US man who plotted with au pair to murder wife given life sentence | Virginia
A Virginia man who had an affair with the family’s Brazilian babysitter was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for killing his wife and a man who was lured into the couple’s home as a villain.
Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) law enforcement officer, claimed that he shot Joseph Ryan on the morning of February 24, 2023, after he saw Ryan attack his wife. But prosecutors said Brendan Banfield and his caregiver, Juliana Peres Magalhäes, plotted with Ryan to kill pediatric intensive care nurse Christine Banfield.
Judge Penney Azcarate said Banfield’s behavior was evil and calculated.
“It is almost inconceivable that the life of your so-called spouse, whom you love, would be disregarded,” he said as he handed down the mandatory sentence for an aggravated murder conviction in Virginia.
The plan involved “luring a completely innocent man into your deadly trap; continuing recklessly in the aftermath of the murders and not once, not once, considering the impact on the Banfields’ four-year-old daughter.”
Azcarate said Brendan Banfield “took everything” from him.
In addition to murder, jurors in February found Banfield guilty of child endangerment because the couple’s daughter was home at the time of the killings. Azcarate sentenced Banfield to five years in prison on that charge and an additional three years on the firearms charge.
Speaking during his sentencing, Banfield declared his innocence. Banfield said he loved his wife and never considered leaving her, even though they had affairs.
Azcarate was unmoved and did not hesitate to order him behind bars for life, citing his lack of remorse as justification.
At Friday’s hearing, Christine Banfield’s older sister, Danielle Hocker, described her sister as kind, compassionate, reliable and selfless. He said they grew up chasing fireflies and sleeping side by side in sleeping bags on the floor.
“When he was born, ‘I’ became ‘we’,” Hocker said. “After his death, I didn’t stop saying ‘we’ when I talked about my childhood, but when I say it now, my breath catches—a loving pause with nowhere to go.”
Ryan’s mother, Deidre Fisher, told the court her son was an “extremely caring” person and a caretaker for his grandmother and other loved ones.
“Joe was a man who believed in fighting for the underdog and even really neglected dogs,” Fisher said with a slight laugh. “He would walk into an animal shelter and ask for the oldest, ugliest dogs, bring them home and pet them for years.”
