LETHAL AFFAIR - Nanny & Husband Charged in Murders

TWO ARE DEAD AFTER A VIOLENT ASSAULT IN A VIRGINIA HOUSEHOLD RIPPED APART BY A SECRET ROMANCE

- CHRISTINE PELISEK, WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR

Already a dedicated nurse and patient advocate, Christine Banfield seemed to go above and beyond during the pandemic. "She was an angel for me," recalls Rodrigo Valderrama, a COVID patient at the suburban Virginia hospital where Christine worked. He remembers waking up from a weeks-long coma to see Banfield's kind face beside his bed: "She shaved me; she helped me set up a Zoom call with my family." The construction project manager struck up a friendship with his nurse, inviting her and her husband, Brendan Banfield, an IRS criminal division special agent, and their then-3-year-old daughter Valerie to a party in a park near Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2021.

Christine told him she was planning to hire an au pair from South America to live with the couple and help with their toddler. "She wanted me to recommend restaurants in the area," says the Colombian-born Valderrama.

"That was her personality—she wanted the au pair to feel at home." Yet it was the Banfields' Brazilian au pair, 22-year-old Juliana Peres Magalhães, who in two 911 calls on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023, first alerted police to what they described as "an appalling scene" at the family's home in Herndon, Va. In a second-story bedroom Fairfax County Police Department officers found Christine, 37, naked except for her socks, bleeding from fatal stab wounds to the neck; she died later that day at a hospital. Nearby was the dead body of Joe Ryan, 39-who authorities say arrived at the house that morning for a prearranged sex date-with gunshot wounds in the head and chest. Also at the bloodsmeared scene were Peres Magalhães and Christine's husband, Brendan, 38, according to police, as well as a bloody knife, two handguns and a bag filled with fetish sex accessories. Valerie, then 4 years old, was found unharmed in the basement.