A former federal law enforcement officer from Virginia has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering his wife and a man lured to their home in a scheme linked to his affair with the family's au pair.
Judge Brett Kassabian handed down the sentence on Friday in Fairfax County Circuit Court for 40-year-old Brendan Banfield, who was convicted earlier this year of two counts of aggravated murder, child endangerment, and a firearms charge.
Prosecutors said Banfield fatally stabbed his wife, 37-year-old pediatric intensive care nurse Christine Banfield, and then shot 39-year-old Joseph Ryan during a staged home invasion at the couple's Reston-area home on Feb. 24, 2023.
Under Virginia law, the aggravated murder convictions carry mandatory life sentences, which the judge ordered to run consecutively, according to CBS News.
Investigators and prosecutors told the court that Banfield orchestrated the killings so he could start a new life with the family's Brazilian au pair, 25-year-old Juliana Peres Magalhães, with whom he had been having an affair.
Evidence presented at trial showed Banfield and Magalhães created an online persona pretending to be Christine on a fetish website and used it to lure Ryan to the home, instructing him to bring a knife and other items so he could be framed as a dangerous intruder.
Prosecutors argued that Banfield stabbed his wife in an upstairs bedroom, then shot Ryan and directed Magalhães to fire as well to bolster the staged self-defense narrative.
Banfield, a former officer with the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation division, claimed on the stand that he acted in self-defense after seeing Ryan attack his wife with a knife, ABC News reported.
Jurors rejected that account after reviewing digital messages, online profiles, and crime scene evidence that prosecutors said contradicted his story and supported a premeditated plot. He was taken back into custody immediately after sentencing and will serve his term in state prison.
Magalhães previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Ryan's death as part of a deal to testify against Banfield and was sentenced in February to 10 years in prison, the maximum allowed under the plea.
In victim impact statements read at Friday's hearing, members of Christine Banfield's family told the court that her killing had left a permanent void and described ongoing trauma for the couple's young child, who was at home the day of the murders but not physically harmed.
Prosecutors said the life sentence ensures Banfield will never be released and called the case a calculated breach of trust carried out inside the victim's own home, as per Yahoo News.
