The husband, the au pair – and the stranger they allegedly used in plot to kill wife

Juliana Peres Magalhães, the Banfield’s au pair, is testifying about the February 2023 killings of Christine Banfield, 37, and Joseph Ryan, 39.Credit:

Magalhães told jurors that she and Banfield had plotted to kill his wife and the man they’d lured from a fetish website to frame as a violent intruder. She testified for two hours about the February 2023 killings of Christine Banfield, 37, and Joseph Ryan, 39. She will resume answering questions on Wednesday morning (Thursday AEDT).

Both Magalhães and Banfield were arrested and initially charged with murder but Magalhães pleaded guilty in 2024 to involuntary manslaughter and agreed to co-operate. Brendan Banfield is charged with aggravated murder. His trial began this week.

The au pair described arriving in the United States from Brazil as a 21-year-old, offered $US200 ($300) a week and a room in the Banfields’ home to care for their toddler, then how her relationship with Brendan Banfield turned sexual. Prosecutors showed jurors photos she posted to her Instagram with the married man’s face covered by an emoji: a selfie of them in the bath, a video of them singing in the car to the 2002 hit song “A Thousand Miles,” a photo of his hand on her upper thigh.

Brendan Banfield was charged with the premeditated killings of his wife and another man.Credit:

She joined him on work trips, she said, and they brought the Banfields’ young daughter on a vacation with them to New York. It was on that trip, in October 2022, that Brendan Banfield first mentioned his plan to “get rid of” his wife, Magalhães said.

At first, she thought he was joking, she said. But then he took her to the shooting range and told her that he wasn’t going to hire a hit man because that would be too easy for investigators to discover. He replaced the family’s windows with soundproof glass. She posted a photo of herself at the shooting range the same month as the New York trip, captioned in Portuguese that translates to “The handsome guy takes really good pictures HAHAHA”.

Christine Banfield in a photo from her social media account. Credit:

She said she watched as Brendan Banfield used his wife’s laptop to create a new email address in her name and open an account on FetLife, a BDSM and sexual kink community site. The couple impersonated Christine Banfield on the website, Magalhães said, waiting until Christine got home from her nursing shifts to take her laptop from her backpack and exchange messages with people.Brendan Banfield made sure they used the website only when Christine Banfield was also at home, Magalhães said, anticipating that investigators might later track her movements through her phone.

They eventually met Ryan, who went by the username tacosupreme7000, and lured him to the family’s home under the pretense of a rape fantasy scenario. Prosecutors said Ryan agreed to a set of rules: Don’t meet before the fantasy, bring a knife and zip ties, and – most importantly – don’t stop, no matter how scared Christine Banfield seems.

Brendan Banfield cried in court Tuesday while listening to the 911 call Magalhães made from the Banfields’ home that February.

In the first emergency call from the Northern Virginia home, the only sound is a guttural moan, then silence. About 15 minutes later, another 911 call comes from the home, and this time the Banfield family’s Brazilian au pair can be heard begging for help, breathing hard and too flustered to give an address. Then Brendan Banfield’s voice cuts in.

“There’s somebody here,” Brendan Banfield can be heard saying on the call. “I shot him. He stabbed her. She’s bleeding out. There’s several marks on her neck. What do I do?”

Joseph Ryan was killed at the Banfield home in February 2023. Credit:

This is where the cover-up began, United States prosecutors argued on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) at the outset of Banfield’s murder trial.

Banfield would later tell investigators that Magalhães had called him to tell him she’d seen a strange man entering the house, and he rushed back to the home to find Ryan with a knife to his wife’s throat, so he shot him.

But Fairfax County prosecutor Jenna Sands urged jurors Tuesday not to believe that version of events.

In opening statements, Sands argued that Banfield and Magalhães, the then-22-year-old au pair, were deeply in love, but Banfield worried that if he left his wife he would lose custody of their young daughter.

Instead, Sands said, the couple impersonated Christine Banfield on a fetish website, where they met Ryan and lured him to the family’s Herndon-area home under the pretense of a rape fantasy scenario.

Sands said Magalhães messed up the plot by making the 911 call too early, and only called back later after both she and Banfield had shot Ryan and Banfield had stabbed his wife repeatedly in the neck.

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Defence attorney John Carroll told jurors on Tuesday to be sceptical of Magalhães’s version of events, saying she had maintained her innocence for a year but eventually changed her story to match prosecutors’ theory in exchange for a sweetheart deal.

Carroll pointed to correspondence from Magalhães to Banfield while she was in jail, saying she wrote to him “They want you” and “They want me to say things that aren’t true”.

“The whole reason she was arrested was to flip her against my client,” Carroll said during his opening remarks. “There’s a vulnerable person who is open to prey for what they need. And I would respectfully suggest that Juliana Peres Magalhães is the linchpin in all of this.”

Banfield also faces child abuse and child endangerment charges related to his daughter, who was four years old and in the basement of the Northern Virginia home when the killings occurred. He has pleaded not guilty on all counts. The trial is expected to last four weeks.

The Washington Post

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