Husband Sentenced to Life in Au Pair Murder Case

A Life Sentence in Fairfax County

A Virginia man who killed his wife and a stranger he lured to the house to disguise the crime was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The woman who died was Christine Banfield, killed inside her own family home alongside Joseph Ryan, a man prosecutors say had no real connection to the family at all. Ryan was lured to the house through a fake online identity, drawn in through a fetish dating website, and walked into a setup he could not have understood. The man behind it was Christine’s husband, Brendan Banfield, 40, a former federal law-enforcement officer who, prosecutors said, built the entire scene to hide an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair.

How the Plot Came Apart

The killings happened on Feb. 24, 2023, at the family’s home in northern Virginia, according to CNN, NBC News and ABC News. Prosecutors described a deliberate plan: Banfield used the false persona to bring Ryan to the house so that Ryan could be cast as an intruder, with Christine’s death made to look like a consequence of the staged encounter. The au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, helped lure Ryan to the home. What prosecutors presented was not a crime of impulse but a constructed story, one that unraveled as investigators traced the online identity and the relationship behind it. A jury found Banfield guilty in February of two counts of aggravated murder, a firearm count and child endangerment.

The Au Pair’s Role

Magalhaes, with whom Banfield was having an affair, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and is serving a 10-year sentence for her part in luring Ryan to the home. She testified against Banfield, telling the court they posed as Christine online to draw Ryan to the house. Her account and the digital trail helped establish the framework prosecutors used at trial. The child-endangerment conviction reflected that a child was in the home connected to the events - a detail that kept the case from being only about the two adults who died.

What the Sentence Leaves

Banfield will serve life without parole, and Magalhaes will serve ten years. The fact that stays with the case is the shape of the plan itself: a husband who invented a stranger online, brought a real one to his door, and used two deaths to cover a relationship inside his own house.

References: Virginia man sentenced to life in prison for killing wife and stranger in elaborate murder plot | Brendan Banfield sentenced to life for double murder in au pair case | Brendan Banfield sentenced to life for elaborate double murder plot