Overview
- Brendan Banfield, a former IRS agent, is on trial in Fairfax County for aggravated murder in the 2023 deaths of his wife, Christine, and Joseph Ryan, and he has pleaded not guilty with a potential life sentence.
- Juliana Peres Magalhães, the Brazilian au pair who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, testified that Banfield posed as his wife on a fetish site to lure Ryan and then staged the scene to look like a home invasion.
- Defense attorney John Carroll challenged her credibility with jailhouse letters, memory gaps and motive, and she acknowledged receiving jail funds from a media company and negotiating to sell her story.
- A Fairfax detective testified Thursday that months after the killings he found the au pair’s lingerie in the master closet and photos of Banfield with her replacing pictures of his wife.
- Prosecutors are calling detectives and other witnesses as the multiweek trial proceeds, and Banfield also faces child‑abuse charges tied to his then‑4‑year‑old daughter being in the home.