The Brazilian au pair at the center of an elaborate plot to kill her boss’s wife continued her testimony on Wednesday in Brendan Banfield’s murder trial.
“I thought of it as being the right thing to do,” Juliana Peres Magalhães said of her decision to take a plea deal and testify against Banfield, according to WDCW. “We all deserve to know what happened. I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
Peres Magalhães pleaded guilty in 2024 to manslaughter, as CrimeOnline reported. In their original version of the story, Peres Magalhães told investigators she left the Herndon, Virginia, home of Brendan and Christine Banfield, where she was a live-in au pair, at about 7:30 a.m. on February 24, 2023, to take the couple’s 4-year-old daughter to the National Zoo. She turned around and went back, she said, because she’d forgotten their lunches and saw a strange car in the driveway.
She said she tried to call Christine Banfield, but she didn’t answer, so she called Brendan Banfield, who was already on his way to work. He rushed to the house, and the two entered a second floor suite, where, they said, they found a stranger had attacked Christine, stabbing her multiple times. Brendon shot the stranger with his service weapon, but he was still alive, so he told Peres Magalhães to go get another gun from a gun safe in the bathroom so they could shoot him again. She did, and she shot the man, later identified as Ryan, in the chest.
The story prosecutors are laying out, both in their opening remarks and in Peres Magalhães’ testimony, tells a different story. The former nanny began her testimony on Tuesday, the opening day of Banfield’s trial, and continued Wednesday, when she discussed the plans she and her IRS officer lover made to kill Christine Banfield and pin the murder on Ryan, a stranger they catfished to the house.
Peres Magalhães also talked about discussions she’s had with television streamers to sell her story, telling her family in text chats “we deserve something” not for the murder, she testify, but for “what my family and I have been through,” WDCW reported.
The au pair also answered questions about how she and Banfield created the FetLife account to lure Ryan to his death as defense attorneys challenged her for not remembering very specific details about the messages they sent him and other users on the fetish site.
If you were in my shoes you wouldn’t remember either,” she said at one point.
Peres Magalhães completed her testimony Wednesday afternoon, and the judge sent the jury home early. They will return Thursday for further testimony.
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[Featured image: Julana Peres Magalhães and Brendon Banfield/Fairfax County Police Department]