The au pair in a strange and twisty Virginia double homicide case struck a plea deal with prosecutors and will cooperate when her former lover goes on trial for murder in February. Juliana Peres Magalhães, 24, pleaded guilty to manslaughter Tuesday and will be sentenced in March, the New York Times reports. She faces up to a decade behind bars; had she been convicted of murder, she would have faced more than four times that. She was having an affair with her employer, Brendan Banfield, in 2023 when Banfield's wife, Christine, and another man, Joseph Ryan, were found fatally wounded at the Banfields' Herndon home. Ryan had been shot to death while Christine Banfield was clinging to life after having been stabbed; she later died at a hospital. Peres Magalhães is charged only in Ryan's death; Brendan Banfield is charged in both, NBC News reports.
A Fairfax County attorney called the guilty plea a "significant step forward in this case," but declined to share details of what led to it. At a Tuesday hearing, prosecutors laid out their theory in more detail, the Washington Post reports. They say Brendan Banfield started an account on a fetish website under his wife's name in order to lure Ryan to the family home, and Peres Magalhães impersonated Christine Banfield in a phone call to Ryan finalizing the plan a few days before the murders. Prosecutors believe Brendan Banfield stabbed his own wife, but staged the scene to make it look like Ryan had stabbed her, and he and Peres Magalhães interrupted the attack and fatally shot Ryan in self-defense. (More on the ins and outs of the case here.)
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