Juliana Peres Magalhães Is Detained
In October 2023, Peres Magalhães was arrested on second-degree murder charges for shooting Ryan in the heart.
When police entered the home, they noted that she had moved into the primary bedroom with Brendan, an IRS agent. The room was decorated with photos of the pair as a couple.
Peres Magalhães began working for the family in late 2021, and by August 2022, she and Brendan had begun an affair. Dates included a trip to New York City and several trips to a gun range to teach Peres Magalhães how to shoot.
According to Peres Magalhães, Brendan soon began telling her that he wished he could end his marriage with Christine, a pediatric intensive care nurse, without financial repercussions or a lengthy custody battle.
Technology at Its Worst
Prosecutors argued that Brendan and Peres Magalhães created a fake profile for Christine on a fetish website and lured Ryan to the home that morning under the pretense of a rape fantasy in which Christine, who had a blood clotting disorder, was to be threatened and cut with a knife.
“Technology is increasingly being used to weaponize and facilitate sexual and gender-based violence,” Leana Pardo, executive director of North Brooklyn Coalition, an organization that supports survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. This leaves laws and investigative techniques racing to catch up.
According to prosecutors, Peres Magalhães, who had left earlier in the morning to take the Banfields’ daughter to the zoo, returned to the home after Ryan was scheduled to arrive. She called Brendan, who was waiting at a nearby McDonald’s. He came home, shot Ryan (along with Peres Magalhães), stabbed Christine and dripped Christine’s blood on Ryan to make it look like he was the culprit.
Lovers No More
In the year after her arrest, Peres Magalhães said nothing to investigators about Brendan or the murders. One recorded phone call from the Fairfax County, Va., jail where she was being held documents her saying to him, “I hope you are not just staying with me because you are afraid I’m going to turn against you.”
Isolated from loved ones and experiencing poor health and waning confidence in her defense, Peres Magalhães did just that. After rejecting an initial misdemeanor plea deal, she pleaded guilty to felony manslaughter in October 2024 in exchange for her testimony against Brendan.
She said she posed as Christine on a phone call with Ryan, conspiring to call Brendan back to the house after Ryan arrived on the morning of the murders, shooting Ryan at Brendan’s direction and calling 911 when he instructed her to. She added that she crouched by the bed, eyes shut and ears covered, while Brendan stabbed Christine repeatedly.
Brendan Banfield’s Role
In September 2024, Brendan was indicted on charges including four counts of aggravated murder and one firearm offense. In December, charges of felony child abuse and neglect and felony child cruelty were added.
“What concerns me most is the pervasive lack of concern for his daughter,” Barbara McLean, founder and executive director of VIA Community Services, an organization that supports survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Brendan maintains that he shot Ryan while trying to save Christine but tragically intervened too late. However, this wasn’t the first time Brendon told a woman he was having an affair with that he wished his wife was not around. According to Fairfax County prosecutors, multiple women who had had affairs with Brendan came forward to report that he had told them the same things.
“He chose to destroy his family without diminishing his assets. His sole motive was to not have to give his wife a divorce settlement or pay child support for more than a decade,” McLean says.
Pardo adds, “Domestic violence and gender-based violence [are] all about power and control. [Abusers] don’t care about making sure they have their child. They care about getting control.”
Justice Served?
Brendan’s defense argued that the authorities could not prove definitively that he created the profile of Christine on the fetish website and pointed to details that Peres Magalhães was unable to recall in her testimony, such as which room the pair was in when they created the profile. Brendan insisted that both he and Christine had multiple affairs throughout their 20-year relationship.
On February 2, 2026, Brendan was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder, firearm use in the commission of a felony and child endangerment.
Later that month, Peres Magalhães was sentenced to 10 years after Judge Penney S. Azcarate rejected the recommendation of time served. “You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done to the victim and his family,” Azcarate said. “May it weigh heavily on your soul.”
Ryan’s family credited Peres Magalhães for coming forward but specified that it did not absolve her of responsibility for aiding Brendan in setting up Ryan, shooting him and then slandering him as a rapist and murderer.
Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan Remembered
In June 2026, Brendan was sentenced to life in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Ryan was remembered by family as a kind and selfless person who rescued dogs and loved painting.
“[Brendan] created that dynamic of manipulating a man to come and do what he thought was a consensual act with [Christine], and that is also sexual violence,” Pardo says.
Christine was remembered for her compassion and dedication as a mother, sister, friend, nurse and advocate for rape victims.
“The headlines say, ‘Man Killed His Wife to Be with His Mistress,’" Pardo says, “but what domestic violence providers see is a fatal domestic violence case. We’re not naming it for what it is in media. We’re not saying, ‘This is gender-based violence.’ At the end of the day, this is what domestic violence looks like.”
