A former au pair who conspired with her married employer-turned-lover to murder his wife and a stranger has been jailed for 10 years in the US.
Juliana Peres Magalhaes, 25, shot Joseph Ryan dead while her lover, Brendan Banfield, 40, was fatally stabbing his wife, Christine, in the couple’s home in northern Virginia in February 2023.
The Brazilian woman might have been released after giving evidence against Banfield in return for accepting a downgraded charge of manslaughter, under a deal she struck with prosecutors in 2024.
Instead, Fairfax Chief Circuit Court Judge Penney Azcarate handed her the state’s maximum possible sentence for the crime on Friday, telling her she didn’t deserve anything other than “incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done to the victim and his family. May it weigh heavily on your soul”.
Calling it the “most serious manslaughter scenario” the court had ever seen, according to Sky News’ US partner NBC, the judge rejected a sentencing recommendation of time served because the pair’s plan “did not work without your full involvement”.
In a statement to the victims’ families, Magalhaes, who waited months before agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against Banfield, said: “I know my remorse cannot bring you peace.
“I lost myself in a relationship, and left my morals and values behind. I hope someday I can be forgiven, as I hope to be able to forgive myself.”
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Prosecutors said they continued their affair for months after the killings.
Banfield was found guilty of the aggravated murder of his wife and Mr Ryan earlier this month, and could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Magalhaes told her own trial that she and Banfield, an IRS agent, used his wife’s laptop to set up an online account in her name on a sexual fetish website in a catfishing scheme.
Mr Ryan responded, and he was persuaded to come to Banfield’s home for what he believed to be a fake-rape fantasy involving a knife with Ms Banfield.
The lovers took Banfield’s four-year-old child to the basement, and then went to the bedroom, where she said Banfield shot Mr Ryan and stabbed his wife in the neck.
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When she saw Mr Ryan moving, Magalhaes said she fired the second shot that killed him from point-blank range.
She was arrested eight months later, and only agreed to talk to detectives as her own trial date approached.
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The plotters planned to tell police they shot Mr Ryan after he stabbed Ms Banfield, Magalhaes said in court.
Mr Ryan’s mother, Deidre Fisher, said her son’s life “was used and thrown away, seen as worthless and utterly disposable”.
