Brendan Banfield, a Herndon, Va., man convicted of murdering his wife and another man in an elaborate scheme involving a fetish website and an au pair, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without parole.
Mr. Banfield, a former agent for the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, was found guilty on Feb. 2 of two counts of aggravated murder, one of using a firearm in commission of a felony and one of child endangerment.
In Virginia, where the killings occurred in 2023, the only punishment for aggravated murder is life in prison. Judge Penney Azcarate of the Circuit Court in Fairfax County said that life in prison was “a harsh sentence, but in this case, it is a justified one.”
Mr. Banfield’s former lover, Juliana Peres Magalhães, an au pair from Brazil, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2024 for her role in the killings, and this February, the same judge sentenced her to 10 years in prison, the maximum for manslaughter in the state, going well beyond the sentencing recommendations made by both prosecutors and the defense lawyers.
Before Friday’s sentence was read, Mr. Banfield addressed the court to claim his innocence, pointing to evidence and expert testimony that he argued had been unfairly disregarded. “I was found guilty of a crime that I did not commit,” he said, adding that he loved his wife.
The trial over the murders of Christine Banfield, who was stabbed, and Joseph Ryan, who was shot to death, captured international attention.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Banfield had plotted to lure Mr. Ryan to the family’s home by posing, with Ms. Magalhães’s assistance, as Ms. Banfield on a fetish website. Mr. Ryan, 38, was led to think he was being invited to enact a violent sexual role-play scenario that Ms. Banfield, 37, had proposed.
Prosecutors accused Mr. Banfield, 41, and Ms. Magalhães, now 26, of arranging for Mr. Ryan to visit the home while Ms. Banfield was alone.
After Mr. Ryan entered the bedroom where Ms. Banfield was, prosecutors said, Mr. Banfield followed him, shot him with a pistol and then stabbed Ms. Banfield, staging the scene to appear as though he had come to his wife’s aid.
Ms. Magalhães testified against Mr. Banfield in January. In her guilty plea, she said that she had shot Mr. Ryan, but that Mr. Banfield had masterminded the plan.
In his own testimony in late January, Mr. Banfield said that those claims were “absolutely crazy.” His lawyers said that Ms. Magalhães had made a deal under pressure and had been used by prosecutors to convict Mr. Banfield in the absence of more concrete evidence.
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
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