2 days Ago
A Virginia man was arrested Monday and charged with four counts of murder in the death of his wife and another man in a baffling case involving the couple’s au pair , with whom he was having an affair, in February 2023. Brendan Banfield, a 39-year-old criminal special agent, was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of aggravated murder and a firearm charge, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s attorney announced at a news conference on Monday alongside the Fairfax County Police chief. His arrest came 19 months after the killings of his wife, Christine Banfield, a 37-year-old pediatric nurse, and Joseph Ryan, 39, in their house in Herndon, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.
C. On Feb. 24, 2023, just after 8 a.
m., police responding to a 911 call found Christine Banfield nude in her upstairs bedroom with fatal stab wounds. Ryan’s body was just feet away.
He was fully clothed and had been shot to death, allegedly by different guns, authorities said. The Banfields’ live-in au pair, 23-year-old Juliana Peres Magalhaes, was indicted in April on charges of second-degree murder in Ryan’s killing, and her trial is currently scheduled for November. Her attorney has previously said she acted in self-defense, and authorities said that Brendan Banfield told her to shoot the stranger who was attacking Christine Banfield after Brendan Banfield shot the man himself.
HuffPost reached out to Peres Magalhaes’ and Brendan Banfield’s defense attorneys but did not get an immediate response. Brendan Banfield’s arrest, while he was driving Monday in Fairfax County, was a dramatic — although not entirely unexpected — development in a case that had perplexed investigators and confounded the public, who have been privy to scant details, each more bizarre than the next. From the beginning, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis told NBC4 Washington in April he expected there would be “a lot of twists and turns” in the case, that they were “still ongoing,” and that he believed eventually “more than just one person” — meaning Peres Magalhaes — would be held accountable.
Ryan was invited to the Banfields’ home through a sexual fetish website, authorities said, where he exchanged messages arranging the date with an account purporting to be Christine Banfield’s. But prosecutors said in a court hearing that the account was created by someone else as a ruse in a premeditated scenario to kill her and Ryan. Ryan Banfield and Peres Magalhaes were having an affair before the killings, authorities said, and remained a couple afterward.
Following the killings, prosecutors said they found framed photographs of them together in the Banfields’ bedroom, as well as evidence that the pair had visited a gun range shortly before the killings and purchased a Glock, the same gun Peres Magalhaes allegedly used to fire the shot that killed Ryan. In one 911 call Peres Magalhaes placed the morning of the killings — she allegedly also called twice 13 minutes beforehand and hung up both times — Banfield told the dispatcher that he had shot Ryan after seeing him stab his wife multiple times, The Washington Post reported . Authorities said Banfield used his IRS service weapon to shoot Ryan.
Afterward, investigators said Banfield told them that he instructed Peres Magalhaes to retrieve the Glock and shoot Ryan again. It is unclear whether Banfield is still employed by the IRS. The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s query about his employment status.
The Banfields’ daughter, then 4, was at home at the time of the killings, but authorities said she was physically unharmed. Despite authorities’ suggestions that Banfield had worked with the au pair to plan the killings, he remained free for more than a year after her arrest. Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said at Monday’s news conference that “new information” obtained by detectives was “very instrumental” in Banfield’s new indictment, but he refused to elaborate.
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Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages. “That information will come out on trial,” he said. Both Banfield and Peres Magalhaes are being held at the Adult Detention Facility in Fairfax County, Descano said.
She has been held there since her arrest last October. Davis said they had no “legitimate reason” to seek to hold Banfield elsewhere, and Descano noted there is only one detention facility in the county and it was “just typical protocol” to house him there. Aggravated murder — when more than one person is killed on the same occasion, or when more than one murder occurs in less than three years — carries a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Virginia.
The firearm charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of three years, Descano said. Banfield will be arraigned within the next few days in Fairfax County General District Court, Descano said, with a court date set for Thursday. Consider supporting HuffPost starting at $2 to help us provide free, quality journalism that puts people first.
Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read. Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
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