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).

A northern Virginia man has been indicted for killing his wife and another man who he is believed to have snookered into acting out a part in a complicated murder conspiracy involving his family’s au pair and a fake profile on a sexual fetish website, law enforcement says.

Brendan Banfield, 39, stands accused of four counts of aggravated murder and one count of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony over the February 2023 double murder, according to a press release issued Monday by the Fairfax County Police Department in conjunction with the Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

On the day in question, Christine Ann Banfield, 37, was killed in her own home, along with Joseph Nathan Ryan, 39, who was not a resident of the home. Details of the alleged plot to take their lives are lurid. Several mysteries have swirled since their brutal deaths 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.

Now, law enforcement claims to have unraveled the story.