FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man who had an affair with a Brazilian au pair will stand trial Monday in what prosecutors say was an elaborate double-murder scheme to frame another man in the stabbing of his wife.
Brendan Banfield is charged with aggravated murder in the February 2023 murders of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan at the Banfields’ home in Northern Virginia. He pleaded not guilty in the case.
Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhães, the family’s au pair, were with the woman and Ryan the morning the victims were killed in the master bedroom of Banfield’s home, court records say. The authorities said that day, Banfield and Magalhães told the officers that they saw Ryan, a stranger, stab the woman after entering the house. Then they each shot the intruder, Banfield and Magalhães said at the time.
Prosecutors painted a different picture, claiming that Brendan Banfield and Magalhães lured Ryan to the house and made it look like he and the au pair shot a predator in self-defense. Officials said Banfield and Magalhães had a romantic relationship that began the year before the murder.
Both the au pair and the man were arrested between 2023 and 2024 and initially charged with murder in the case. In 2024, Magalhães pleaded guilty to a reduced manslaughter charge after giving a statement to officers that confirmed parts of their theory.
In that statement, Magalhães said she and Brendan Banfield created an account in his wife’s name on a social media platform for people interested in sexual fetishes. There, Ryan connected to the account in the name of Christine Banfield, and the users made plans to meet on the morning of February 24, 2023, for a sexual encounter involving a knife, authorities said based on the statement from Magalhães.
Prosecutor Eric Clingan said last year that the au pair’s statement helped the state solidify its theory before the trial.
“With 12 different homicide detectives, there were 24 different theories,” Clingan said. “Now, one theory.”
Not all the officers investigating the case believed that Banfield and Magalhães caught Ryan.
Brendan Miller, a former digital forensics examiner with the Fairfax County Police Department, testified last year that he analyzed dozens of devices and concluded that Christine Banfield had connected to Ryan herself through the social networking platform.
An evidence analysis team at the University of Alabama peer-reviewed and affirmed Miller’s digital forensic findings, according to evidence submitted to the court.
Miller was transferred out of the department’s digital forensics unit in late 2024, although a former Fairfax County commander testified that the reassignment was not punitive or disciplinary.
John Carroll, Banfield’s lawyer, claimed that the transfer of Millers was directly linked to the case. He also said in court that Fairfax County police reassigned the lead detective on the case after that man pushed back on the top brass catfishing theory.
“It’s a theory in search of facts rather than a series of facts that support a theory,” Carroll said.
Banfield, whose daughter was home the morning of the murder, is also charged with child abuse and felony child cruelty in connection with the case. He will also face those charges at trial for aggravated murder.