Brendan Banfield is set to formally face sentencing on Friday, June 5, in the deaths of his wife, Christine Banfield, and Joseph Ryan. He faces a mandatory life sentence after a judge on Thursday denied a motion to throw out his conviction.
That hearing gives the case its next and likely final courtroom milestone. The murders date to Feb. 24, 2023, in Reston, after investigators say Banfield turned an affair, a fake online identity and a staged meeting into a deadly plan that ended with two people dead in the Banfield home.
Banfield, a former investigator with the Internal Revenue Service, began his affair with the family's au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, in August 2022. Court filings say that by the fall of 2022 he was expressing a desire to be rid of Christine Banfield and was planning her murder. By January 2023, prosecutors said, he had bought a gun and given it to Peres Magalhaes, and he also trained her at a gun range in the months before the killings.
The killing of Joseph Ryan was built around deception. Banfield made a fake account on a fetish website, posed as his wife and drew Ryan to the Banfield home on the 13200 block of Stable Brook Way. He told Peres Magalhaes to use Telegram with Ryan just days before the murders to confirm consent and the details of the meetup, and Ryan was led to believe he was arriving for a consensual sexual encounter with Christine Banfield.
Inside the house, investigators said, Banfield turned off his wife's phone, left it in a kitchen drawer and waited at a nearby McDonald's so he could return quickly. When Ryan entered, Peres Magalhaes made calls to both Christine and Brendan Banfield's phones as directed. Banfield returned with Peres Magalhaes and his then 4-year-old daughter, left the child downstairs, went upstairs, announced himself as a police officer and shot Ryan in the head with his service-issued firearm. Peres Magalhaes made a brief 911 call and ended it at Banfield's direction, Banfield then stabbed his wife to death, and when Ryan showed signs of movement, Peres Magalhaes shot him again.
Police arrested Peres Magalhaes in October 2023 after she admitted during interviews that she shot Ryan and later gave a detailed account that matched physical and digital evidence. The broader investigation began in February 2023, and the remaining question now is not what happened but what sentence, if any, Peres Magalhaes will ultimately receive after Banfield is sentenced Friday.
