Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were two unsuspecting strangers who were murdered in an elaborate plot that involved a catfish set-up, a fetish website, and a secret affair.
Their murders, the subject of the April 3 episode of NBC’s long-running Dateline, dissect how Banfield’s husband, Brendan Banfield, and the family’s au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, orchestrated the brutal deaths of the ICU pediatric nurse and a man falsely accused of murder.
On February 24, 2023, Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were murdered inside the home she shared with her husband, Brendan Banfield, in Northern Virginia.
Initially, Brendan told police that after his au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, called him just after he left for work to tell him that an unfamiliar car was in the driveway, he raced home to find Ryan kneeling over his wife after he had fatally stabbed her. In response, Brenden said he shot and killed Ryan, and Peres Magalhaes admitted to shooting him as well.
However, what actually happened that fateful morning was a sinister plot constructed by Brendan and Peres Magalhaes to get rid of Christine and frame Ryan for her murder.
As months passed, Brendan and Peres Magalhaes’ accounts of what happened in the bedroom that February morning didn’t add up.
There were two 911 calls placed, one of which was the call for police assistance, but it was the first call made 13 minutes prior that fed police suspicions. During that call, the person didn’t say anything and only remained on the line for a few seconds before hanging up.
“A person was in an injured state, and yet it still took 13 minutes” for the other call to be placed, the prosecutor in the case said. “It made no sense.”
Brendan’s claims were also questioned due to his saying that Ryan refused to drop the knife when confronted, despite Brendan having a gun pointed at him.
Eight months later, Peres Magalhaes, who confessed to her role in shooting Ryan, was arrested and charged with murder in October 2023. Close to a year later, and due to the completion of a blood pattern analysis that determined he held the knife inside the bedroom, Brendan was also arrested.
Shortly after his arrest, where he pleaded not guilty to murder, Peres Magalhaes decided to come clean and tell the truth about how and why Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were killed.
During a four-hour statement, Peres Magalhaes revealed that she and Brendan were having an affair. While they were in a relationship, he told her he wanted to kill his wife, referring to her as “lazy” and “not a good mother,” according to Peres Magalhaes.
To carry out the murder, Brendan and Peres Magalhaes decided to seek out an unsuspecting third party by catfishing them via a fetish website.
The two created a fake profile on FetLife.com by using Christine’s laptop and posing as “Annastasia9,” a fake persona who wanted to act out violent sexual fantasies with a stranger.
Ryan interacted with the profile and set up a meeting with “Annastasia9,” not realizing that Brendan and Peres Magalhaes were setting him up to be framed and ultimately leading him to his death.
Through her cooperation, Peres Magalaes pled guilty to the lesser crime of manslaughter and agreed to testify against Brendan, receiving 10 years in prison.
As for Brendan, who has maintained his innocence, in February 2026, three years after his wife was murdered, he was convicted of aggravated murder.
He will be sentenced in May 2026, where prosecutors are seeking life in prison.
Dateline airs Fridays on NBC and is available to stream on Hulu.
