A Brazilian au pair pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month and agreed to cooperating with authorities against her IRS agent lover in a complicated double murder plot to frame a man for the murder of the agent’s wife.
Juliana Peres Magalhães entered the guilty plea on October 29, ending the case against her that began with the deaths of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan on February 24, 2023, CBS News reported.
That was the day that Magalhães told investigators she left the Herndon, Virginia, home of Brendan and Christine Banfield, where she was a live-in au pair, at about 7:30 a.m. to take the couple’s 4-year-old daughter to the National Zoo, as CrimeOnline reported. She turned around and went back, she said, because she’d forgotten their lunches and saw a strange car in the driveway.
She said she tried to call Christine Banfield, but she didn’t answer, so she called Brendan Banfield, who was already on his way to work. He rushed to the house, and the two entered a second floor suite, where, they said, they found a stranger had attacked Christine, stabbing her multiple times. Brendon shot the stranger with his service weapon, but he was still alive, so he told Magalhães to go get another gun from a gun safe in the bathroom so they could shoot him again. She did, and she shot the man, later identified as Joseph Ryan, in the chest.
Detectives began investigating and discovered that Ryan, 39, had been contacted by Christine Banfield — or someone pretending to be her — through a sex fetish website. But friends and family said the communications they found in Banfield’s name didn’t match up with the Christine Banfield they knew, leading detectives to wonder if someone other than Banfield had set up the meeting between her and Ryan for that morning.
Detectives eventually arrested Magalhães in October 2023 on charges of second degree murder and use of a firearm in a felony. Prior to the arrest, they returned the scene and found photos of Brendan Banfield and the au pair in the bedroom Banfield once shared with his wife, as well as Magalhães’s lingerie. Magalhães denied at the time they were having an affair.
Magalhães remained behind bars, but eventually her relationship with Banfield began to sour, and in September of this year — after a long-awaiting blood spatter analysis showed that someone had smeared Christine Banfield’s blood on the body of Ryan — Brandon Banfield was arrested and charged with second degree murder, CBS said.
On Tuesday, two weeks before she was to go on trial, Magalhães agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Prosecutors say Magalhães and Banfield conspired to lure Ryan to the house expressly to frame him for Christine Banfield’s murder, and that in the days leading up to the incident, Magalhaes had expressed a desire to back out.
Her sentencing has been delayed until after Banfield’s trial.
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[Featured image: Julana Peres Magalhães and Brendon Banfield/Fairfax County Police Department]
