Man, au pair charged in double murder of wife, man months apart
Evidence photo shows Brendan Banfield and his au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes. (Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office)
(NEW YORK) — A grand jury has indicted 39-year-old Brendan Banfield in the stabbing death of his wife and murder of another man in the couple’s bedroom 19 months after the killing, according to Virginia’s Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office.
Banfield is accused of fatally stabbing 37-year-old Christine Banfield and shooting Joseph Ryan, 38, in February 2023.
Banfield’s charging in the case comes months after the family’s 24-year-old live-in au pair was charged in the case.
“We know Brendan Banfield and Juliana Magalhaes, the family au pair, were involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the murders,” Fairfax Police Chief Kevin Davis said at a press conference Monday.
Banfield was indicted on four charges of aggravated murder and one charge for the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is accused of the premeditated murder of the two.
If convicted, he could face a life sentence without the possibility of parole. For the firearm charge, he could face a mandatory minimum of three years.
“The great investigative work of the Fairfax County Police Department led us to new information which was instrumental in securing today’s indictment,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said during the press conference.
Investigators would not reveal what new information led to Monday’s arrest.
ABC News has reached out to an attorney for Brendan Banfield for comment.
The Banfield couple were married and living in their family home with their then-4-year-old daughter at the time of the murders.
Police responded to a 911 call from the home on Feb. 24, 2023, and found Ryan dead in an upstairs bedroom as a result of gunshot wounds. Christine Banfield was stabbed.
She was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to police.
Police said they recovered two firearms and a knife from the home at the time of the murder.
Police also carried out another search warrant at Banfield’s house on Monday.
Magalhaes has been in custody since her arrest, according to police. Her trial is scheduled to begin in November.
The two are being held in the same adult detention center, according to Descano.
Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — Opening statements will begin Friday in the trial of subway rider Daniel Penny charged in the May 2023 choking death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man, in a New York City subway car.
The jury was seated Wednesday. The trial is expected to last between four and six weeks, according to Judge Max Wiley.
Penny, a former Marine, has pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death.
Wiley denied Penny’s bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter case in January.
Penny put Neely, 30, in a fatal chokehold “that lasted approximately 6 minutes and continued well past the point at which Mr. Neely had stopped purposeful movement,” prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have said.
Penny’s attorneys said they were “saddened at the loss of human life” but that Penny saw “a genuine threat and took action to protect the lives of others,” arguing that Neely was “insanely threatening” to passengers aboard the F train in Manhattan.
Witness accounts differ on Neely’s behavior on the train, prosecutors say.
They note that many witnesses relayed that Neely expressed that he was homeless, hungry and thirsty, and most of the witnesses recount that Neely indicated a willingness to go to jail or prison.
Some witnesses report that Neely threatened to hurt people on the train, while others did not report hearing those threats, according to police sources.
Some witnesses told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train; however, others have said though Neely had exhibited erratic behavior, he had not been threatening anyone in particular and had not become violent, police sources also told ABC News following the incident.
Some passengers on the train that day said they didn’t feel threatened — one “wasn’t really worried about what was going on” and another called it “like another day typically in New York. That’s what I’m used to seeing. I wasn’t really looking at it if I was going to be threatened or anything to that nature, but it was a little different because, you know, you don’t really hear anybody saying anything like that,” according to court filings by the prosecution.
Other passengers described their fear in court filings. One passenger said they “have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.” Another said Neely was making “half-lunge movements” and coming within a “half a foot of people.”
Neely, who was homeless at the time of his death, had a documented mental health history and a history of arrests, including alleged instances of disorderly conduct, fare evasion and assault, according to police sources.
Less than 30 seconds after Penny allegedly put Neely into a chokehold, the train arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette Station: “Passengers who had felt fearful on account of being trapped on the train were now free to exit the train. The defendant continued holding Mr. Neely around the neck,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass in a court filing against Penny’s dismissal request.
According to prosecutors, footage of the interaction, which began about 2 minutes after the incident started, captures Penny holding Neely for about 4 minutes and 57 seconds on a relatively empty train with a couple of passengers nearby.
Prosecutors said that about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into the video, Neely ceases all purposeful movement.
“After that moment, Mr. Neely’s movements are best described as ‘twitching and the kind of agonal movement that you see around death,'” the prosecutor said.
The defense argued Penny had no intent to kill, but Steinglass noted that the second-degree manslaughter charge only requires prosecutors to prove Penny acted recklessly, not intentionally.
“We are confident that a jury, aware of Danny’s actions in putting aside his own safety to protect the lives of his fellow riders, will deliver a just verdict,” Penny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, said after Penny’s request to dismiss the charge was denied.
In a past statement to ABC News, an attorney representing Neely’s family said, “This case is simple. Someone got on a train and was screaming so someone else choked them to death. Those two things do not and will never balance. There is no justification.”
“Jordan had the right to take up his own space. He was allowed to be on that train and even to scream. He did not touch anyone. He was not a visitor on that train, in New York, or in this country,” attorney Donte Mills said.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to delay his criminal hush money case in New York, after the judge overseeing the case delayed Trump’s sentencing.
New York Judge Juan Merchan on Friday delayed the sentencing date from Sept. 18 until Nov. 26, and said he would issue a ruling Nov. 12 on whether to dismiss the verdict on the grounds of presidential immunity.
Defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove on Monday sought an “en banc” hearing on Trump’s motion to pause the proceedings indefinitely so a federal court could resolve the applicability of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity opinion.
“Such a stay is appropriate in order to preserve Trump’s right to a fair and orderly litigation of the Presidential immunity defense in a federal forum,” Blanche and Bove wrote in a letter to the Second Circuit.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is seeking to have the case dismissed after the Supreme Court ruled in a blockbuster decision that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, in a ruling last week denying Trump’s bid to move the case from state court into federal court, wrote that “Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion affects my previous conclusion that the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”
Trump’s attorneys subsequently asked the Second Circuit to stay Hellerstein’s ruling.
(WASHINGTON) — A “diverse set of actors” in the U.S. could use Monday’s one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel as an opportunity to “engage in violence or threaten public safety,” Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials warned on Wednesday, sources said, adding that the actors could specifically target Jewish, Muslim or Arab communities.
Law enforcement is particularly concerned about hoax threats targeting symbolic institutions or public gatherings, according to sources, although there is currently no credible threat that anything is going to happen.
Those places are “pretty attractive targets” if an extremist wanted to carry out an attack, officials said.
Actors with a range of motivations, including those who are antisemitic or Islamophobic, could be motivated to strike, especially with Al Queda and ISIS encouraging lone offenders to carry out attacks against the West, according to sources.
Foreign terrorist organizations online could escalate the threat of violence in the U.S., particularly targeting Jewish community institutions and U.S. officials who support Israel, sources said.
At the same time, it is unlikely that Hezbollah or Iran or its proxies would attack inside the U.S. homeland, sources said.
After the events of Oct. 7, hate crimes in the U.S. skyrocketed. Hate crimes continue to be the biggest threat to members of the Arab, Jewish and Muslim communities, officials warned.
Senior DHS and FBI officials are concerned that graphic images from the continuing conflict in the Middle East could contribute to radicalization, violence and even retaliatory attacks.
Sources also said that the FBI and DHS are “aware” that violence can occur at local protests.
Officials went into more detail about the threat that election officials face from domestic violent extremists.
White supremacists did make threats in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, according to sources, and officials remain concerned they could be inspired to carry out an attack.
The FBI believes that the threat from domestic violent extremists could persist through the presidential inauguration in January.
Violent extremists could seek to use a range of violence or disruptive tactics against individuals and entities associated with the presidential election, including physical attacks, threats of violence, swatting and doxing, mailing or otherwise delivering suspicious items, arson and other means of property destruction, FBI officials said on a call with law enforcement partners that was described to ABC News.
Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Kristie Canegallo said on the call that the threat environment is “volatile.”
Individuals who could be targeted include candidates for public office, elected officials, political party representatives, election workers, judicial personnel, participating in court cases related to the election media personnel and perceived ideological opponents, the FBI assesses, according to sources.
Domestic violent extremists could also target voting locations, ballot drop boxes, voter registration locations, political rallies, campaign events and political party offices, and could target the homes of public officials.
The concern from security officials is that domestic violent extremists continue to “promote and exploit” narratives about the election and that that could motivate some extremists to act upon grievances.
“Since the last presidential election, some of the most common social and political issues extremists have violently reacted to include immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights and abortion access,” an FBI official said, according to sources.
Some indicators, sources said, are suspicious behavior around the sites themselves, specific threats of violence, packages with excessive tape or postage stamps, photographing election related infrastructure and unfamiliar people around a certain site.
The warning comes as DHS on Wednesday issued its Homeland Security Threat Assessment that outlined threats facing the United States.
