A suburban dad. An extramarital affair. A double homicide tied to a fetish website. And a Brazilian au pair who was in the middle of it all.
In testimony that ended Wednesday, that au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, connected the dots of what prosecutors say was an elaborate plot by Brendan Banfield to kill his wife, Christine, 37, and Joseph Ryan, 38, in the Banfields’ Virginia home in 2023 — a scheme that included Ms. Magalhães, with whom he was having an affair. Ms. Banfield was stabbed to death, and Mr. Ryan was fatally shot.
“I just couldn’t keep it to myself, the feeling of shame and guilt and sadness,” Ms. Magalhães said on the stand.
In a case that inspired true crime podcasts and drew national attention in both the United States and Brazil, Ms. Magalhães pleaded guilty to manslaughter last year in exchange for testifying against Mr. Banfield, who is now on trial on charges of aggravated murder. Under the terms of that agreement, prosecutors have said they will recommend that she is sentenced to time served.
Prosecutors say Mr. Banfield created an account on a fetish website, posing as his wife, and lured Mr. Ryan to their home early one morning, leading the man to think he would be in a tryst with Ms. Banfield as part of a violent sexual role play scenario that she had proposed.
Once Mr. Ryan had entered the bedroom where his wife was, prosecutors say that Mr. Banfield, an I.R.S. agent at the time, shot him with his pistol and then stabbed his wife, staging the scene to appear as if he had come to his wife’s aid. Ms. Magalhães, now 25, also confessed to shooting Mr. Ryan later after seeing him move.
Lawyers for Mr. Banfield, who has pleaded not guilty, say Ms. Magalhães made a deal under pressure and is being used by prosecutors to convict Mr. Banfield in the absence of more concrete evidence.
The chain of events began around October 2022, roughly two months after Ms. Magalhães and Mr. Banfield had begun having an affair, she said.
He told Ms. Magalhães he wanted to “get rid of” his wife, she said, adding that she thought he was joking.
By January 2023, she said, Mr. Banfield had settled on his plan of using the fetish website. The two of them would take turns swiping Ms. Banfield’s devices to message other users while she was home to make it appear that she was behind them.
Those messages, she said, turned up several interested users, but Mr. Banfield rejected all of them when they insisted on meeting his wife before agreeing to a sexual encounter. That was until he came across Mr. Ryan.
“He seemed like the kind of person who would do the things Brendan needed the person to do,” Ms. Magalhães said. At one point, she added, she posed as Ms. Banfield on a voice call with Mr. Ryan.
She recounted that Mr. Ryan was asked to bring restraints and a knife, enter the home through an unlocked front door and go to the couple’s bedroom.
In the weeks leading up to the killings, Ms. Magalhães said, Mr. Banfield meticulously prepared, scouring his neighborhood in Herndon, Va., near Washington, for doorbell cameras, taking Ms. Magalhães to a shooting range and installing soundproofed windows in the family home.
On the day of the killings, Ms. Magalhães said, she watched from a car parked farther down the cul-de-sac, with Mr. and Ms. Banfield’s daughter watching a television show in the back seat, as Mr. Ryan arrived at the Banfield home. As instructed, Ms. Magalhães called Mr. Banfield, who was waiting a short drive away.
Once he returned to the home, she said, they left the daughter in the basement and found Mr. Ryan in the bedroom, pinning Ms. Banfield down. Mr. Banfield, with his pistol drawn, identified himself as a law enforcement officer, she said.
Ms. Banfield “yelled back at Brendan, saying, ‘Brendan, he has a knife!’” Ms. Magalhães said, adding that Mr. Ryan looked shocked.
“And that’s when Brendan shot Joe.”
In his opening statement and later during cross-examination, Mr. Banfield’s lawyer, John Carroll, took aim at Ms. Magalhães’s credibility and the circumstances surrounding her plea deal. He said prosecutors had been desperate to “flip” Ms. Magalhães against Mr. Banfield, repeatedly approaching her until she complied.
That agreement, Mr. Carroll argued, came as Ms. Magalhães was under significant duress, facing prolonged imprisonment, health issues and a looming trial. He presented several messages Ms. Magalhães had sent from jail, expressing frustration and distrust in her lawyer. He also repeatedly pressed Ms. Magalhães for details — including dates and locations of events leading up to the killings — that she couldn’t recall.
Mr. Carroll also said Ms. Magalhães had entered negotiations with a journalist who was interested in buying her story. Their tentative plan, according to messages shared in court, was to make a documentary for Netflix.
Ms. Magalhães, who remained largely impassive during questioning, maintained she had agreed to testify against Mr. Banfield because it was “the right thing to do.”
Chris Hippensteel is a reporter covering breaking news and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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