Au pair sentenced to 10 years for part in double murder

FAIRFAX, Va. – In 2024, weeks before she was to stand trial for second degree murder, Juliana Peres Magalhães made a deal with prosecutors: She would plead guilty to manslaughter and testify against her ex-lover in exchange for a recommended time-served sentence.

On Friday, Fairfax County Chief Judge Penney Azcarate rejected the deal and sentenced 25-year-old Magalhães to 10 years in prison, with two additional years suspended on probation.

Magalhães sobbed throughout the hearing and nodded as the judge spoke.

“I know I will live with this the rest of my life,” she told the court. “I understand that I am to blame.”

Magalhães was the prosecution’s key witness in the double murder trial of her onetime lover, Brendan Banfield, 40. She testified in January about the Feb. 24, 2023, killings, telling jurors that Banfield devised a plan to lure stranger Joseph Ryan, 39, to the home through a fetish website to stage him as an intruder and create an alibi for the murder of Banfield’s wife, Christine Banfield, a pediatric ICU nurse. Banfield shot Ryan and stabbed his wife to death. Magalhães fired the second shot at Ryan.

Azcarate pointed out that Magalhães initially faced a potential life sentence, but the reduced manslaughter charge capped her punishment at 10 years. She emphasized that credit for time served was only a recommendation, not a binding agreement, and said the facts showed Magalhães was culpable.

“You may not have come up with the plan, agreed, and an older man may have groomed you to a point,” Azcarate said. But until today, she added, “you have shown no empathy for the victim in this case.”

The judge said Magalhães played a far greater role than her testimony suggested, texting and speaking with Ryan and “knowing all along you were bringing him to his death.”

Azcarate said Magalhães waited nearby, alerted Banfield when Ryan arrived and helped set the murder in motion. When Christine Banfield asked her to call 911, Magalhães did, but then hung up. After Banfield shot Ryan, Magalhães walked up to him as he lay moaning and shot him again.

The plot would not have worked without Magalhães, the judge said. She added that Magalhães then spent a year and a half fabricating a story that portrayed Ryan “wrongly as a rapist and a murderer — an innocent man.”

“You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection for what you have done to the victim and this family,” the judge said. “May it weigh heavily on your soul.”

Ryan’s mother, who filed a victim impact statement with the court, also spoke during the hearing, detailing the profound nature of her loss.

“My son’s life was used and thrown away, seen as worthless and utterly disposable by those who plotted and executed his brutal murder,” wrote Deidre Fisher.

She thanked the judge for considering the “trail of pain and loss Juliana left in the wake of her calculated, cold-blooded murder, with her life and future as her only concern. My son, Joseph Nathan Ryan, was not and is not disposable.”

During the trial, Magalhães recounted that Banfield commenced an affair with her soon after she took the au pair job watching after his daughter. Banfield wanted to end his marriage, but didn’t want to share custody of his child or the expense of a divorce.

Banfield contended that he arrived home and confronted Ryan in the bedroom. According to his testimony, Ryan stabbed Christine Banfield, Banfield then shot Ryan and attempted to render aid to his wife

Banfield was convicted of aggravated murder and child endangerment, as his young daughter was home during the incident. His sentencing is scheduled for May.