Brendan Banfield, a former IRS agent who plotted with his Brazilian au pair to kill his wife and a man lured to the family’s Northern Virginia home, was sentenced to life in prison Friday.
“The level of cruelty, calculation and inhumanity in this case reflects something far deeper than anger or impulse,” Chief Judge Penney Azcarate told Banfield. “It reflects evil.”
Banfield, 41, was found guilty earlier this year of murdering his wife and the man he tried to frame for her murder — convictions that followed a dramatic trial in which he and the au pair testified.
Prosecutors painted Banfield as a man so deeply in love with the au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, that he orchestrated an elaborate plot to kill his wife, Christine Banfield, 37, and a stranger, Joseph Ryan, 39, whom he lured to their home under the pretext of a rough sex fantasy. Brendan Banfield wanted to create a confrontation, according to prosecutors, that would allow him to pin his wife’s murder on Ryan so he and Magalhães could make a life together. But ultimately, Magalhães testified against him.
Magalhães had earlier pleaded guilty in the case and was sentenced by Azcarate to 10 years. During Banfield’s trial, she testified that he wouldn’t divorce his wife because he feared losing custody of the couple’s then-4-year-old daughter. Instead, Magalhães said, he devised a plan to “get rid of” Christine Banfield by “catfishing” a man online, then framing him for the murder.
After Ryan came to the house, Brendan Banfield shot him and stabbed Christine Banfield seven times in the neck with a kitchen knife, and Magalhães shot Ryan a second time, according to prosecutors. During the entire confrontation, the Banfields’ daughter was in the basement.
Relatives of both victims described them in court Friday.
“She had a way about her that made people feel comfortable and welcomed without effort,” Christine Banfield’s older sister, Danielle Hocker, said.
It didn’t surprise Hocker that her sister became a pediatric ICU nurse.
“She provided comfort to frightened parents,” Hocker said. “She made those moments more bearable with her big smile and infectious laugh.”
Hocker recalled how people often said she looked like her sister — and how that has now taken a heartbreaking turn.
“When I look into a mirror, I sometimes see her first, my face replaced by hers, and in a flash, she’s gone, and I’m left confused by my own reflection,” Hocker said.
Ryan’s mother, Deirdre Fisher, said she tries to live on the words he’d always tell her: “Be kind to yourself, mom. Take better care of yourself, mom. Love you, mom.”
Fisher closed her remarks as if she were addressing her son: “I won’t forget you, Joe. I hear you now.”
In his trial testimony, Banfield denied any plan to harm his wife and called the notion he concocted a catfishing plot “absolutely crazy.” He told jurors that his relationship with Magalhães was not serious, citing his previous extramarital affairs as proof that he would not kill his wife over a dalliance.
Banfield struck the same tone Friday, standing in a dark-green jail jumpsuit and speaking for 11 minutes before his sentence was imposed.
“I am greatly disappointed in the legal system,” he began. “I was found guilty of a crime that I did not commit. It is actually impossible to have committed the crime as the prosecution, the experts and their witnesses have presented.”
He claimed that his wife and Ryan arranged the meeting and that the confrontation was about him trying to save his wife. “Only Christine could have planned the meeting,” Banfield said.
He also praised his wife. “Christine was a wonderful and loving person,” he said. “She was a loving and compassionate nurse.”
He spoke of how his earlier affairs shouldn’t be confused for not caring for his wife.
“I loved her very much, despite what you may think of my affairs,” Banfield said in court. “Our marriage worked for us. It wasn’t something that I looked to end. It was told to other women that I was never going to leave Christine. That was always how it was said.”
During his trial, when Brendan Banfield was confronted with letters he had written to Magalhães planning how they would name their future children — Chloe for a girl, Robby for a boy — he said he fell in love with her only after the death of his wife. Evidence photos taken of Banfield’s bedroom after the killings showed that he had replaced photos of his wife with photos of Magalhães.
In her earlier sentencing of Magalhães, Azcarate spoke of her active participation in the plot.
“You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done,” the judge told her. “May it weigh heavily on your soul.”
Hocker and Fisher, the relatives of the victims, spoke of how Banfield’s plot — and his continued deception — was an insult to their memories.
“His testimony was the most self-serving display of narcissism I have ever witnessed,” Christine Banfield’s sister, Hocker, said. “He attempted to smear her through outright lies.”
″Joe was chosen because Brendan Banfield thought he would make a good dupe,” said Fisher, Ryan’s mom.
She spoke of her son’s kindness, how he taught jiujitsu to children with autism and cared for two grandparents. And he had an affection for the most neglected of animals. “He would walk into an animal shelter, and ask for the oldest, ugliest dogs,” Fisher said, forcing a smile and laugh through her tears, “and bring them home and love them for years.”
Just before imposing her penalty Friday, Azcarate reflected on her long career and others who had come before her for sentencing.
“In the vast majority of these cases, people made mistakes,” the judge said. “They were not inherently bad people, but they made terrible decisions and suffered the consequences. Sentencing in those cases is difficult. It weighs on me often long after the hearing is over.”
She made it clear she held no such burdens with Banfield’s case.
“The disregard of the life of your wife, someone you supposedly loved, is almost unfathomable,” Azcarate said. “Scheming for months a master plan involving so many moving parts, including deception and manipulation, luring a completely innocent man into your deadly trap, continuing on after the murders without a care, and not once thinking of the impact on Christine’s daughter.”
“You did not just take her mother from her,” the judge added. “You placed her in the middle of the horror you created. She is young now, but one day she will understand your true self, and she will understand what you took from her — which is everything.”
In handing down the life sentence with no chance of parole, Azcarate added eight years for two of Banfield’s other convictions — use of a firearm in commission of a felony and child endangerment.
“One would hope that someday you will become tortured by what you have done to Christine, Joe, Christine’s daughter and their families,” Azcarate said. “But nothing I have seen suggests that you will.”
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