Brazilian au pair faces sentencing in scheme to kill lover’s wife and another man

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — An au pair who pleaded guilty to scheming with her employer-turned-lover to kill his wife and another man said she confessed because she wanted to do good — not out of hope that cooperating would free her from a Virginia jail so she could return home to Brazil.

On Friday, a judge will determine her fate.

Juliana Peres Magalhães will be sentenced at the Fairfax County courthouse in the February 2023 killing of Joseph Ryan. She testified that she fatally shot Ryan as Brendan Banfield was fatally stabbing his wife, Christine, in the couple’s bedroom.

Magalhães pleaded guilty to a downgraded manslaughter charge in Ryan’s killing following an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against Brendan Banfield, who was convicted by a jury this month of aggravated murder in the deaths of his wife and Ryan.

Magalhães and Banfield had an affair in the months leading up to the killings, and continued their relationship afterward, prosecutors said.

At his trial, Magalhães testified that she and Banfield, an IRS agent, had created an account in the name of his wife, a pediatric intensive care nurse, on a social media platform for people interested in sexual fetishes. Ryan connected with the account and agreed to meet for a sexual encounter involving a knife.

Magalhães said she and Brendan Banfield took the couple’s 4-year-old child to the basement, and then entered the bedroom, where she said Brendan Banfield shot Ryan and was stabbing his wife in the neck. When she saw Ryan moving, Magalhães said, she fired the second shot that killed him.

She wasn’t arrested until eight months later, and didn’t talk with investigators for more than a year, until she changed her mind as her own trial date approached.

Banfield’s attorney scrutinized the former au pair’s motives during his trial, arguing that she was only saying what prosecutors wanted to hear.

As part of her plea deal, her attorney and prosecutors agreed to end her time behind bars at her sentencing hearing. Chief Judge Penney Azcarate could still reject that agreement. In Virginia, manslaughter is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.