IRS special agent indicted for murder of wife and would-be patsy in bizarre sexual fetish conspiracy double murder plot that also implicates his lover, a foreign national au pair

Brendan Banfield appears inset on the left; Juliana Peres Magalhaes appears inset on the right – against an image of the house where Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were killed.

Inset left to right: Brendan Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhaes (Fairfax County Police Department). Background: The house where Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan were killed (WTTG).

Lurid new details have been revealed in the double murder conspiracy case against a widower and his family’s au pair in northern Virginia.

Jailhouse communications suggest the accused man’s mother was helping to pass information along to her son’s alleged partner in crime, the Fairfax County Police Department alleges.

Juliana Peres Magalhaes, 24, the onetime live-in nanny, was arrested and charged in October 2023 — several months after the hotly-disputed slaughter that took two lives at the two-story house on Stable Brook Way in Herndon, a medium-sized town and part of the broader Washington, D.C., metro area.

Brendan Banfield, 39, was indicted in late September for his alleged role in the February 2023 double murder.