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Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast

The Murders of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan: The Au Pair's Testimony + Trial Update

Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast

Moms got ya covered-feed

True Crime

4.68.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happens when a suburban love affair turns deadly? When the prosecution's star witness is also negotiating a Netflix deal from her jail cell?On February 24, 2023, Christine Banfield, a beloved pediatric ICU nurse, was found dead in her Fairfax County, Virginia home. Also dead: Joseph Ryan, a man Christine had allegedly been communicating with online about violent fantasies. But prosecutors say Christine never sent those messages. They say her husband Brendan Banfield and their au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães were having an affair, and instead of getting a divorce, they hatched a plan to kill Christine and stage it as a home invasion gone wrong. In this episode, we break down the first four days of Brendan Banfield's murder trial, including Juliana's explosive testimony as the prosecution's star witness. We cover the fake online persona created to lure Joseph Ryan, the forensic evidence pointing to a staged crime scene, jailhouse love letters, and why Juliana is negotiating a Netflix deal while testifying. Make sure to check-out One Strange Thing Podcast. If you love the weird and mysterious, THIS is the show! Thank you to this week's sponsors! Get organized, refreshed, and back on track this new year for WAY less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Join the more than 3 million families who have been served by K12, and empower your student to reach their full potential now. You can make the switch at anytime. Go to K12.com/MOMS today to learn more. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday! Follow us on Instagram: @momsandmysteries Join our Patreon: patreon.com/momsandmysteries Visit our website: momsandmysteries.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:57.6

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I am doing quite well. We are through the flu at my house. That was a big update a couple days ago. Yes. And no one else got sick. I did a whole lot of doing things with gloves and washing a billion hands and wiping off everything. And I'm impressed. I want to say I'm

1:05.4

impressed because I feel like it's, and any mom also would want to give you like props for being able to quarantine

1:12.2

like the one sick person in your house and keep it from the rest of the house like it's amazing

1:18.3

yeah yeah it's a teenager she likes to stay in a room anyway we made the one bathroom her bathroom

1:23.6

and we all used the other one so it worked out as good as it possibly could I ended up spending a lot of time cleaning and a lot of time listening to the case that we are talking about today, as well as our friend Laura's one of her podcasts. Have you heard of one strange thing or have you listened to any of that? Because it's way up your alley. I've definitely heard of it. I have not had a chance to actually listen yet, though.

1:44.5

Okay. Amazing stuff. For those of you who don't know about one strange thing, they go through

1:49.9

like the old, I basically think it's the bowels of old news articles, like literally through

1:55.3

newspapers to find these weird stories. Like there's one about the ghost bride. I was listening to

2:00.5

one on the owl man who was like the British mothman. Anyway, there's one about the Ghost Bride. I was listening to one on the Owlman who was like

2:02.1

the British Mothman. Anyway, very much up your alley, Mandy. And Laura has like the best voice in the

2:08.0

world, which for sure. It's not very nice to say about herself. Well, I didn't say it. She just does

2:13.3

have one of the best voices in the world. So anyway. So anyway, and she's a great storyteller, an

2:17.5

amazing researcher. So if you were looking for something new to listen to after us, please

2:22.7

check out one strange thing and I'll make sure to have it in our show notes. Awesome. Yeah. So

2:27.8

we're going to get really right into this story that we're talking about this week. This is one that

2:32.6

is currently very relevant.

2:35.8

The trial is actually actively going on right now. So this is a story that a lot of you

2:40.8

might have heard about or be familiar with or even be following right now, as I know you are,

2:47.2

Melissa, and have been this entire time. Of course, I'm always late to every single party. So I'm happy to be here today.

...

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