The Brazilian au pair accused of collaborating with a Virginia man to kill his wife and another man in an elaborate scheme testified Tuesday about the details of the plan. Juliana Peres Magalhães, now 25, told a Fairfax, Va., court that she and Brendan Banfield plotted to murder Banfield’s wife, Christine, and an unsuspecting stranger, Joseph Ryan, who’d been roped into a rape fantasy plot. Magalhães initially pleaded not guilty in the case before copping to a lesser count of manslaughter in exchange for her testimony. Banfield faces two counts of aggravated murder. Brendan Banfield, charged with aggravated murder in the 2023 killings of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan, appears in court during opening statements on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026 in Fairfax, Va. (Court TV via AP, Pool). Banfield, an IRS agent, and Magalhães began an affair about a year after she began working at their home in Herndon, Va., a western Washington, D.C. suburb. She told the court that Banfield said he wanted to marry her and have kids but needed to “get rid of” his wife first. Magalhães said Banfield wrote off divorce because he wanted custody of their then-4-year-old daughter and believed he’d leave with less money than his wife. So instead, Banfield and Magalhães cooked up a winding murder plot, in which they created a fake profile for Christine Banfield on a popular sexual fetish site, prosecutors said. Magalhães said Banfield took several precautions throughout the plot to avoid leaving evidence, such as posting only when his wife was home, checking the neighborhood for doorbell cameras and altering his morning routine. “He knew that we needed to have some alibis,” she testified. Eventually, Magalhães and Banfield succeeded in “catfishing” Ryan, convincing him to bring restraints and a knife to their home to complete a sexual fantasy with Christine Banfield on Feb. 24, 2023, prosecutors said. But after Ryan entered the Banfields’ bedroom, Magalhães and Brendan Banfield shot and stabbed him and Christine Banfield to death, according to investigators. They told police they found Ryan attacking Christine Banfield and acted to defend her. FILE - This image provided by the Fairfax County Police Department and taken on Oct. 13, 2023, was submitted as evidence in the murder case against Brendan Banfield shows a framed photo of Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhães on his bedside table in Herndon, Va. (Fairfax County Police Department via AP, File) It took several months for cops to unravel the case. Magalhães was arrested in October 2023, and Banfield was indicted in September 2024, one month before Magalhães flipped and cut a plea deal. Banfield’s lawyer, John Carroll, has not disputed the affair with Magalhães but claimed instead that Christine Banfield operated her own profile on the fetish website and that Ryan’s presence at the house was part of a consensual sexual encounter. With News Wire Services ...read more read less