A 24-year-old Brazilian au pair charged in a brutal love triangle double murder at a Virginia mansion has whined to her mother that she's had enough of prison.
“I am tired of this place and this situation,” Juliana Pérez Magalhaes wrote in a recent email to her mother from the Fairfax County Jail. The Washington Post.
“I'm unhappy and nothing I do makes me happy,” she wrote in a June email. “I just want to get out of here and go home to be with everyone. But by the grace of God we'll be together soon, Mom.”
The letter was the latest development in a bizarre murder case that has captivated crime fans around the world.
Magalhaes, who prosecutors say was in a torrid relationship with his employer, 39-year-old IRS investigator Brendan Banfield, is accused of shooting and killing Joseph Ryan, a fetish-seeking stranger who allegedly stabbed Banfield's wife to death in the couple's home on Feb. 24, 2023.
Ryan was allegedly summoned to the multimillion-dollar mansion through an online sexual fetish site and was assaulting a naked Christine Banfield when Magalhaes entered the room with Christine's husband, Brendan, who was her lover.
According to the Washington Post, Brendan allegedly fired a shot at Ryan, wounding him, but it was the au pair who then grabbed another gun hidden in the house and fatally shot Ryan.
Magalhães claims self-defense, but prosecutors say the whole incident was a ploy orchestrated by Magalhães to get rid of Christine. They say Ryan was a sucker lured into a sordid conspiracy.
Investigators have not yet identified the person who created an account under the name “Anastasia9” on a sick-sex dating app allegedly linked to Kristin and lured Ryan to the home.
Prosecutors also questioned the circumstances under which Magalhaes left the home just after 7 a.m. for a day at the zoo with the Banfields' young children, only to return having forgotten lunch.
Brendan left the house at 7.10am and waited in the car park of a nearby McDonald's until his au pair called him at about 7.37am when he returned home.
Authorities say the two went in together and shot Ryan.
Prosecutors have questioned why Brendan did not fire his handgun until after Ryan allegedly stabbed his wife, and why Magalhaes then retrieved his own gun.
The couple waited 10 minutes before calling 911, according to the outlet.
“There's no way someone in that situation would do that unless they were trying to hide something,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Gill said during a court hearing on the case in December.
Brendan has not been charged and, when questioned in court, asserted the Fifth Amendment. No one has been charged in his wife's death.
Magalhaes, who joined the Banfield family in 2021, has been charged only in Ryan's shooting death, and investigators are continuing to unravel the complex murder case.
Her mother, Marina Pérez Souza, continues to insist her daughter is innocent.
Speaking to reporters in Portuguese, she called Magalhaes a “rare gem” and said he did not deserve to be jailed.
“I pray that the prosecutor and the judge understand who is guilty in this case, because it's not Juliana,” she said.
