Christine Banfield Murdered Because Her Husband Didn’t Want a Divorce
Christine Banfield was killed by her husband in a plot with their nanny, because he reasoned murder was preferable to divorce.
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It’s dangerous to be a chump. Ask Shannon Watts, Laci Peterson, Kathleen Peterson, or Nicole Brown Simpson — women murdered by their cheating husbands. All dispensed with for the crimes of being inconvenient, or worse, flagrantly autonomous.
Add to that list, Christine Banfield. Her husband Brendan Banfield allegedly stabbed her to death after locking their 4-year-old daughter in the basement. All so he could start a new life with his mistress, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, their nanny — nanny schtupping being an infidelity cliche.
Think about the dynamics of nanny affairs for moment. Imagine you’re a sociopath. What’s more gratifying than a new younger woman to care for your kids and service your dick? Every day is a spousal appliance audition. There in your home side-by-side with your old appliance. Of course you’re going to compare. You want the new appliance, but how to get rid of the old one? You can’t just call Home Depot to haul her away.
‘Divorce was not an option’
Video of Peres Magalhaes’ testimony was reported by NBC4 and livestreamed by CourtTV. She testified that Brendan began concocting the plan after saying he wanted to “get rid” of his wife.
Peres Magalhaes testified that Brendan told her “divorce was not an option” because “money was involved” and he did not want to share custody of his daughter with his wife, per NBC4.
He can’t divorce Christine Banfield! The court would determine she had some rights to her child and marital property! How many of us have divorced FWs who were similarly outraged? Consequences for my infidelity? Child support? Expenses? I want what I want now.
Continue to think like a sociopath. Hey! I’m smarter than everyone else. And I deserve all the things! So, let’s plot an elaborate murder and pin it on some other schlub.
The murder plot
The New York Times reports (gift link)
A suburban dad. An extramarital affair. A double homicide tied to a fetish website. And a Brazilian au pair who was in the middle of it all.
In testimony that ended Wednesday, that au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, connected the dots of what prosecutors say was an elaborate plot by Brendan Banfield to kill his wife, Christine, 37, and Joseph Ryan, 38, in the Banfields’ Virginia home in 2023 — a scheme that included Ms. Magalhães, with whom he was having an affair. Ms. Banfield was stabbed to death, and Mr. Ryan was fatally shot.
“I just couldn’t keep it to myself, the feeling of shame and guilt and sadness,” Ms. Magalhães said on the stand.
I’m glad she flipped, but dear God, the mistress seems like another sociopath. How can you contemplate a future with a man who wants to murder his wife? This is next level magical sparkletwat thinking.
Stage the death to make it look like it was the victim’s idea
All the victim blaming is baked right in! Had this gone according to plan, Christine would not be a wronged betrayed wife, no, she’d be a bad girl who liked transgressive sex with randos. And her Brendan would be the hero who was only trying to protect her! The tragic chumped husband who tried to save his cheating wife’s life.
Wow. What a DARVO masterstroke.
Prosecutors say Mr. Banfield created an account on a fetish website, posing as his wife, and lured Mr. Ryan to their home early one morning, leading the man to think he would be in a tryst with Ms. Banfield as part of a violent sexual role play scenario that she had proposed.
I’m sorry Mr. Ryan was a murder victim, but not that sorry. I’m thinking of all those men in the Gisele Pelicot case who were quite happy to answer similar ads. What is wrong with people?
Once Mr. Ryan had entered the bedroom where his wife was, prosecutors say that Mr. Banfield, an I.R.S. agent at the time, shot him with his pistol and then stabbed his wife, staging the scene to appear as if he had come to his wife’s aid. Ms. Magalhães, now 25, also confessed to shooting Mr. Ryan later after seeing him move.
As cynical as my Chump Lady brain is, I’m still gobsmacked at the sheer hatred of stabbing your own wife. The mother of your child.
And I’m gobsmacked that Magalhães thought that Brendan Banfield, a dumpy IRS agent who looks like something squeezed out of tube, was a prize worth killing for.
But here we are. Two sociopaths in twu wuv. If only Christine Banfield could’ve divorced the cheater and gained a life, instead of losing hers. It makes me wonder how many FWs get away with it.
Can’t help feeling that if guns weren’t so readily available in the U.S. many lives would be saved. Its too easy for anybody to buy a gun, hence, murder is much easier than facing the legal system and divorce proceedings. You gotta wonder if something has to be tweaked in the system. Its the Wild West south of the border, thank God I live in Canada where this is a rare occurrence, and not a daily one. Tighten up your gun laws people, woman and children are dying.
I mean, he stabbed her, so I doubt lack of a gun would have prevented this.
The other murder victim was shot. A gun was a key part of the scheme. Two victims — one stabbed, one shot.
The sex worker was shot, so a gun was used in the crime, lets not forget about the other victim.
I’m not forgetting the other victim. I am saying that had a gun been unavailable, someone who is willing to stab their victim to death would have found a way to kill her (and the other victim) regardless. Stabbing is brutal, up close, and personal and speaks to a lot of rage. The lack of a firearm would not prevent that person from killing.
FYI, I am in favor of gun regulations.
Such stupidity and such tragedy! How many of us wonder if our murder didn’t cross the mind of our FW or AP? It’s what CL always says…it’s the CHARACTER of these bozos. And once your character says you can cheat on the one you purport to love anything is possible.
This is one of the things I have told my therapist when working through the feelings and trauma of the whole thing – I think I will always be at least slightly alarmed by this person who would do this thing to both me and our daughter. The character (or lack thereof) that would cause something so catastrophic to happen to other people that they claimed to love or at least tried on as family…what’s to say that worse won’t happen at some point? I am forever on guard, as long as I have to co-parent with this effing sociopath. He’s covert too, which makes it that much worse because he’s not overtly a threat. Of course at this point, we all know better. Sometimes with them it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. You never know where their lack of character and consideration for other human life will stop.
I can only hope that Christine’s daughter is well looked after and supported.
Monsters walk amongst us.
LFTT
It’s monstrous how little they think of the children involved in their twisted plans. This poor girl.
Why “Brendan Banfield, a dumpy IRS agent who looks like something squeezed out of tube, was a prize worth killing for”?
If Ms Peres was on a temporary work visa (there are legitimate companies in Brazil that broker temporary au pair jobs), dumpy Banfield was the road to her green card, a small price to pay because she could alwys get a divorce later. She seems pretty shallow, but probably realized she was going to get caught and decided to cut her losses.
You would think that with all the true crime shows, etc., around, people would make better plans. But stupidity ….
Sigh. Such a sad, ugly story, but he and the nanny ended up in jail instead of with each other. The elaborate plan failed. His wife is dead, and their daughter is going to have to work through this for the rest of her life. What an evil, delusional man!
I read elsewhere that the trial will be many weeks and that the same judge is involved who did the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial. I take that as pretty much a positive here.
It truly could have been any of us.
This IRS guy is diabolical!
Regulars around here know that I call my ex FW narcopath because at one point he was considering a fatal accident for me. He even looks like Chris Banfield. Whether criminal brothel madam was in on the plot or not I don’t know but she’d be like this nanny out to strip FW of assets and maybe a green card too.
It happens more than we want to believe, people have told me of suspicious deaths of relatives who were chumped and the cheater never arrested.
Frighteningly this probably means nearly all of our FW have at least *thought* about how convenient our early demise would be for them even if they ultimately did not attempt murder or botched the job.
Two disordered people find each other but there is an object (or two) in the way of their happily ever after. It becomes rational to the disordered to remove those objects. When I finally realized that I was an object to Cheaty McLiarface and Joyful Jil I was terrified for a minute. But Cheaty knows that Roscoe is my constant companion. It doesn’t guarantee my safety but it does provide some peace of mind.
National news stations have covered this story, as well as another similar story, for several day in great detail. They have spent less time on important national and international stories.
They are teasing viewers with photos of attractive, upper class white Americans. The stories do not connect the dots between infidelity and domestic violence. Nor do they report the numbers of women killed everyday.
We are being failed.
I didn’t think about this, but you are correct- this would be a great way to inform the public about the numbers, the statistics and how common domestic violence is, how commonplace. And yes, the correlation, the stats, of infidelity and violence. It’s just put out like a “how can this have happened!” as opposed to, this happens. Here is proof–
we all know. But the world still is uninformed, victims are still blamed. Etc…
These killings always make my blood run cold. My ex FW was telling my teenage kids I was trying to kill him and them. Luckily, my kids came to me. I was planning to leave but this sped up the timeline to immediately and I got myself and them safely, quietly. My boss became my benfactor and we stayed in a hotel for 2 days and then moved to our freedome crib where we stayed till they finished high school. They go to college at the same school and I moved like an hour away. All about 500 miles from my ex. I often think what he could have done.
Where cheating and extreme misogyny dovetail 🙁