The au pair who pleaded guilty in a double homicide plot claimed an unknown man “started stabbing” the wife and the husband asked her to shoot the man, according to body camera video that has been released from the day of the killings.
The footage depicts au pair Juliana Peres Magalhaes’ reaction as she tells police what happened inside the home on Stable Brook Way in Herndon, where Christine Banfield was stabbed to death and Joseph Ryan was fatally shot.
The body camera footage shows police arriving at the house to find the Brazilian au pair upstairs inside a bedroom. They take her outside where she began to explain what transpired in a shaky voice.
Peres Magalhaes said she was taking her host child to the zoo on Feb. 24, 2023, but forgot something at home, so the two turned around and came back. When she got back home, a car she didn’t recognize was in the driveway. That car belonged to Ryan.
Peres Magalhaes said she tried to call Christine Banfield, who was also home at the time, but it went straight to voicemail. She then called Brendan Banfield, Christine’s husband.
She said that when Brendan Banfield arrived, the two went inside. Brendan Banfield went upstairs, while Peres Magalhaes left the Banfields’ child in the basement.
When she went upstairs, she said she saw the man “spanking” Christine Banfield, while Brendan Banfield was saying, “Police! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!'” Magalhaes said in the footage.
She said Brendan Banfield and Ryan began to scream at each other, and she told police that Ryan said he was “going to kill” Christine Banfield.
That’s when Peres Magalhaes said Ryan began stabbing the wife. Brendan Banfield then shot Ryan and asked Peres Magalhaes to help shoot him, as well.
Watch the body camera footage obtained by WTOP’s partner 7News below.
What the plea agreement revealed happened inside the Fairfax County home
Peres Magalhaes pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in Ryan’s killing Tuesday, saying she had agreed to help the husband’s ruse to kill the wife and make it look like they both shot a predator.
Brendan Banfield was arrested in September on charges of aggravated murder and his trial is scheduled for February 2025.
Peres Magalhaes began working for the Banfields in late 2021. In August 2022, she and Brendan Banfield began an affair. Shortly thereafter, Brendan Banfield began plotting to kill his wife, Fairfax County prosecutors said.
What followed was a complicated plot that involved creating a profile pretending to be Christine Banfield on a sexual fetish website that eventually matched with Ryan.
On the day of the killings, Peres Magalhaes waited nearby the house, with the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, and made two calls, following the pair’s plan. After Ryan went into the house, she called Christine Banfield’s phone — which her husband had turned off and tucked in a drawer. The call went to voicemail, according to court documents.
Peres Magalhaes then called Brendan Banfield — who was waiting at a nearby McDonald’s — to tell him she was “scared” because a “strange man” was at the house, the plea agreement stated.
Brendan Banfield also called his wife’s phone, which went to voicemail.
Brendan Banfield returned home and he and Peres Magalhaes made their way upstairs to the bedroom both armed with a weapon — Brendan Banfield, a criminal investigative division agent for the IRS, had his service weapon, and Peres Magalhaes, with the weapon Brendan Banfield bought and taught her how to use.
Brendan Banfield shot Ryan and stabbed his wife, court documents said, while Peres Magalhaes went to a safe, “ostensibly to retrieve the firearm already in her possession.”
When she returned, she noticed Ryan was moving and shot him. He died in the bedroom, according to court documents.
WTOP staff and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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