It’s a case that has drawn international attention for months: A woman was found fatally stabbed in an upscale neighborhood outside Washington, D.C. Her husband, who prosecutors say was having an affair with their Brazilian au pair, was a federal law enforcement officer. A second victim, who authorities said had been lured to the couple’s home through a sexual fetish site, was found shot to death next to the murdered wife.
Since the killings took place in February 2023, the case has riveted the public, spawning true crime podcast episodes and obsessive online chatter from the high rises of São Paulo to the Washington suburbs.
It took months for the first charges to come down, but in October 2023, the authorities charged the au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, 24, with second-degree murder in the shooting death of the man found in the home, Joseph Ryan, 38.
And this week, the husband, Brendan Banfield of Herndon, Va., was charged with aggravated murder in the deaths of his wife, Christine Banfield, 37, and Mr. Ryan. He was also charged with use of a firearm in Mr. Ryan’s death.
Prosecutors in Fairfax County, Va., have accused Mr. Banfield of plotting to kill the two in his home in Herndon, Va., about 20 miles outside the capital.
Mr. Banfield, formerly an agent for the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, was arraigned on Tuesday; his trial date will be set later this week. If convicted, he could face a life sentence without parole. His lawyer declined to comment.
A lawyer for Ms. Magalhães, whose trial begins in November, also declined to comment. If convicted, she faces more than 40 years in prison.
Here’s what we know about the case.
The police found an ‘appalling’ murder scene.
On the morning of Feb. 24, 2023, police officers responded to 911 calls placed by the au pair, Ms. Magalhães, and found a scene they would later describe as “appalling.”
In a large home on a cul-de-sac, they found Mr. Banfield’s wife, a pediatric nurse, who had been stabbed in the upper body and would soon die of her injuries, and Mr. Ryan, who had been shot dead. Mr. Banfield, Ms. Magalhães, the au pair, and Mr. Banfield’s 4-year-old daughter were also at the scene, unharmed.
Mr. Banfield and Ms. Magalhães told the police Mr. Ryan was attacking Ms. Banfield that day and they were trying to defend her. But the police found no sign of forced entry, and prosecutors said the man who was shot had been invited to the home for a sexual tryst.
Police recovered a knife and two guns.
The family’s au pair fired a weapon, too.
Ms. Magalhães started her job as a live-in child care worker for the Banfields in 2021.
On the morning of the killings, Ms. Magalhães said she set out with the couple’s daughter sometime after 7 a.m. for the zoo, but returned after forgetting their lunch, according to her lawyers, who gave her account of events at a hearing in April.
She saw an unfamiliar car outside the home and called Ms. Banfield, who did not pick up. She then called Mr. Banfield, and once he arrived, they went inside together, the lawyers said.
Ms. Magalhães took the child to the basement, but heard a commotion and went upstairs, the lawyers said, where Mr. Banfield was shouting, “Drop the knife!”
Mr. Banfield told a 911 operator that a man was stabbing his wife, and that he fired his service weapon at the man to stop him. Ms. Magalhães later told a detective that Mr. Banfield told her to get a second gun from a bathroom, giving her the code to a safe.
She retrieved it and fired, the lawyers said, arguing that she was acting in self-defense to protect the family. They later emphasized that she was acting on orders from her employer.
Mr. Ryan, of Springfield, Va., was pronounced dead at the scene. A medical examiner testified that he was struck twice, in the head and chest, and that it was the shot to the chest — the au pair’s bullet — that was the fatal blow.
Who was the man shot in the Banfield home?
Prosecutors say Mr. Ryan exchanged messages with a profile featuring a photograph of Ms. Banfield on the website FetLife, which describes itself as a community for people interested in kinky sexual practices.
It was not clear who had created the profile.
Mr. Ryan had arranged to come to the Banfield home after discussing plans for “rough sex,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Ryan was open about his activity on FetLife, his friend told The Washington Post. .
People who knew Ms. Banfield said messages discussing a rendezvous did not sound like her, and a prosecutor, Eric Clingan, said in April that there was no evidence that she had been “into knife play, binding” or other similar sexual practices.
But Ms. Magalhães’s lawyers have emphasized that it was Ms. Banfield, the murdered wife, who purchased tickets for her daughter and au pair to go to the zoo that day, suggesting she wanted to have the house to herself.
Allegations of an affair between Mr. Banfield and the family’s au pair.
While prosecutors have not said that Ms. Magalhães and Mr. Banfield concocted a plot to frame Mr. Ryan, they have offered a possible motive: The two had been having a monthslong affair.
In October 2023, when police returned to the Banfield home with a warrant to arrest Ms. Magalhães, they found that she had moved into the master bedroom with her employer, the same room where Ms. Banfield was stabbed eight months earlier.
Ms. Magalhães’s clothes were hanging in the closet and her lingerie was strewed around the bed, according to photos introduced at a hearing. A framed picture of the two had been propped on the bedside table.
Her lawyers have said that she was Mr. Banfield’s “girlfriend” but claim that neither of the Banfields were sexually exclusive.
In April, prosecutors revealed that the pair practiced shooting at a gun range two months before the murders, and that Mr. Banfield later returned to the range and purchased a pistol — the Glock with which Ms. Magalhães shot Mr. Ryan.
The two replaced their cellphones shortly before the killings, prosecutors said, and on the morning of the killings, when Ms. Magalhães said she called Mr. Banfield to alert him of a stranger in his home, Mr. Banfield was not at work but waiting outside a nearby McDonald’s.
Prosecutors have also pointed to a long gap between two 911 calls placed from Ms. Magalhães’s cellphone, and they said that on one 911 call, Ms. Magalhães told an operator a friend had been hurt before Banfield got on the line and said he had shot his wife’s attacker.
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