FAIRFAX, Va. — A Virginia man who was having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for the murder of his wife and a man who was lured to the couple’s home as a fall guy.
Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, claimed he shot Joseph Ryan after he came across Ryan attacking his wife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. But prosecutors said Brendan Banfield and au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães set Ryan up in a scheme to get rid of Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse.
Judge Penney Azcarate called Banfield’s actions evil and calculated.
“The disregard of the life of your wife, someone you supposedly loved, is almost unfathomable,” she said in handing down the sentence, which is mandatory in Virginia for an aggravated murder conviction. The scheme involved “luring a completely innocent man into your deadly trap; continuing on after the murders without a care; and not once — not once — thinking of the impact” on the Banfields’ 4-year-old daughter. Brendan Banfield “took everything from her,” Azcarate said.
In addition to murder, jurors in February convicted Banfield of child endangerment because the couple’s daughter was home during the killings. Azcarate sentenced Banfield to an additional five years on that charge and three more years on a firearms charge.
Speaking at his sentencing, Banfield proclaimed his innocence. Banfield said he loved his wife and, although he had affairs, he never intended to leave her.
Azcarate was unmoved, citing his lack of remorse as a reason she felt no hesitation in ordering him to remain behind bars for life.
During Friday’s hearing, Christine Banfield’s older sister, Danielle Hocker, described her sister as kind, caring, reliable and selfless. She said they grew up chasing fireflies and sleeping next to each other on the floor in sleeping bags.
“When she was born, ‘I’ became ‘we’,” Hocker said. “I haven’t stopped saying ‘we’ when I speak about my childhood after her death, except now when I do, it takes my breath away — a pause filled with love that has nowhere to go.”
Ryan’s mother, Deidre Fisher, told the court her son was an “extremely caring” person who was a caretaker for his grandmother and other loved ones.
“Joe was a guy who believed in fighting for the underdog, and even actual neglected dogs,” Fisher said, with a small laugh. “He would walk into an animal shelter and ask for the oldest, ugliest dogs, bring them home and love them for years.”
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