John Jefferson
Inset left to right: Brendan Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhaes (Fairfax County Police Department). Background: The house where Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were killed (WTTG).
Lurid new details have been revealed in the double murder conspiracy case against a widower and his family’s au pair in northern Virginia.
Jailhouse communications suggest the accused man’s mother was helping to pass information along to her son’s alleged partner in crime, the Fairfax County Police Department alleges.
Juliana Peres Magalhaes, 24, the onetime live-in nanny, was arrested and charged in October 2023 — several months after the hotly-disputed slaughter that took two lives at the two-story house on Stable Brook Way in Herndon, a medium-sized town and part of the broader Washington, D.C., metro area.
Brendan Banfield, 39, was indicted in late September for his alleged role in the February 2023 double murder.
In those 11 intervening months, Magalhaes communicated with Brendan and his mother, Teresa Banfield, almost every day, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by D.C.-based NBC affiliate WRC. Those alleged communications came by way of phone calls as well as texts and emails from a tablet provided to inmates.
In one such phone call, Teresa Banfield told Magalhaes she and one of her defense attorneys had discussed an arrangement for getting unspecified items or information into the jail, according to the affidavit. Purporting to read aloud from a text message sent by the lawyer in question, Teresa Banfield allegedly said: “Hi Tess. I will be going to visit Juliana this morning. Expected to be there around 9. If I, you know, if I have anything I’d give it to her.”
That attorney, in comments to WRC, reportedly denied helping Magalhaes pass messages to either Banfield.
The precise nature of the alleged information, however, is not entirely clear at present. In the same phone call, the elder Banfield reportedly relayed to Magalhaes she was upset with the defense team because certain “things” were not making their way into the lockup facility.
“It’s the only way we can communicate with her about what’s happening,” Teresa Banfield allegedly told Magalhaes — again referencing a conversation with defense counsel, but apparently reading or recollecting what she had said, according to the affidavit.
Notably, detectives also allege that both mother and son separately spoke to Magalhaes on recorded phone calls, telling her not to talk about the case because the calls were being recorded.
The case itself, long a mystery, and perhaps yet to be fully unraveled, is fundamentally about a man killing his wife for a younger woman, police say. But the circumstances of the alleged cover-up both precede and follow the actual killing, according to investigators.
On the day in question, Christine Ann Banfield, 37, was killed in her own home along with Joseph Nathan Ryan, 39, who might have been considered just a random man — but for his online communications with an alleged catfish.
Law enforcement now believe Ryan was snookered — by way of a fake profile on a sexual fetish website — into showing up at the Banfield residence and acting out a part. Whoever ran that profile was posing as Christine Banfield, police allege. Intended to play the role of patsy, Ryan was eventually found in the bedroom with Christine Banfield.
Inside that bedroom, the wife would be repeatedly stabbed in the neck. The otherwise unknown man would be shot to death.
And from there, stories sharply diverge.
To hear the defendants tell it: Magalhaes left the home with the Banfield’s daughter in tow around 7:30 a.m. that day, just after Christine Banfield purchased their tickets for the zoo. Then, the au pair told police, she doubled back because she forgot to grab their packed lunches and saw a car she did not recognize in the driveway. A phone call to Christine Banfield went unanswered, Magalhaes said, so she called Brendan Banfield. He happened to be at a nearby McDonald’s and quickly rushed home.
The trio — husband/father, daughter, and au pair — entered the house. Upstairs, the defendants claimed, Ryan was in a bedroom with a naked Christine Banfield, who had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Ryan was then shot with a gun already in Brendan Banfield’s possession. Then, the husband directed the au pair to retrieve another gun from a safe in a bathroom closet, and he provided the code.
While Brendan Banfield initially said he was the one who shot and killed Ryan, Magalhaes would later admit she used the second gun to shoot the already-shot man in the chest. Another story allegedly diverged: the au pair first said she and Brendan Banfield were not in a romantic relationship, but her attorney later confirmed that they were.
They claimed in their story that they acted in self-defense, but investigators were suspicious.
In April, some details of the alleged plot were revealed when Magalhaes was indicted for Ryan’s death on one count each of second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Brendan Banfield was subsequently indicted on four counts of aggravated murder and one count of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Magalhaes was the first person to call 911 that day. She first dialed dispatchers at 7:49 a.m. in what amounted to an “open line hangup,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said. Some 13 minutes later, Magalhaes called again and spoke, saying her friend was hurt. Then Brendan Banfield got on the line to say he had shot Ryan, claiming the other man had entered their home and stabbed his wife.
Police would come to refer to Ryan as not “necessarily a stranger.” The sexual fetish website angle filled in the picture for why his car was parked on the driveway right outside the two-car garage.
“There was no forced entry whatsoever,” Davis told the press on the day of the slayings. “This was not a home invasion. Here’s what I can say right now with certainty: He did not force entry into the home. I do not know exactly what the nature of his presence in the home is all about just yet, but we’re working hard to determine that.”
Prosecutors say they found messages on the fetish website between both victims — even one arranging a meeting on the fatal day in question. But, law enforcement alleges, the way the fake Christine Banfield profile communicated with Ryan did not match the way she otherwise spoke, citing descriptions provided by friends and family.
Part of the state’s presentation to the judge in Magalhaes’ case was instrumental to the since-filed charges against Brendan Banfield: newly-framed photos of the two alleged conspirators together. In one such photo, set up in Banfield’s bedroom after the killings, the husband and the au pair are seen sharing an embrace, the nanny’s head resting on the IRS special agent’s shoulder — both smiling.
Left: Juliana Peres Magalhaes and Brendan Banfield in a photo together next to his bed (NBC Washington via Fairfax County Police). Right: Christine Banfield (via her Facebook).
Law&Crime reached out to the Fairfax County Police Department for additional details on Teresa Banfield’s alleged connection to Magalhaes, specifically inquiring as to whether any additional charges are anticipated in the case, but no response was immediately forthcoming at time of publication.
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
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