BODY BAGS WITH JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN | Au Pair Love Triangle Murder Trial: What Does The Forensic Evidence Show?

Summary

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace – BODY BAGS WITH JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN

Episode: "Au Pair Love Triangle Murder Trial: What Does The Forensic Evidence Show?"

Date: February 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the complex murder case involving IRS Special Agent Brendan Banfield, his wife Christine, and their au pair Juliana Perez Magaly, centering on the violent deaths of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan. Hosts Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave (co-host) meticulously dissect the forensic evidence, alleged motives, digital breadcrumbs, and crime scene staging associated with the so-called "au pair love triangle" and address whether the forensic evidence aligns with the narrative presented by the defense. The tone is frank, occasionally sardonic, and deeply analytical, leaning heavily on Joseph’s seasoned forensic expertise.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background & Case Participants

• Brendan Banfield: IRS special agent, husband, and central figure now on trial.
• Christine Banfield: Wife, 37, found nude and stabbed in her home.
• Juliana Perez Magaly: 23-year-old Brazilian au pair, allegedly involved romantically with Brendan.
• Joseph Ryan: 39-year-old man, shot dead in the Banfield home, claimed to be a stranger prior to the event.

"Whoever was in charge of acquiring wealth in my family, they failed miserably...I never understood these folks that sign up to take care of other people’s children. But here we are, looking at a million-dollar home and an au pair in suburban Virginia."
— Joseph Scott Morgan, [02:00]

2. Timeline and Initial Events

• Morning of February 24, 2023: Multiple 911 calls from the Banfield home reporting a stabbing and shooting, two victims found.
• First 911 Call: Made and disconnected at 7:45 a.m.
• Second 911 Call: 15 minutes later, au pair connects and hands the phone to Brendan, who claims he shot a man stabbing his wife.

“When there’s more than one 911 call made from a residence and you’ve got dead bodies, somebody didn’t have their story straight.”
— Dave, [03:54]

3. The Defense's Story

• Defense alleges Christine solicited Joseph Ryan via a fetish website for a violent rape fantasy.
• Digital forensics revealed a profile for Christine on such a site, arranging the meeting.
• The official story: Au pair leaves for the zoo with the child, sees Ryan entering, notifies Brendan, both return, and "walk in" on an attack.

“We’re talking about going down a really, really dark path...you're trying to sell me on the idea she wanted this stranger to come into her home? I mean, I don’t know, call me old fashioned, but from an investigative standpoint, this thing stunk to high heaven.”
— Joseph Scott Morgan, [16:09]

4. Crime Scene Complexity & Forensic Issues

• Christine stabbed multiple times in an upstairs bedroom.
• Joseph Ryan shot multiple times; wounds from two different guns.
• Multiple forensic challenges: excessive blood complicating wound analysis, cross-contamination, and an absence of pristine context when Christine is removed and dies at the hospital.
• Sharp force (stabbing) vs. gunshot wounds and their investigative implications.

“There was so much blood here that it would have been really, really hard to completely interpret things in it to its fullest extent.”
— Joseph Scott Morgan, [21:48]

5. Digital & Behavioral Evidence

• Forensic evidence quickly pointed toward a relationship between Brendan and Juliana.
• They switched out phones days before the attack—interpreted as an attempt to hide digital records.
• Juliana moves her clothes into Christine’s closet just months after the murder.
• Both had training at the firing range days prior, and the Glock used in the crime was newly purchased.

“Pretty quickly after the death of his wife...the au pair moves into the master bedroom and hangs her clothes in the closet of Brendan Manfield’s dead wife.”
— Dave, [10:31]

“They found digital evidence, physical evidence, forensic evidence, and circumstantial evidence that it appeared to them that Banfield and Perez Magaly...were involved in a sexual relationship.”
— Dave, [35:24]

6. Discrepancies, Motive & Aftermath

• The timeline of phone calls, presence in the home, and witness statements didn't align “naturally.”
• Brendan refused police interviews; only communicated via doctor/hospital personnel.
• Investigators suspected scene staging, motivated by the love affair and desire to eliminate Christine.

“But here’s the interesting thing...he would understand the basics of how to process a crime scene. He’s a cop. And the fact that he would not engage in conversation with police officers...is rather odd from the beginning.”
— Joseph Scott Morgan, [32:15]

7. Au Pair's Legal Turn & Prosecution Moves

• It took over a year and a half for arrests.
• Au pair made a deal with prosecutors after her story was scrutinized and the defense tried to suppress her statements.
• At trial, Juliana admitted to creating the fetish website profile with Brendan, exposing the plan as premeditated.

“She copped a deal and has admitted now because...the defense was saying, well, see, Christine just had this really dark side. At trial, you know, this is ongoing. But the au pair said she created it, that they created the profile.”
— Dave, [46:29]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Law Enforcement Solidarity vs. Secrecy:

  “You carry a gun and a badge, Joe, I think you’re duty bound to talk to cops.”
  — Dave, [38:06]

• On Forensic Investigation:

  "Let me make my own assessment. Because at that point in time my mind is still kind of in a pristine state...unaffected by whatever kind of static is coming in.”
  — Joseph Scott Morgan, [22:09]

• Dark Humor Break:

  “When you said Russian, I thought you meant she was hurrying. I’m sorry.”
  — Dave, [18:08]

• On Staging and Motive:

  "As an investigator, you walk onto a scene, and there has been a bloodbath...you know you've entered into another level as an investigator.”
  — Joseph Scott Morgan, [19:58]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction and Relating to the Case – [00:33 – 03:18]
• Case Summary & Initial Crime Scene Details – [03:18 – 07:24]
• Fetish Website Theory Discussed and Debunked – [10:04 – 16:09]
• Crime Scene Forensics and Investigation Nuances – [21:48 – 23:43]
• 911 Call Timeline Dissection – [23:43 – 27:51]
• Analysis of Forensics and Banfield’s Law Enforcement Training – [27:51 – 34:48]
• Digital Evidence & Post-Murder Behavior – [34:48 – 38:36]
• Gun Ballistics and Forensic Clarification – [39:10 – 43:12]
• Final Breakthrough & Au Pair’s Admission – [43:12 – 46:47]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a masterclass in forensic skepticism and methodical reasoning, making clear how digital forensics, scene staging, and behavioral evidence can unravel the official story to reveal deeper motives and complicity. The hosts highlight the necessity of challenging improbable victim narratives and underscore the importance of context, both physical and digital, in homicide investigations.

Original Tone: Candid, experienced, at times darkly humorous—with a relentless focus on uncovering the forensic truth behind tabloid headlines.

Transcript

[Dave]

This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.

[Podcast Announcer]

Friday. Kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Lipsy for sensational.

[Podcast Announcer]

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

[Dave]

Ilia Malady redefining the sport Friday at.

[Podcast Announcer]

8 Eastern, 7pm Central on NBC.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And Peacock Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, I gotta tell you, I don't. I don't necessarily run in the circles of rich folks. I never have. I don't come from a bunch of wealth or anything like that. My family's been, you know, on the North American continent, I guess, since the 1600s. But whoever was in charge of acquiring wealth in my family, they failed miserably. So none of that was ever passed on to me. I've certainly never been around folks that can afford to have, I don't know, you know, one of them stay at home nannies or they call them an au pair, you know, to watch after the young folks, take care of the babies for. You never understood that. I don't know. I guess. I guess people have the ability to do that. My family never did that. Plus, I love taking care of my own youngins. Love taking care of my grandbabies, too. I want to hand them off to somebody, but that's just me. But, you know, there's a case that has been going on for some time, and I've had a lot of you guys ask me about my opinion regarding, regarding this case and the IRS agent who's now on trial for his life because of the forensics here, because the forensics are so odd in this case. And this involves many things that we talk about, you know, in the forensic world, specifically crime scene staging, you know, which is a discipline all in of itself. So today on Body bags, as the case up in, up in Virginia is going on right now of this man, who Brendan Banfield, who in fact is an IRS agent. He's on trial for his life. Let's. Let's dig into this a little bit. It's piqued my curiosity, that is for sure. So without further ado, guess what? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags Brother Dave. I don't know about you. I never had folks take care of my youngins for me. I mean, family, you know, would watch them periodically, but it was, it was me and Kimmy. I've never really understood these folks that, you know, sign up to take care of other people. It's One thing to clean up the mess of your own kids, but to clean up the mess of somebody else's kids, it's just. It's something different for me, and it's something. I can't identify with it. But if you have enough money, you know, you could. You know, you can afford to do that.

[Dave]

Well, here's what we've got, friends. We actually have an IRS special agent that means he carries a gun, Brendan Banfield. We have the au pair for Brendan and his wife, Christine, who is Juliana Perez Magaly's at the time, 23 years old. Christine Banfield is 37, by the way. And then we got a guy, guy named Joseph Ryan. He is not connected to this before the event takes place. Really? And what happens is on the morning where we are now almost three years removed from when this happened.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

God, is. Is it been three years?

[Dave]

February 24, 2023, police are called to the Banfield home for a stabbing and a shooting around 8 o' clock in the morning. Give or take. I say give or take. We'll get into that in a little bit. There were actually, there was more than one call made. And I'm gonna be honest with you. When there's more than 1911 call made from a residence and you've got dead bodies, somebody didn't have their story straight. That's what I'm thinking.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, it's one. Hey, look, I gotta. Can I just make a point here? It's one thing, and I'm glad you brought this up because, you know, it's one thing if you're working a case and you've got multiple ear witnesses or you've got multiple eyewitnesses, say something takes place in front of a home in View or something, running gun battles going down the street. And yeah, you might get multiple 911 calls, you know, that are coming in from all these different locations. As a matter of fact, we could go back and talk about, you know, the Surgeon. The Surgeon case up in Ohio. Remember how the 911 operator acted? Oh, you know, when they call that thing in, they had multiple people.

[Dave]

Where there were so many family members and co workers and friends that didn't. Couldn't get them on the phone. So they went to the house and they're calling 9 and the 911 operators going, I've already talked to somebody from there. Cops have already been out there, leave us. Basically leave us alone. But that's not the case here. What we have here is we've got a house, we got a domestic Scene where you have a wife and a husband and their four year old daughter and they're all pair. Now, the au pair was taking the four year old somewhere that day. The zoo or whatever.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

In a plan they were going to. National Zoo, man.

[Dave]

A planned day trip. And again, Magalis is not from the United States of America. She's in her early 20s and she's here as an au pair. Now, inside the home, what police find are two bodies. And they're killed differently too. One is shot, the other is stabbed. But here's a story that they were told, okay? Which, Joe, every now and again, when a story is. Is told and it doesn't make sense, you know, and you're thinking you're smart enough to be an IRS agent carrying a gun and a badge, and this is what you came up with. Where are you spending your time? Not in the library, not watching crime shows. You thought this up? Talking to a 20 year old girl? I guess, because it doesn't. This is not the plan of an adult that.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No.

[Dave]

So they get the police get there and they find Christine Banfield, the wife of Brendan. She's nude and she's stabbed multiple times in an upstairs bedroom. Nearby, they find a man named Joseph Ryan, and he is shot multiple times inside the house at the time of the shooting, Brendan Banfield, along with the family's au pair, Juliana Margulies, and the Banfield's four year old daughter. Okay? That's how many people you got in the house at the same time. Five people. Two are dead. So who did the stabbing? Who did the shooting? That's what Joseph Scott Morgan has to be able to tell us. Because, Joe, they didn't walk out of there in handcuffs with anybody at first. It took time. This happened again February 24, 2023.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, let me address one more thing too. In this particular case, you got an IRS agent, Special Agent. And they are living. And look, granted, I know, okay? So if you're in federal service, and I might be stepping way outside of my, you know, of my bailiwick here, but if you live in a specific area and you're working for the feds and they have assigned you there, they will provide you with specific funds to kind of balance out. To kind of balance out, you know, the, the downside of being a government employee so that you can live, you know, in a particular location. But dude, this house they're living in is worth a million bucks. Now, I don't know about you, I got a lot of friends in law enforcement. Colleagues I've Got people I've taught, I've got a lot of, a lot of former students that are federal agents now. Literally all over the world they're working in embassies. I got guys that are our FBI agents that work abroad and all over the country. And to a person, I don't know of any of them, particularly those that are still in the field, maybe those that have retired and have developed, you know, security companies and that sort of thing. I don't know of any of them that own a million dollar CR man. Because, you know, and I'm just, you know, I'm sitting here and when I heard that number, I was shocked by it because I don't know what the actual salary scale is, but you know, it just seemed that, that part of it in and of itself. I'm thinking, man, how can you afford this now? I mean, I don't know, maybe he's a great investor, maybe there's family money or something like that. But not only do you have, do you have a million dollar home, you've got an au pair. You know, that's something that, you know, you're thinking that somebody that lives in Manhattan, you know, near Central park or you know, somebody that's up in, I don't know, in Rhode island along the coast or you know, up in Connecticut along the coast, they've got all pairs but Virginia, and you're an IRS special agent. Million bucks. It just, it, I don't know, the whole thing to me it was just, it was shocking. And again, maybe I'm just chasing rabbits, but it just, it seemed a bit off to me.

[Dave]

Well, when you get down to the nitty gritty here, and Joe, I know that because of the scene that the, the death investigator is going to have to really work hard to put together where the bodies were, you know, what actually transpired based on the forensics, what happened. Because what we have, I can give you the overall story of what the defense is, is pulling together, but that's something that has to be decided based on the forensics, Joe. And we're not talking just the blood evidence or just the gun residue or the knife fingerprints on the knife. We're actually going to talk a little bit about the forensic digital evidence. Yes, because that comes into play as well. And during the time that this case was being investigated, we covered the story right when it happened. I remember covering it because you had again the au pair involved in a story with you got the pretty girl watching the 4 year old, you got the 38 year old wife, but One of the things, Joe, that came out of this was it very quickly after the death of his wife, of Brendan. You know, when Brendan Banfield's wife is dead, the au pair moves into the master bedroom and hangs her clothes in the closet of Brendan Manfield's dead wife. The au pair takes the position that the wife had been in. That happened very quickly and we're talking two or three months after the deaths occurred. So the story that they tried to sell to the police was that Joseph Ryan was on a fetish website and that Mrs. Banfield, Christine Banfield was also on this fetish website. And on this fetish website she said she wanted to be raped violently. And I'm sure these types of websites exist. I don't know that for a fact. I'm telling you that right up. I do not know that for a fact. I've never eyeballed one, I've never been on one. I just know that we've covered stories and they're there. So Joseph Ryan, 39 years old, answers the fetish website. I'll come and do that. I will be there to rape you. What time and where? And so Joseph Ryan shows up to commit this violent rape against Christine Banfield. And at that time that morning, the au pair was supposed to be with the four year old headed to the zoo. And I'm guessing that Brendan Banfield was supposed to be on his way to work.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, yeah. And that's the way it went down. And you know, they're trying to get people to buy into this idea that this is something that the wife Christine had planned. And because, you know, you talk about something that, I mean, we're talking about going down a really, really dark path here, brother. You know, an individual mama that is, I don't look, you know, say what you will about me, I don't put anything past dudes when it comes to sexual interest or proclivities. And. But when you're talking about a mother that's living in, in suburban Virginia like this and you're trying to sell me on the idea that she wants this stranger to come in, into her home and into, I don't know, I guess the marriage bedroom and though it's, you know, it's, I don't know, role playing, I guess she's asking to be raped. And Dave, not just raped, but this idea of violence comes into it. And for me, I think that as an investigator, you know, when, when the investigators would, you know, begin to try to wrap their brain around this and they're looking at the life that these people lead. You know, we talk a lot in. In this world that we're in, Dave, about victim blaming, don't we? You know, you hear that a lot. And the old adage that the, you know, that the dead can't speak up for themselves. And you're right. How, how do you. First off, how do you disprove it as an investigator? How do you prove it? Because either way you got to do it. And they would have spent a tremendous amount of time trying to understand did she have a background in this kind of fetishized world that people indwell and listen, I've worked cases at. I had one guy I know in particular in Atlanta. I'll go and tell a story of. He would go to. He would go to what they used to call lingerie shops in Atlanta. I don't know if they still exist. And he would wear. And this guy in particular, he was wearing. And the reason I know why he was wearing this is because I found out about it when I went to examine his body at the hospital. He was wearing his wife's underwear when he rolled in in cardiac arrest from one of these lingerie shops. And the lingerie shop is not really they'll sell you lingerie, but you're interacting with the model inside of the lingerie shop and they put on a show, quote, unquote air quotes here for you to model the underwear that you can purchase.

[Dave]

I'm sorry, do you have an address in Atlanta?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, and I would not give.

[Dave]

I'm just looking for some information because.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

I got my research. I had than one death that came out of this place and that's kind of a fetishized thing. But you know, when we examined him at the. Because interestingly enough, I had the in anytime an emergency room charge nurse tells you and she knew me by name because I'd worked a lot of cases and that had wound up at this particular emergency room. She says this is probably going to be a natural death, but you need to come here and see this. And I'm thinking I got other stuff to do. But she's telling if an ER nurse, a charge nurse tells you to do that. So I go to the emergency room and she takes me back into the exam room where this guy's died and he's. He's purple from the nipple line up. You can tell he's in congestive failure. But she said, come over here, look at this. And she pulls back the sheet and sure enough, he is wearing what turned out to be two Pair of his wife's underwear, panties, if you will. And then she pulls them back, right? Pulls them back and down beneath his equipment, you could see two white strings hanging out of his rear end. And he had taken, let me see, how can I put this politely? Two of his wives, feminine products, and inserted them. And I'll never forget, we went back and this girl that he was in the room with at the lingerie shop said he was doing his thing. I was taking my clothes off and he was, you know, stimulating himself and he suddenly turned purple and started vomiting and he had heart attack right there. And she was Russian, I'll never forget that. And, you know, through broken English, you know, she's telling. She's terrified, you know, because she thinks that the cops are going to arrest her or whatever.

[Dave]

When you said Russian, I thought you meant she was hurrying. I'm sorry.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, no, no, she was not rushing. She was Russian. And so, yeah, it runs a gamut. I could tell you stories right now about people that. I've worked cases where people were involved in fetishism that have, in fact, died in the midst. And some of these things, Dave, turned very, very violent. I've worked cases where people have been strangled many times and the intent was not there to bring about death. And this goes back to this level of violence. We've got a suburban housewife who. I don't want to say housewife, but certainly a suburban mother and wife who is signing up for a fetish website where she's asked to be violently raped by somebody because she's living out a fantasy. I mean, I don't know, call me old fashioned, but I gotta tell you, but from an investigative standpoint, this thing stunk to high heaven.

[Podcast Announcer]

Friday, kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy. Featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's see for sensational, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

[Dave]

Ilia Malady redefining the Sport, Friday at.

[Podcast Announcer]

8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

As an investigator. When you walk onto a scene, there are some things that are very benign and you have to be very careful with that because sometimes the benign things are the ones that actually trip you up. But there are those times when you walk onto a scene and there has been a bloodbath that has occurred there, you know, that you've entered into another level as an investigator that it's going to make this very complicated as far as trying to piece everything together. And, Dave, I would imagine that in this environment, when investigators walked into that room, they actually began to appreciate that they had a lot of blood evidence, you know, that there has been gunplay involved. And I think another thing also, and you and I have talked about this extensively, sharp force injury is involved here. And so that even makes it more complex, particularly when you're at a scene, I'm not talking about being back at the morgue, but when you're at a scene and you're trying to do an injury assessment, because blood begins to crust, it will crust and it will. It will actually hide injuries that you can't. That you can't appreciate. And here's one thing that you cannot do at a scene involving really bloody. You don't go grab a rag. You don't grab a rag. You don't bring out a sponge. You don't clean the body there. You make note of what you can see there. And then hopefully, hopefully when you get them back to the morgue and you begin the cleanup, after the photographic documentation, things will, you know, come to light. But, Dave, there was so much blood here that it would have been really, really hard to completely interpret things in it to its fullest extent.

[Dave]

Well, let me ask you about that, because when. When you have a scene that is like this, that is a mess, and do you do. Do you listen to police? Do they come and say, hey, this is what they're telling us happened, or do you come in blindfolded and say, everybody be quiet. Let me. Let me see what I see, and then I'll hear your stories?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, there's this kind of bleed over that takes place, no pun intended. And when I say bleed over, I mean, this is something that we in my field have to. Have to work through. Because when you arrive as a medical, legal, death investigator and to a certain extent, as a homicide detective, you will have had EMTs, you will have had first responding police officers that are there and they are saying, there's a lot of blood. These people are really banged up really bad. And so that's. That's kind of influencing. That's kind of influencing what your perspective on a case is. And you have to be very careful. You know, I think that a lot of it circles back to what I said about Tom Noguchi, you know, a year or so ago when I first talked about him looking at the ceiling in cases. And, yeah, it's my preference has always been, please don't talk to me. And I'm not rude to anybody, but please don't talk to me, just let me know that there's dead bodies in the room. Let me make my own assessment. Because at that point in time my mind is still kind of in a pristine state where it's unaffected by whatever kind of static is coming in. It might be valid stuff that they're trying to tell me. Now if there's whoppings about, they're loaded and I'm in danger. Yeah, I want to know that. If there's a dog in the house that might bite me, yeah, I want to know that. But I just want to know the basics so that I'm not colored anyway way when I'm going to do an examination.

[Dave]

Okay. Now in this case you have to wonder how did it end up where you've got Joseph Ryan in the house.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And.

[Dave]

Brendan Banfield gone to work, au pair off with the four year old to the zoo, but they all end up back in the house? Yeah, here's what happened according to the initial story told by the au pair. Because I do want you to know something. Brendan Banfield did not talk to police. I, I don't know what that means to anybody. I know what it means to me. But Brendan Banfield did not talk to police. They had to put this together based on what they were getting from Juliana Perez. Magaly's the au pair. Now, what happened is Banfield is on his way to work. Magalis has their four year old and is headed the Banfield's four year old daughter heading to the zoo. And she says Magalis said she saw Joseph Ryan, 39 years old, going into the home. Now, Christine Banfield is supposedly at the home by herself. And when Maghuli sees this man going into the home instead of driving to the zoo with the child, she calls Brendan Banfield, the IRS agent with a gun and a badge and says, hey, I just saw a guy go in your home. And so Branfield goes back to the house, Magalis comes back to the home with the four year old and that's why they were all at the house at the same time. Part one, Part two, Banfield says to Magoles, you take the little girl over there, put her, you know, get her away from all this. Now, upstairs in the bedroom, you've got Christine Banfield and you've got Joseph Ryan. According to the story that is told is that Christine Banfield was being stabbed in the neck by Joseph Ryan. So gun and a badge. Brendan Banfield shoots him and begins to try to help his wife, but there's too much blood, he's compressing it and doing this and that. Magalis comes up after hearing the gunshot and she then shoots Ryan because he's not dead. So there's two gunshot wounds. Yep, to Joseph Ryan. Now he's dead. The 911 call. I want to go very carefully here because it's important. There are two 911 calls made from the house. The first one is a 7:45am but quickly disconnected. Think about this for a minute. You have a man who's been shot dead, a woman who's been stabbed and is bleeding, and you call 911 and hang up. What is 15 minutes later before they get another 911 call? Joe. And that's the one that was made by Magalis, the au pair. After that call connected with 91 1, she gave the phone to a man, Brendan Banfield, who tells police. Tells 911, rather, he tells 911 he shot a man who was stabbing his wife. That's the story we got from Brendan Banfield. I say we because he didn't talk to police. Police arrive on the scene. They find Joseph Nathan Ryan, 39 years old, dead from a gunshot wound. They find Christine Banfield, 37, stab wounds. She is transported to the hospital alive, but she dies once she gets there. Brendan Banfield, Christine's husband, refuses to talk to police. He does talk to a. I'm guessing a doctor at the hospital who is telling him his wife passed, you know, and it was caught on or overheard by police, but basically saying, you know, he knew how much blood had been gone. You know, it was obvious she wasn't going to survive this attack.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, I think that there was even a conversation that took place, Dave, where, you know, the, the doctor talked about that, that this was unsurvivable, you know, that these, these injuries were so egregious, where you're going to have multiple defects in the body. You know, one gunshot wound or one stab wound is one thing, you know. And for those of you that have ever been through any kind of first aid class and you've got people that are bleeding, what's the thing that they teach you? Well, you're going to apply direct pressure, right? And with so much internal damage. And remember, when I say internal damage, if you've got multiple gunshot wounds, you've got a stab wound, you've got multiple tracks that are running through the body, Dave. And so for every one of those tracks, you're clipping all manner. And I'm not even talking about organ damage here. I'm just merely right now just talking about. Talking about the Vessels, you got multiple vessels that are, that are compromised and literally ripped to shreds and destroyed. And so when you walk through it and you begin to understand you're not an octopus, you don't have enough hands to place on top of all to do compression or to apply pressure rather. And then you've got the added piece to this where if they rolled her to the hospital, I'd be very interested to know, did she have some kind of faint pulse, agonal respirations? My suspicion is probably no, but she was probably pretty warm to the touch. She may not have died immediately, but she's slipping off into the, slipping off into the darkness. So they rolled her from there. And you know, this is another thing too that I know that you and I have discussed extensively. If you have an individual that is removed from scene, and look, they have to remove them from scene, right? Because this is a life saving measure. But when you, when you have an individual that is removed from the scene, suddenly your context is gone. As an investigator, there's not a body or you're absent at least one body in this case to examine and kind of contextualize the scene. Because one of the things that we look at is relationship. And we're talking about, remember we're going back to violent rape, remember?

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

So we're talking about proximity of bodies. We're also talking about evidence of potentially some type of sexual assault, because that's what's being implied, right? And you know, that's the heart of this thing. And all of a sudden, from an evidentiary standpoint, things ain't the way that they were initially. They weren't pristine in that pristine state. So that when the investigators arrive after the fact, they've got a lot of questions. And here's one other thing that I wanted to bring, you know, kind of bring into frame here you've got a fellow and we've talked, we've, we've talked a lot about or have mentioned at least a couple of times that he is a gun toter. And when you have a gun toter, you can have an agent, say for instance, that works for one of these three letter agencies. And when I say that folks might not know this, but did you know that almost every single federal agency out there has some kind of law enforcement wing? And there's been a lot of hate that's been made over the last few years. You remember when they, I don't know if you recall this, but when they had that, that budget thing that came out a few years ago, where The IRS was arming up, you know, they were going to arm them with all of, you know, with all kinds of weapons. Yeah. Okay, so he. He is, in fact, a fellow law enforcement officer. And. No, he. He's an IRS special agent. Don't. Don't think that this guy doesn't know anything about crime scenes, because he does. And let me tell you how this kind of works with the feds. The IRS will send their future law enforcement investigators down to a place called Glencoe, Georgia. They have their own academy. It's a basic law enforcement academy that they go through. Okay? And it's like multiple agents. You might be. You might be in a class down there with people from the forest Service or U.S. park Service. You might have people that work for the fda, all right? You might have people that work for the Federal Drug, Drug Administration. And I'm not talking about the dea, everybody, the Department of Energy, you know, and they might be going through a basic law enforcement academy. And then at the end, or the completion of that, they will then go to the IRS academy as kind of an add on. This is what we do. This is how so he. He would understand the basics of how to process a crime scene. He doesn't sit around, you know, the old. What's the. The. The thing, The. The visor that accountants wear, the green visor, you know, and he's got his gun sitting on his desk and he's running numbers on charts and all that sort of thing. That ain't the way this is. This guy. This guy's cop. Okay. At. And the fact that. But he would not engage in conversation with police officers who, by the way, are trying to determine what happened to a fellow law enforcement officer's wife in their own home is rather odd from the beginning. And again, this goes back. You know, we talked about the violent. The violent sexual part of this that they alleged that she was asking for. I hate to say that sounds horrible, but that's what they're implying. And then there's gunplay involved, and he won't. He won't sit down and try to help them try to understand what happened. And, you know, maybe he's. He's falling back on an excuse that, well, you know, I pulled my weapon and I fired it, so therefore I can be implicated in this thing. But I don't know, Dave, I got to tell you, brother, I think that there's. At least. I think from the police standpoint, there's. They probably have a hint at this point in time. There's a much more Sinister underpinning here, I gotta tell you. That's just my thought on it, Dave. This is so very complex as far as scene goes. Can you kind of break this down into the nuts and bolts of it so that we can kind of begin to understand the dynamic here and we'll kind of walk through this very carefully.

[Dave]

Well, you know it, when we looked at it earlier, we're talking about how the au pair calls Brendan Banfield saying, I just saw a guy go in the house. Banfield comes back to the house. So does the au pair with their four year old daughter. He, Banfield goes up and sees Joseph Ryan stabbing his wife Christine in the neck. Banfield shoots Joseph Ryan. He doesn't kill him. This is where the au pair then goes to a safe in the house, retrieves another gun, comes upstairs and she shoots Joseph Ryan in the heart, killing him. Meanwhile, according to Banfield, he's trying to stop the bleeding on Christine, his wife, but she stabbed in her neck. There's no place to compress. And that's the discussion that is heard from the doctor on the body cam, from the police officer at the hospital when he tells Brendan Manfield, your wife is dead. She just lost too much blood. There was no way. And he was taught, he says, I was trying to get it to stop, but. And the doctor says, there's no place on the neck to make it stop. So police begin the investigation based on this housewife, this mother, and why was Joseph Ryan in the house? Who is this guy? So they're doing the digital forensics on the phones, the computers, they're looking up all of this stuff and they find out pretty quickly a number of things. Joe, the chief investigator and all, the chief of police, rather, Chief Davis, said that investigators early on found digital evidence, physical evidence, forensic evidence and circumstantial evidence that it appeared to them that Banfield and Perez Magaly, the. The husband of the deceased wife and the au pair, who's only 22 years old at the time, that they were involved in a sexual relationship and that Brendan Banfield actually had Perez Magolies swapping out their phones for new ones, new phones. In the days before the attack, in the days before his wife is killed by this unknown assailant, he swaps out phones to hide evidence. I mean, that's all they're thinking. They find out that Brendan Banfield took the au pair to a gun range before his wife was killed. A Glock that was used to shoot Joseph Ryan was purchased on a trip to the shooting range. Brendan Banfield Empires. Magaly said Christine Banfield summoned Joseph Ryan to her home through a website for sexual bondage. Brendan Banfield shot Joseph Ryan in the head, wounding but not killing him. Julian Perez Magalies got a gun from a safe, shot Ryan in the heart, killing him. Brendan Bamfield and Perez Magalies began the relationship months before the deaths occurred. Banfield and Perez Magaly's relationship continued after the deaths and in the months following the death of his wife, the mother of his four year old daughter. He moves in the au pair. Perez Magaly's clothing is hanging in the Banfield closet, not Christine Banfield's clothing. You know, Joe, my wife died 11 months ago. Her clothes are still in the closet. Oh, Lord, I can't get them out. Her phone is still on.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

God bless you, man.

[Dave]

And I saw this and my first thought was, you scumbag, you're carrying a gun in a badge, working with the IRS and you won't talk to cops. That's a big problem for me. I, by the way, I am the guy that says don't ever talk to cops, ever. Because you're. Even if you didn't do anything, they're good if they think you did, you're going to be found dead, you're going to be found as the guilty guy. So don't ever talk to cops. But you carry a gun in a badge, Joe, I think you're duty bound to talk to cops.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, you would think so. You know, and even, you know, even if you're, you know, you're not tasked as an IRS special agent to investigate local homicides or deaths and that sort of thing is still, you're, you're under that, you're in that family. Okay? But here's, here's the interesting thing. You know, IRS agents, they typically carry the weapon that they learned to train on when they went through the academy, and IRS agents actually do carry Glocks. Okay, so this is a weapon he would have been familiar with. I find it very.

[Dave]

Didn't know that. I didn't know that.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. So I find it very interesting. Very interesting. As a matter of fact, I think that they carry Glock, maybe Glock 26, like 5th gen. What's interesting though is that, let's just say, let's just say that he's carrying that same frame, okay, that same frame of weapon or platform of weapon, and he goes out with the, which he did, by the way. You had just mentioned they had gone out to, to this shooting range so that she could, she could practice shooting, which is Something that had never occurred before. And this is. Dude, this is within days of this event taking place. But did you know that even though it might be the same weapon platform, it don't matter, because both of those weapons, the, the ballistics on both of those weapons are going to be distinctly different. And so I find that I find interesting. And it's something else. When you begin to think about Joseph Ryan, who is laying there, he's shot, the wife is stabbed, any kind of round that they take from either the body or the scene, the striations on those bullets are going to be distinctly different, let's just say. Okay, and I'll give you, for instance, if you are a law enforcement officer, and I don't care where you're working, you have to go to the range and qualify many times. You'll have to qualify a couple of times a year. All right? So every time you fire that weapon, changes occur within that barrel and you'll get little nicks and dings. It's not just the rifling inside of the barrel that transfers into the striations on the, on the projectile itself. The more use you have of a weapon, the more distinctive it makes it. Okay? Even if it's the same caliber, the same platform, that weapon is going to look different than, say, this brand new one that was just purchased, which was actually utilized here. So you're going to have two different weapons. And look, you've got both of them, you know, admitting to the fact that both these weapons were fired. So you'll have two weapons to examine, two weapons that are going to go to the state ballistics lab to be viewed. The question is this. You go into great detail with shooters, with, you know, people that have shot individuals. If they're going to talk, they're going to be asked specific questions. What position was this individual when you engage them with your weapon to begin with? Were they standing? Were they kneeling? Were you behind them? Were you in front of them? Were you to the side of them? Okay. And so that's going to make a big difference here as to relationship. And then with Christine being pulled out of the environment, you know, having gone to the hospital to be treated for these sharp force injuries, you know, to no avail, of course, that could in and of itself change the dynamic. But I want to go back to this thing with the digital forensics here, because again, in this case, just like so many others that we've covered over these years, you actually have someone kind of laying out with these digital breadcrumbs of what they're doing. And I think then in the midst of these things, people, they don't think about how this looks. Right. And so if you're creating something, it's very interesting that you know she would have. She did this hang up, right? She did this hang up on the 911 call. And then Dave there, there is body cam footage to Wood sound, correct?

[Dave]

Yeah. Oh, you know, going back to the hang up call, you know, she said that this what Magaly said at the time, the reason she hung up the phone, that when they got into the house to back up little timetable here. When Magalis Left with the 4 year old to go to the zoo, she's pulling away and she forgot their homemade lunches that they were supposed to take. And when she turns around to go back to the house to pick up the sandwiches, she sees Ryan going in the home. That's when she ostensibly calls Banfield who's at a local McDonald's on his way to work. Banfield turns around and comes back to the house. He imagoles meet at the house and walk into the house together. Banfield says take the four year old and go downstairs into the basement. And he goes upstairs. Banfield goes upstairs and you know, shoots Ryan. Well that's where the hang up call happened. Magaly says at 7:47 she was in the basement calling 911 and realized she didn't know what to tell him. Because see, the only thing she knows, Joe, is what really happened. She doesn't know the story that needs to be told. Remember English is not her first language. She's 22, from Brazil. She's an au pair and that's why she hangs up and that's why there's 15 minutes in between. I said you got to get the story straight now backing up a minute because we have the story of the fetish website. The, the, the thing is, or the evidence shows that Christine Banfield's laptop was used in setting up the account. The profile on this fetish website where she, according to records on this website, reached out, wanted somebody to violently rape her. That's what her fetish was, to be violently raped in her home. And that she arranged everything and that she even bought the tickets for Magalis to take the four year old to the zoo that day so they would be gone on. See, she knew what time her husband was leaving to go to work. She knew what time she'd get the pair out with the four year old and the home would be open for her to be violently raped by a guy. She didn't know that she met on this fetish website. Now, part of this back and forth, you know, it took over a year. Joe, we mentioned this happened in February of 2023. It was a year and a half before an arrest, before anything was done, before an arrest was made. And then the arrest did come down. Well, when the indictments were handed down charging Brendan Banfield with the. With what had happened and Magalis, it only took three weeks for the au pair to cut a deal. The deal was because right after the indictment was handed down. Joe, do you know if Brendan Banfield's defense attorney Wanted, wanted very first thing. Everything the au pair said to police from the time this happened until the time she we wanted inadmissible. She doesn't. The English is not her first language. She didn't know what she. Everything. So everything she said, you can't use. And when that didn't happen, she copped a deal and has admitted now because they were. The defense was saying, well, see, Christine just had this really dark side. She really wanted this. And you know, hey, Brandon Banfield, he's a hero. You know, he tried to save his wife's life. This guy was killing her. He took it too far. You know, the whole crazy thing. But at trial, you know, this is ongoing. But that the au pair said she created it, that they created the profile.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Now that's almost insurmountable. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.

[Dave]

This is an Iheart podcast.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Guaranteed human.