Murders of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan

2023 murders in Virginia

The murders of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan, dubbed the au pair affair and the au pair murders in the media, occurred on February 24, 2023, in Herndon, Fairfax County, Virginia. In 2026, a Fairfax County jury convicted Banfield's husband, former Internal Revenue Service agent Brendan Banfield, of the aggravated murder of his wife and Ryan in what prosecutors described as a premeditated plot in which he and his lover, the family's Brazilian au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, lured Ryan to the family's house to commit the murders and stage the crime scene as a home invasion gone wrong. Peres Magalhães had previously pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Ryan's death and testified as the key witness for the prosecution at Banfield's trial, and was herself sentenced to ten years in prison.