"She Wrote She Was Heartbroken For Doing This To Brendan" — FBI Agent On Au Pair's Credibility
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Juliana Peres Magalhaes is the prosecution's star witness against Brendan Banfield. She's also a woman who wrote from jail that she was "heartbroken" for what she was doing to him — and that she still loved him. But she wanted to go home to her mother. So she took a deal. Retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer returns to Hidden Killers to break down the credibility of a cooperating witness whose freedom depends on conviction. Juliana told police the same story Brendan did for a year: Ryan was an intruder, they shot him in self-defense.
Then she flipped. Now she says Brendan masterminded a murder plot and handed her a gun the morning of the killings. Her plea deal recommends time served and deportation to Brazil. Her sentencing is scheduled after Banfield's trial. Coffindaffer has evaluated cooperating witnesses throughout her FBI career. She knows the difference between someone finally telling the truth and someone saying whatever gets them out. In this interview, she explains what corroborating evidence prosecutors need to make Juliana's testimony stick, how the defense will attack her on cross-examination, and what the jury should be watching for. The prosecution says Juliana was a reluctant participant who was told it was "too late to back out." The defense says she's lying to save herself. Which version will the jury believe?
#BrendanBanfield #JulianaPeresMagalhaes #HiddenKillers #JenniferCoffindaffer #AuPairMurder #FBI #StarWitness #PleaDeal #TrueCrimePodcast #WitnessCredibility
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:08.6 | The prosecution's entire case here in the Au pair affair murder trial that's getting underway of Brennan Banfield. |
| 0:15.6 | It comes down to one person, Juliana Perez Mangalese. |
| 0:19.1 | She spent a year in jail facing second-degree murder charges. |
| 0:23.9 | Then she changed her story, took a plea deal for manslaughter with time served and agreed to testify |
| 0:31.0 | against the man she allegedly helped commit double murder. She gets to go home to Brazil. All she |
| 0:36.6 | has to do is say what prosecutors need her |
| 0:39.7 | to say. But here's the thing. From a jail cell, she wrote to her mother. And she was heartbroken |
| 0:46.2 | for what she was doing to Brendan, that she still loved him. So how does the juryway testimony |
| 0:52.0 | from a witness whose freedom depends entirely on conviction? |
| 0:56.6 | Jennifer Coffendaff, a retired FBI special agent, is here to help us break all that down. |
| 1:03.1 | The sentencing is scheduled for after Banfield's trial. This is the scheduling for Juliana, |
| 1:10.3 | meaning nothing or go back to Brazil, to ensure that she continues to cooperate. |
| 1:17.1 | I mean, essentially that means to ensure that she continues to say what we want her to say. |
| 1:21.2 | If she doesn't say what we want her to say, they could say you're not going back home. |
| 1:24.9 | I mean, this, again, it just, this doesn't feel like the free will of a witness in a case like this when you're holding literally her future in front of her. |
| 1:34.8 | And Tony, that happens every day in every investigation from the standpoint of we get witnesses that are jailhouse snitches. |
| 1:46.0 | We get witnesses. Look, you can't get choir boys to talk about gangbanging or to talk about |
| 1:51.2 | murders, right? It's people who have their hands dirty in one way or the other in terms of the |
| 1:56.8 | crime because those are the witnesses to them, right? So you have to take into account, |
| 2:03.3 | in my opinion, how does she hold up on the stand? How does she do in terms of what she said? |
| 2:11.5 | It's always a problem when you have anyone change in their testimony. I mean, for me, geez, it's, it's tough. I mean, |
... |
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