Man Who Schemed With Au Pair to Kill His Wife Is Sentenced to Life

A Virginia man convicted of murdering his wife and another man in an elaborate scheme involving a fetish website and an au pair was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without parole.

The husband, Brendan Banfield of Herndon, Va., a former agent for the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, was found guilty on Feb. 2 of two counts of aggravated murder, one of using a firearm in commission of a felony and one of child endangerment.

In Virginia, where the killings occurred in 2023, the only punishment for aggravated murder is life in prison. Judge Penney Azcarate of the Circuit Court in Fairfax County said that life was “a harsh sentence, but in this case, it is a justified one.”

“The level of cruelty, calculation and inhumanity in this case reflects something far deeper than anger or impulse,” she added. “It reflects evil.”

Mr. Banfield’s former lover, Juliana Peres Magalhães, an au pair from Brazil, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2024 for her role in the killings, and this February, the same judge sentenced her to 10 years in prison, the maximum for manslaughter, going well beyond the recommendations made by both prosecutors and the defense lawyers.

Before Friday’s sentence was read, Mr. Banfield addressed the court to claim his innocence, pointing to evidence and expert testimony that he argued had been unfairly disregarded. “I was found guilty of a crime that I did not commit,” he said, adding that he loved his wife, Christine Banfield.

Prosecutors said that they expected Mr. Banfield to appeal, and he has 30 days to do so. His lawyer during the trial, John Carroll, said he will no longer represent him.

The trial over the murders of Ms. Banfield, who was stabbed, and Joseph Ryan, who was shot, captured international attention.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Banfield had plotted to lure Mr. Ryan to the family’s home by posing as Ms. Banfield on a fetish website, with Ms. Magalhães’s assistance. Mr. Ryan, 38, was led to think he was being invited to enact a violent sexual role-play scenario that Ms. Banfield, 37, had purportedly proposed.

Prosecutors said Mr. Banfield, 41, and Ms. Magalhães, 26, arranged for Mr. Ryan to visit the home while Ms. Banfield was alone.

After Mr. Ryan entered the bedroom where Ms. Banfield was, prosecutors said, Mr. Banfield followed him into the house, shot him with a pistol and then stabbed Ms. Banfield, staging the scene to appear as though he had come to his wife’s aid.

The Banfields’ daughter, who was unharmed, was in the basement when the killings occurred. She was 4 at the time.

Ms. Magalhães, who worked as an au pair for the family and began an affair with Mr. Banfield in 2022, testified against him in January. In her guilty plea, she said that she had shot Mr. Ryan after Mr. Banfield did, but that Mr. Banfield had masterminded the killings.

She added that Mr. Banfield had prepared by scouring his neighborhood for doorbell cameras, taking the au pair to a shooting range and installing soundproof windows in his home.

On the day of the killings, she said, she sat in a parked car, with Mr. and Ms. Banfield’s daughter watching a television show in the back seat. She watched as Mr. Ryan arrived at the Banfield home. As instructed, Ms. Magalhães said, she then called Mr. Banfield, who was a short drive away.

In his own testimony in late January, Mr. Banfield said that those claims were “absolutely crazy.” His lawyers said that Ms. Magalhães had made a deal under pressure and prosecutors used her.

On Friday, before the sentence was read, relatives of Ms. Banfield and Mr. Ryan spoke about their grief in court.

Deirdre Fisher, Mr. Ryan’s mother, appeared via video call. “Joe wasn’t the disposable caricature he was made out to be,” she said. “He had a face, he had a name, he had a life.”

Danielle Hocker, Ms. Banfield’s sister, said that justice would do nothing to ease her grief. “I didn’t truly know Brendan at all,” she added. “I don’t believe anyone did; not family, not friends and certainly not Christine.”

Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County, said after the sentencing that he “wasn’t surprised” by Mr. Banfield’s defiant assertion of innocence.

“He thought he could commit the perfect crime,” Mr. Descano said. “He thought he was smarter than everyone else.”