,” said Mastellone.
The defense referenced each witness in the trial, trying to claim that investigators didn't do their jobs thoroughly and simply got the wrong guy.
Mastellone said the evidence questioned the single murderer theory and once again asked why brother Corey Caneiro wasn't looked into further.
She told jurors that neighbors heard two men outside Paul Caneiro's home at 4:30 a.m., and how the fire timeline at the Tilton Drive home showed how he couldn't be setting the fire near the garage while at the same time trying to move his family to safety. She also questioned DNA evidence found in the frozen pile found at Paul Caneiro’s home.
“If DNA transfer is that sensitive, if those cautions you would take to prevent transfer of contamination, imagine what is happening here where everything is piled on top of itself, melted, congealed, wet,” she said.
Assistant Prosecutor Chris Decker closed by asking jurors what kind of man would turn off his own cameras before driving to Colts Neck and murdering four family members.
Decker said the neighbor's testimony about noticing the two people outside was simply her seeing the first arriving fire officials on scene, one with a flashlight, aiming it in the direction of a fire.
He told jurors how Paul Caneiro's story about his cameras kept changing.
“He tells the fire marshal the cameras weren't working. He then can't remember if he turned his cameras off and then he tells them the cameras make the home Wi-Fi run slow,” said Decker.
Decker told jurors to not find Paul Caneiro guilty on one piece of evidence, but use a combination of examples like shutting off his security video, leaving his home in the middle of the night and returning, the DNA found in the basement pile and the ballistics evidence.