The married New Jersey tech boss accused of slaughtering his brother, sister-in-law and their two kids over money bankrolled a lavish globe-trotting lifestyle for his secret gal pal, she admitted in court Tuesday.
Paul Caneiro, a financially struggling 59-year-old dad, was dropping big bucks to tool himself around in three Porsches — while jetting off on posh vacations with 51-year-old Colombian buddy Yisel Restrepo, she told a jury in Monmouth County Superior Court in Freehold.
Caneiro is facing murder charges for allegedly repeatedly shooting his business-partner younger brother Keith, 50, in the head, shooting and stabbing Keith’s wife Jennifer, 45, and repeatedly stabbing their children, 11-year-old nephew Jesse and 8-year-old niece Sophia, in the family’s Colts Neck mansion in 2018.
The jurors were barred from hearing that Caneiro and Restrepo were sleeping together. But Restrepo was able to testify that she and Caneiro met at a restaurant in Asbury Park and became best friends as she laid out the extent of his financial support of her.
Restrepo, testifying through a Spanish translator, said Caneiro paid for the pair to travel to her home country two times and also for their jaunts to Las Vegas, North Carolina, Boston and New York. The duo both lived in Ocean Township.
Caneiro also shelled out the money for her new luxury Audi Q5 SUV, she said.
“You don’t have any bad things to say about Paul, right?” asked Caneiro’s lawyer, Monika Mastellone.
Restrepo answered, “No.”
She said the last time she saw Caneiro was when they went to dinner together two or three days before the murders to celebrate her daughter’s birthday.
Prosecutors have told the jury that Caneiro murdered his brother after Keith confronted him about stealing $78,000. The two businesses the brothers shared — a tech firm and an extermination company — were struggling, and Paul was living above his means, prosecutors said.
Caneiro’s cash flow to Restrepo was just another financial suck on his over-leveraged life, the prosecution said.
The suspect and a third brother, Corey, stood to split Keith’s $3 million life-insurance money if Keith’s whole family died.
Caneiro, rather then admitting to a livid Keith that he took the money from Keith’s trust meant to fund his life-insurance policy, massacred his sibling and his family just a few hours after Keith confronted him about the missing funds, prosecutors said.
The suspect went to Keith’s custom-built manse Nov. 20, 2018, cut the power, turned off the generator and ambushed his brother when he went to check on the power. He shot Keith in the head multiple times, prosecutors claimed.
Then Paul went inside the posh home and slaughtered the rest of his brother’s family.
To cover up the slayings, Paul set a slow-burning fire at the mansion and returned to his own Ocean home. There, he started a blaze to make it look like he was also being targeted, prosecutors claimed.
Earlier Tuesday, the jury heard from Keith’s neighbor about discovering Keith’s body outside the burning home that day.
Boris Volshteyn, a plastic surgeon, said the local landscaper called him about smoke in Keith’s yard, so Volshteyn went to check out what was going on.
“Oh my God. There is blood here,” Volshteyn could be heard saying on a 911 call played for the jury. “It’s a corpse. Somebody is dead here.”
Paul pleaded not guilty and has been behind bars since his arrest.
