Talk of the Town
42-year-old Wendy Moyer Warren, a youth care worker for the past nine years at W.W. Moore Detention Facility in Danville, has been arrested on charges of having an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old boy at the jail for youth offenders. Now she’s in the city jail under no bond.
(FAIRFAX, Va.) — Brazilian au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães, who went along with former IRS agent Brendan Banfield in a northern Virginia double murder plot, was sentenced to to 10 years in prison with two years of probation.
On Friday morning, Fairfax County Judge Penney Azcarate decided to give the 25-year-old the maximum sentence, which was up to 10 years on a manslaughter charge for which she pleaded guilty in 2024.
“Your actions were deliberate, self-serving, and demonstrated a profound disregard for human life,” Azcarate said in delivering her ruling. “So, let’s get straight: You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done to the victim and this family.”
A new “20/20” episode about the case, “The Au Pair, The Affair and Murder” is scheduled to air Friday, Feb. 20, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Magalhães and Banfield were separately arrested over their roles in the Feb. 24, 2023, murders of Joseph Ryan and Banfield’s wife, Christine Banfield, which were committed inside the Banfield home.
Early in the investigation, detectives discovered evidence suggesting that Banfield and Magalhães were having an affair — and that they had plotted to kill his 37-year-old wife.
Part of that plot, according to prosecutors and Magalhães’ testimony, involved covertly creating a profile for, and thus masquerading as, Christine on a social media site for sexual fetishes.
Ryan, 39, took the bait in what prosecutors called the “catfishing” scheme. Ryan communicated back and forth with the profile account that was allegedly posing as Christine, as they together crafted a rape fantasy scenario using a knife, chains and rope.
“I have caused pain that cannot be measured. I pray for forgiveness from the Benson family, and from the Joseph Ryan family,” Magalhães said during Friday’s sentencing hearing.
“There is nothing I could possibly do to make it up to you, for your loss. There are so many regrets, this is my biggest. It’s a tragedy I have been carrying with me, and I know I can never take back the devastation of what I have done,” she added.
Saying she lost herself in the relationship with Banfield, she has changed in jail over the past three years.
At the time, Magalhães and Banfield told police they came home to find Ryan — a stranger to them — stabbing Christine Banfield to death. Banfield and Magalhães each fired a shot, killing Ryan, they said both in their 911 call and to responding officers at the scene.
In October 2023, Magalhães was charged with the second-degree murder of Ryan, as she had admitted to firing the second, fatal shot.
One year later, Magalhães took a plea deal with prosecutors, turning on Banfield in exchange for a lesser charge of manslaughter. Prosecutors also promised to recommend to the judge upon sentencing that Magalhães only get time served.
With that agreement, Magalhães sat for nearly four hours of interviews with prosecutors, largely confirming the theory detectives had developed about their scheme.
Magalhães also took the stand in the trial against Banfield in January, as he maintained his innocence. During his three-week-long trial, Banfield even took the stand, testifying in his own defense.
After two days — nearly nine hours total — of deliberations in the trial, the jury reached a verdict on Feb. 2. The jury found Banfield guilty on all four counts, which included two counts of aggravated murder, one count of child endangerment, and possession of a firearm in commission of a felony.
Family and friends of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan filled the courtroom Friday morning for Magalhães’ sentencing.
Joining remotely online from Florida, Ryan’s mother, Deirdre Fisher, delivered her victim impact statement. She said her son was born two days before Christmas, making it a special holiday for them. Since Ryan’s murder, she has not been able to take down her Christmas tree, which sits behind the urn holding her son’s ashes.
“I say good morning to him each day when I turn on the tree’s lights, and I tell him I love him each night when I turn off the lights,” Fisher told the court.
Fisher said she has missed so many milestones now, including the chance to be a grandmother. There have been many times, Fisher said, when she’s reached for the phone to call her son, only to remember that he can’t and won’t answer.
Ryan’s aunt, Sangeeta Ryan, delivered her impact statement from the courtroom, pausing periodically between sobs.
“He was fun-loving and loved from the beginning. He was inquisitive, curious, smart, charming, and so dang talkative,” she said.
Ryan’s aunt described her nephew’s love for animals and the environment, noting that he often rescued and adopted dogs.
Sangeeta Ryan, added that he also was a dedicated member of their family, especially in taking care of his grandmother, who, she said, sold her home in wake of Ryan’s murder to “dodge memories, grief, and reporters.”
Acknowledging that Magalhães did eventually come forward with the truth, Sangeeta Ryan said that this still was not an act of heroism on Magalhães’ part.
“This could have been a very different ending where Juliana saved two lives,” she said could have been the case if Magalhães had not gone along with Banfield’s plot.
As Magalhães was charged only in Ryan’s murder, Judge Azcarate ruled that prosecutors could not include victim impact statements that Christine Banfield’s family members had prepared.
The death penalty was abolished in Virginia in 2021, meaning that, following his conviction, Banfield is facing life in prison without parole.
His sentencing hearing is set for May 8.
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(LOS ANGELES) — A landmark trial over social media addiction has drawn fresh scrutiny to a decades-old legal shield: Section 230.
The case, which began last Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, centers on claims against Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — and YouTube, which is owned by Google. Plaintiffs argue the companies knowingly built features that encouraged compulsive use among young users, contributing to long-term mental health harm.
The case is the first of more than 1,500 similar lawsuits nationwide to go before a jury, potentially setting a precedent for how tech companies could be held liable for product design. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in the case on Wednesday.
The companies deny the allegations, arguing that mental health outcomes are shaped by a range of factors beyond social media use. They say they have implemented safeguards aimed at protecting young users, including parental controls and accounts designed specifically for teens.
In a statement to ABC News at the start of the trial, a Meta spokesperson said, “We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
Meta said that the company has made “meaningful changes” to its services, such as introducing accounts specifically for teenage users.
The tech giants are expected to challenge the plaintiff’s argument that there is a direct link between social media use and mental health issues. They may also invoke legal protection long-afforded by Section 230.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects social media platforms and other sites from legal liability that could result from content posted by users because they are not deemed to be publishers.
Plaintiffs have sought to circumvent that legal immunity in part by arguing that the platforms are addictive, which amounts to a defect in a product.
Section 230 grants broad protection for internet platforms, saying: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Some tech giants, like Meta and Google, have supported reform of Section 230 that would raise the standard that platforms would need to meet in order to qualify for immunity. But the companies largely support preserving the law in some form to protect them from legal liability tied to user-generated content.
Section 230 has garnered backing from some free-speech advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The measure “protects internet users’ speech by protecting the online intermediaries we rely on,” EFF said in a blog post last week, praising Section 230 as “the legal support that sustains the internet as we know it.”
In 2023, the Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings that upheld Section 230, rejecting challenges from users alleging that harm had resulted from online posts.
One of the cases, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, concerned a lawsuit brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American woman who was killed in an ISIS terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. The lawsuit against Google, the parent company of YouTube, alleged that YouTube recommended ISIS recruitment videos to users. The high court ruled against the plaintiffs.
Many Democrats argue that Section 230 allows platforms to evade accountability for allegedly permitting harmful or misleading content, claiming the rule lets platforms off the hook for policing too little speech.
Republicans have taken issue with what they consider big tech censorship, saying the legal protection allows the platforms to police too much speech without facing consequences.
In December, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced the Sunset Section 230 Act, which would remove the legal protection from federal law within two years. A bipartisan group of seven senators has signed onto the bill but it remains well short of a majority.
ABC News’ Shafiq Najib contributed to this report.
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