Brendan Banfield sentence: Husband jailed for life for killing his wife and man he lured from fetish website

A Virginia man who killed his wife in an elaborate double murder plot so that he could be with his family’s Brazilian au pair has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, was convicted of murdering his wife, Christine Banfield, and Joseph Ryan, a man he lured to his home as part of the plot.

He claimed he came across Ryan attacking his wife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023.

But prosecutors argued that Brendan Banfield and au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães set Ryan up in a scheme to get rid of Banfield’s wife, a pediatric intensive care nurse.

In addition to murder, jurors in February convicted Banfield of child endangerment because the couple’s 4-year-old daughter was home during the killings.

At sentencing, Judge Penney Azcarate called Banfield’s actions evil and calculated.

“The disregard of the life of your wife, someone you supposedly loved, is almost unfathomable,” she said.

She said the scheme involved “luring a completely innocent man into your deadly trap; continuing on after the murders without a care; and not once — not once — thinking of the impact” on the Banfields’ 4-year-old daughter.

Brendan Banfield “took everything from her,” Azcarate said.

During Banfield’s trial, Magalhães testified that he had told her he wanted to marry her and have children with her, but he needed to “get rid of” his wife first.

He didn’t want a divorce because “she would have more money than he would” and because he wanted custody of the couple’s daughter, said Magalhães, who was 21 when she started working for the Banfields in 2021.

Magalhães told jurors that she and Brendan Banfield had impersonated Christine Banfield on a website for sexual fetishes. They used the site to lure Ryan to the house in Herndon, Virginia, for a sexual encounter involving a knife and staged the scene to look as though they had shot a violent intruder.

Magalhães testified that on the day of the killings, she waited in a car outside the house with the Banfields’ child. When Ryan arrived, she called Brendan Banfield, who was waiting at a nearby McDonald’s.

The pair took the child to the basement and then went to the bedroom, where they encountered Ryan. Brendan Banfield shot Ryan and then stabbed Christine Banfield with the knife Ryan had brought. When Magalhães saw Ryan moving, she fired a second shot that killed him.

Magalhães pleaded guilty to manslaughter after agreeing to testify against Brendan Banfield. Magalhães was sentenced to 10 years in prison after Banfield’s trial.