Man Charged In Baffling Killings Of Wife, Another Man 19 Months After Au Pair’s Arrest

A Virginia man was arrested Monday and charged with four counts of murder in the death of his wife and another man in a baffling case involving the couple’s au pair, with whom he was having an affair, in February 2023.

Brendan Banfield, a 39-year-old criminal special agent, was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of aggravated murder and a firearm charge, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s attorney announced at a news conference on Monday alongside the Fairfax County Police chief.

His arrest came 19 months after the killings of his wife, Christine Banfield, a 37-year-old pediatric nurse, and Joseph Ryan, 39, in their house in Herndon, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. On Feb. 24, 2023, just after 8 a.m., police responding to a 911 call found Christine Banfield nude in her upstairs bedroom with fatal stab wounds. Ryan’s body was just feet away. He was fully clothed and had been shot to death, allegedly by different guns, authorities said.

The Banfields’ live-in au pair, 23-year-old Juliana Peres Magalhaes, was indicted in April on charges of second-degree murder in Ryan’s killing, and her trial is currently scheduled for November.

Her attorney has previously said she acted in self-defense, and authorities said that Brendan Banfield told her to shoot the stranger who was attacking Christine Banfield after Brendan Banfield shot the man himself. HuffPost reached out to Peres Magalhaes’ and Brendan Banfield’s defense attorneys but did not get an immediate response.

Brendan Banfield’s arrest, while he was driving Monday in Fairfax County, was a dramatic — although not entirely unexpected — development in a case that had perplexed investigators and confounded the public, who have been privy to scant details, each more