Inside the Minds of Alleged Killers: FBI Expert Robin Dreeke on Banfield, McKee & the Psychology of Control
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 910 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
Brendan Banfield was a trained federal agent. Prosecutors say he spent months building a murder plot designed to look like a home invasion — complete with a fake profile, a groomed stranger, and a staged crime scene. His star witness lied for a year before flipping. Now a jury has to decide if she's telling the truth or saving herself.
Dr. Michael McKee was a successful vascular surgeon. According to police, he allegedly waited eight years after his divorce to drive hundreds of miles and kill his ex-wife Monique and her husband Spencer while their children slept down the hall. No threats. No criminal record. Just silence — and then violence.
Robin Dreeke ran the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. He's spent decades identifying dangerous personalities before they become dangerous. In this interview, he profiles both men and explains what their alleged behavior reveals about psychology, control, and the arrogance of people who think they're smarter than everyone else.
We break down Banfield's 911 call, the framed photo on the nightstand, and the four-year-old left waiting in the basement. We analyze Juliana Magalhães — the au pair who admitted pulling the trigger on Joseph Ryan and is now negotiating with Netflix. Does her credibility survive the jail letters and the media deals?
Then we dig into the concept of "wound collectors" — people who never let go of perceived injuries. Robin explains how professionals like McKee can mask resentment for years, what triggers them to finally act, and how they flip the narrative to make themselves the victim.
Both men maintain their innocence.
#HiddenKillers #RobinDreeke #FBI #BrendanBanfield #MichaelMcKee #WoundCollector #AuPairAffair #TeepeMurders #BehavioralAnalysis #TrueCrime
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewski, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:09.3 | Brendan Banfield was an IRS criminal investigation agent, trained in interrogation, evidence analysis, and how criminals get caught. |
| 0:20.2 | According to prosecutors, he used that training to build a murder |
| 0:23.1 | plot designed to look like a home invasion. He allegedly created a fake profile on a fetish website |
| 0:29.9 | using his wife's identity spent a month grooming a stranger to play the role of an assaulter, |
| 0:36.9 | then shot that man in the head and stabbed his wife |
| 0:40.7 | to death while their full-year-old daughter waited in the basement, backpack on, coat zipped up, |
| 0:46.9 | ready to go to the zoo. |
| 0:48.9 | If the prosecution's theory is true, this wasn't a crime of passion. |
| 0:52.3 | This was a federal agent using his expertise to |
| 0:55.3 | commit the perfect murder and nearly getting away with it. Robin Drake, retired FBI special |
| 1:00.4 | agent, chief of the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program with us here to continue to break |
| 1:06.9 | this thing down. Robin, when you look at the prosecution's theory of the case, a federal |
| 1:12.6 | agent, allegedly building that months-long murder plot using the fetish website, a Patsy, |
| 1:19.2 | and a staged crime scene. What does that level of planning tell you about the psychology of the |
| 1:26.0 | person behind it? |
| 1:32.6 | He had a lot of confidence in his, if it was him doing that, he had a lot of confidence in his ability to pull it off. And I typically, I think it's an over, if it is him, an overinflated |
| 1:38.8 | confidence that he could pull it off because this is not what he did for a living. |
| 1:42.3 | He was an investigator, but he wasn't a |
| 1:44.2 | homicide investigator and there's a huge difference. And we've seen it multiple times. People can't |
| 1:51.0 | stage garbage like this and get away with it very, very frequently anyway. It's tough to. |
| 1:56.5 | So I think if it is him, it's way overconfidence in that. |
... |
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