Months Later, Au Pair Charged in Strange Virginia Murder Case

Around 8am on February 24, a woman called police in Fairfax County, Virginia, to report that a woman, whom she referred to as a friend of hers, was hurt. A man then got on the phone and said he had shot an unknown male who had entered his home. When police arrived, they found two adults dead and two adults alive at the scene: Christine Banfield, 37, was found fatally stabbed in an upstairs bedroom and Joseph Ryan, 39, was found shot dead in the same room, NBC Washington reports. Alive and at the scene were Banfield’s husband, the man who’d gotten on the 911 call midway through, and the Banfield family’s live-in au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, a 23-year-old from Brazil, who’d been the one to call 911 in the first place, NBC News reports. It’s not clear where the Banfields’ 4-year-old daughter was at the time, People reports.

More than seven months later, Peres Magalhaes has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder in Ryan’s death, but the facts around what happened remain very murky. No one has yet been charged in Christine Banfield’s murder, nor has Banfield’s husband, a federal law enforcement officer who carries a gun for work and who allegedly initially refused to cooperate with authorities, been charged with anything. Peres Magalhaes reportedly told police she and Banfield’s husband were both away from the house on the morning in question and she returned to find a car she didn’t recognize at the home, inside which she believed Christine Banfield was alone. She allegedly said that she called Christine Banfield but when she didn’t answer, Peres Magalhaes called the husband, who then also returned home.

Peres Magalhaes allegedly told police she went upstairs and saw Christine Banfield with stab wounds and Ryan with a knife, and that Banfield’s husband shot Ryan. But police say forensics and interviews revealed Peres Magalhaes actually shot him. Police say there were no signs of forced entry at the home and that neither Peres Magalhaes nor Banfield’s husband knew Ryan. “The connection that we’ve been able to locate through the investigation is that [Ryan] was known to the [other] victim, Christine Banfield,” a police lieutenant said without offering further details on how they knew each other. (Read more Virginia stories.)