Already a dedicated nurse and patient advocate, Christine Banfield seemed to go above and beyond during the pandemic.

“She was an angel to me,” recalls Rodrigo Valderrama, a COVID patient at the suburban Virginia hospital where Christine worked.

He recalls waking from a weeks-long coma to see Banfield’s kind face at his bedside:

“She shaved me; she helped me set up a zoom call with my family. The construction project manager struck up a friendship with his assistant, inviting her and her husband, Brendan Banfield, an IRS criminal special agent, and their 3-year-old daughter, Valerie, to a party in -a park near Washington, DC in spring 2021.

Christine told him that she planned to hire an au pair from South America to live with the couple and help with their baby. “She wanted me to recommend restaurants in the area,” says the Colombian-born Valderrama. “That was her personality – she wanted au pairs to feel at home.”

However, Juliana Peres Magalhães, 22, was the Banfield family’s Brazilian au pair who, in two calls to 911 on the morning of February 24, 2023, first alerted police to what they described as “an awful scene” at the family’s home. home in Herndon, Virginia. In a second-floor bedroom, Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department officers found Christine, 37, empty except for herself. socks, bleeding from fatal stab wounds to neck; he died later that day at a hospital. Nearby was the body of 39-year-old Joe Ryan — who authorities say had arrived at the home that morning for a prearranged sexual encounter — with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Also at the scene covered in blood were Peres Magalhães and Christine’s husband Brendan, 38, according to police, as well as a bloody knife, two handguns and a bag full of fetish sex paraphernalia. Valerie, then 4 years old, was found unharmed in the basement.

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During a nine-hour interview at the police station, Peres Magalhães confessed to killing Ryan in the chaotic attack on Christine. According to court documents, the nanny said she was in a car with the baby outside the home that morning when she saw a man carrying a bag come in the front door. He called Christine, who was alone inside. When Christine didn’t answer, Peres Magalhães called Brendan, she said. He had already left for work, but returned quickly. He and Peres Magalhães then entered the bedroom and found Ryan standing over a kneeling Christine with a knife at her throat.

In Peres Magalhães’ initial account of what happened next, Brendan, who carries a gun at work, shot him in the head with his service revolver and yelled at Peres Magalhães to get another gun from the bedroom safe. Fearing Ryan would attack again, she said she pointed the gun at him and fired the bullet that pierced his heart and killed him. However, the police were not convinced by Peres Magalhães’ story of interrupting a home invasion and killing an intruder in self-defense.

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Investigators soon discovered evidence that Brendan and Peres Magalhães had had a sexual relationship: text messages about her new love sent from Peres Magalhães’ phone, photos of the couple on a trip to New York and underwear on Brendan’s bed.

The records showed that the two had visited a shooting range nearly two months before the double homicide and that Brendan had returned to the facility to buy a Glock 43X – the pistol used by Peres Magalhães.

On October 13, 2023, Peres Magalhães was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in Ryan’s death. Almost a year later, on September 16, 2024, citing recently obtained information, Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced that Brendan had been charged with murder in the deaths of Ryan and Christine. “I will make sure that my office presents the strongest possible case at trial and that we continue to seek justice for the victims and their families,” Descano said.

By all appearances, the Banfields were a happily married couple who enjoyed their daughter whom they both adored. Christine, who grew up on Long Island and graduated from Quinnipiac University with a nursing degree in 2007, and Brendan, who studied accounting at the University of St. Joseph of Long Island, launched a math tutoring center for children in Moriches, NY. They moved in with the newborn Valerie. in Virginia in 2019. When she wasn’t working as an intensive care nurse, Christine was active in a neighborhood Facebook group seeking recommendations for a backyard landscaper, a “doll hospital” to fix her daughter’s toy, and a dog boarding for the family husky.

The couple, who previously employed another Brazilian nanny, contacted Peres Magalhães in 2021. “Juliana wanted to travel and learn English,” says a friend in Brazil. “She was excited because she had just finished nursing and was coming to live with a nurse, so they had so much in common.” In Virginia, Peres Magalhães “seemed so happy,” says her friend. “It was easy. Everything worked perfectly.”

Or so it seemed. By August 2022, Brendan had fallen in love with the au pair and began expressing “a desire to get rid of his wife,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Eric Clingan said at a hearing in October. In the weeks before the murders, Brendan allegedly created a profile on a website for bondage and role-playing enthusiasts and began communicating with another user, Ryan. Days before the murders, Clingan said, Brendan directed Peres Magalhães, who posed as Christine, to call Ryan via an encrypted messaging app and confirm the details of the “consensual sexual encounter involving the restraints used on them, the clothing being cut with a knife. and other violent role-playing games.”

On the morning of February 24, 2023, Brendan and Peres Magalhães’ carefully scripted plot to get Christine off the road went according to plan, authorities claim. At 7:17 a.m., Brendan was waiting at a nearby McDonald’s for Peres Magalhães to call him when Ryan arrived home for his pre-planned kinky sex date with Christine. Back at the house, Brendan and Peres Magalhães entered through the basement and left Valerie there while they climbed the stairs to the second floor. Brendan allegedly shouted “police officer” before shooting Ryan in the head and then stabbing Christine. Peres Magalhães then shot Ryan after allegedly seeing him move on the floor.

In the months following Peres Magalhães’ arrest, while Brendan continued to live in the family home with his daughter and mother, tensions developed in the couple’s relationship. In a recorded call to the jail, Peres Magalhães can be heard saying, “I hope you’re not staying with me just because you’re afraid I’ll turn on you,” according to prosecutors. In another conversation recorded on his mother’s phone, prosecutors say, Brendan complained that the nanny couldn’t “keep the damn thing shut” on prison calls.

Finally, on October 29, just days before her murder trial was scheduled to begin, Peres Magalhães struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and agreeing to cooperate with authorities in exchange for the possibility of be released from custody after the term already served.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s friend Zulu Bey says he’s grateful the truth is coming out about his eccentric friend’s unwitting role in the twisted murder plot. “I know he didn’t do what they said he did,” Bey says. “He was just a pawn. Joe was the guy who took in the dogs that had no chance of being adopted and just loved the hell out of them.” And Christine, says her friend Valderrama, will be remembered for her service to the community: “She was one of a kind.”