Feb. 4, 2026
Au Pair Affair Guilty Verdict Explained! (Because We Needed Some Answers From An Expert)
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RSS Feed Amy and T.J. discuss one of the most elaborate and unthinkable murder cases they’ve ever covered with criminal defense attorney extraordinaire Alison Treissl. 40-year-old former IRS agent Brandon Banfield was found guilty this week of killing his wife Christine and a stranger he lured to his home, Joe Ryan. While Amy and T.J. thought the defense raised some reasonable doubt with two experts from the police department, Treissl pointed out all of the problems with Brendan Banfield’s testimony and why she and the jury just didn’t believe him.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ Presents. And we have been dying to talk to our friend Alison Treesel. She has been our legal guide through so many of these trials we have been following, and man did we closely follow and were frankly a little shocked at this week's verdict in the Brendan Banfield aka the O Pair.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Affair double murder trial.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: And look, TJ and I sat through almost every minute of this trial, all the testimony, from opening statements to closing arguments or was it opening arguments to closing statements? I always get it confused opening statements to closing arguments. Yes, and the verdict still was a little surprising to us. And Alison Treesel very famous, renowned, experienced, thirty plus year career of criminal defense, high profile cases.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: She's out of LA.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: You've seen it all at this point, really, I mean you've even seen a BDSM trial, So I mean you've walked the walk, You've talked to talk you watched this trial as well.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: What was your reaction to the verdict.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: Not only am I not surprised at all by the verdict at all, I'm surprised that the jury deliberated for nine hours. I mean I once he took the stand and made statements like his wife, who had according to him, been stabbed at that point multiple times in the neck, turns to him and says, I'm sorry, I'm bleeding out. I love you. That is a bunch of poppycock, okay, And I don't know if that's a legal term I use at all the time. Not believable, he lied through his teeth. And by the way, I didn't like Juliana. I mean I didn't like her on the stand. I don't like her as a witness, but I found her to be far more credible, far more believable, and her testimony lined up with the evidence that was ultimately presented in the case. And then the ultimate nail on the call fin the ultimate and maybe the best witness out of all witnesses, right, The prosecution called twenty, at least twenty witnesses in their case in chief, and the defense calls witnesses. Juliana's on the stand for two days, Brandon's on the stand for two days. But I think the best witness was the prosecution's rebuttal witness of the manager that said meeting meeting there was no meeting. I mean that alone. You know, there's a jury instruction and says, if you don't believe a portion of somebody's testimony, you can disregard all of it.
00:03:06
Speaker 4: So was that the issue?
00:03:07
Speaker 3: Then?
00:03:07
Speaker 4: Do you think you would have had a he would have had a better chance of not being convicted had he not gotten up on the stand.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because I thought about that. Let me just run through a few things with people. So, you know, for a case to go to trial, about ninety to ninety five percent of all criminal cases across the country do not go to trial. They resolve, you know, whether it's a plea, a dismissal, diversion. So it's unusual for cases to actually make their way to trial. The conviction rate for trial. For the conviction rates are very very high, right, So it's like a ninety percent conviction rate when a case goes to trial, and of those cases, only a very small percentage, you know, maybe twenty five percent, thirty percent of defendants testify. And the reason that they don't testify is you don't have to prove a thing. You don't have to It is is completely the prosecution's burden. They must prove by beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed the offense. You don't have to call a witness. And the problem is not in the direct examination, it's the cross and will your client's story stand up to cross? And from where I'm sitting, I found his direct to be unbelievable and I found her cross to just destroy his story. So did he have a choice? You know, he seemed to be taking these notes that he was very active in his defense, right, he was sitting there furiously taking down notes throughout the entire trial. And the decision to testify was ultimately his. And maybe he believed that he was crafty enough and smart enough to outwit that your But it did not help him. It did not help him.
00:05:06
Speaker 2: Wow, did it hurt him?
00:05:09
Speaker 3: So there were parts that hurt him. So the explanation were the the question about from the prosecutor that said we didn't use the towel, the blanket, the sheets to stop bleeding. That hurt him. The It was unbelievable for him to say that this was a nothing burger of a relationship with Juliana after they had been shown these love letters, for him to call Julian say that he only fell in love with her once she saved his life. That was like an oh please moment for me and I found that statement that you know, it took him two minutes to say it, but it undid in my in my opinion, any good that his testimony would would have done for him. When he said, with her neck, I mean, imagine her, this woman cannot speak, I mean, this woman had her entire neck is gutted. And he says that. She turns to him and says, I'm bleeding out. I'm so sorry. I love you. I mean, come on, if it was a movie, you'd say, I'm taking a potty break right now, all right now. But now I'm gonna ask you guys, because.
00:06:28
Speaker 4: Look, no you're the expert.
00:06:31
Speaker 3: Was about did you believe his testimony? What was it?
00:06:35
Speaker 4: It wasn't him. I almost canceled, I think we but almost canceled the two of them out because his story seemed unbelievable, parts of it like give me a freaking break, and then she happened to be so unlikable. So it was almost two different things. It wasn't just that her story was ridiculous. Some parts, she couldn't remember some stuff, but she wasn't a great witness. He wasn't a great witness. So we got hung up on the where the devices were and with whom and who logged onto the feed. We got caught up and all that stuff.
00:07:08
Speaker 3: Okay, because so one of the things that happens, and this is this is great that we're talking about. It is if you are watching minute by minute as a as a trial unfolds, and you you get stuck on an issue, you do miss the big you do forget about the big picture of the case. Okay, you forget about well, jurors have to you know, and prosecutors in this case, this is a if true, which it which judging by the verdict, it we now he he now is guilty. And you don't have to say allegedly, Okay, you don't have to say allegedly this or you know, you know he's guilty. He did this. So this was a sinister plot. This was a plot that most people on the planet would never think of, right so to to set up this fetish site. And and also, by the way, if I'm a jur and I'm thinking about the fact that he comes up with the oh she was having affairs too, and you know, one time I knew that she was into b DSM, but there then we learned that there's no proof of that at all. There's no proof of that. I think, you know, this is a real son of a bit. This is a I mean for him to do this, to tarment, tarnish his late wife, to disparaiture, to say all of these things. And then you think of the cruelty of this plot to kill his wife when all of us say, well, why didn't you just get a divorce, Why didn't you just get a divorce? You had to kill her and your daughter was there and you and then you kill this innocent man and you set him up. I mean, how deranged are you? And and when you think about that big picture right as a juror, and you say, I don't believe him. I don't believe him. And is he capable of this? And if you can get to those two things, you're going to convict.
00:09:00
Speaker 2: And to exactly what you're saying.
00:09:02
Speaker 1: It's so hard to see this guy who looks he's an IRS agent, looks like your next door neighbor, who's telling you that he didn't do it, and he's saying, why would I do something that egregious, that elaborate, that manipulative for someone who I just started sleeping with six weeks ago, that that was a hard thing for me to come as a human because to believe that someone could do that, and that's your reason, that was a hard thing.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: I wanted to believe him.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: I wanted to think he didn't do those things.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Is sorry to cut you off. Did it make sense to you that he would take Juliana to a gun range? Did that make sense to you? I mean, really, did it make sense to you that someone with a blood disorder would tell someone to bring a knife for knife play? Did it make see these kinds of things? And I also when he said that is an absurd line of questioning, well, that was so overly dramatic and such a forced response that it wasn't believable to me. Juliana was not likable. I am not going to tell you. And by the way, the deal that she got, if I'm a juror, and maybe I spend an hour during that nine hour deliberation saying, this girl would have said anything for a deal like that, anything for a deal like that.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: That was the other thing that TJ and I kept talking about like, how can you believe what she's saying if she would say anything at this point she got her freedom, she might forget even the money that she might get from Netflix or any sort of like made for TV movie that could be made or a book that could happen from this, forgetting that part of it, and just the idea that she went from saying I'll die for you, I'll do anything for you, I would never betray you to completely testifying against him to get out of jail for free. It was just hard to take her testimony as fact, all.
00:11:19
Speaker 3: Right, And there was a jury instruction about it, right, There was a jury instruction about it. And even though she was not likable, her testimony aligned with the evidence in this case, it aligned with the evidence in this case, and that is extremely important. So it was corroborated and his was disproven. His testimony was disproven. And when I'm talking about the strength of that rebuttal witness, here he is talking about how important this meeting was and how it was a career defining meeting, right, I mean it was a career defining meeting. And someone who has no horse in this race, no horse in this race, you know, one of the things that you do when when someone has no motive. Right. So, so Juliana get out of jail free card, right, Brandon Bansfield, he's he, he's he. If convicted, he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Right. So they both have a vested interest in the outcome. Somebody reaches out to the prosecutor has no vested interest in the outcome of the case, comes forward and says, I was the manager on that day and there was no meeting. There was no meeting. That was That was a pretty powerful witness.
00:12:49
Speaker 4: But that's the thing, Alison, No, okay, I listen my question. What was the smoking gun? From an evidentiary standpoint? And that is my problem because no.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: No, no, don't stay what I'm doing.
00:13:06
Speaker 4: I have so many I have so many give me.
00:13:11
Speaker 3: Wait a minutej Now you've got me all riled up. So many Okay, so many that I'm going to start with the basics. Okay, they're having an affair. They're having an affair, and so automatically, the first thing is he's getting rid of her, so that Juliana can PLoP right in, How does how does she PLoP right in? Well, that little Brazilian jersey that she had that was in one closet, then goes to the other closet. The picture of their family change. What changed did Victoria and Brandon change? Nope, just the woman, Just the woman right next to the bed. Boom. Okay, the gun range, the gun range. Who takes uh someone that you're barely interested? And then suddenly she's got the gun and she knows how to use it and she shoots somebody. Okay, a fat like, don't teach. I'm not done. I haven't even started.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I've even started.
00:14:05
Speaker 3: The fat life website for for a nurse. A nurse who has no prior history of being involved in BDFSM lifestyle. She's going to arrange to have some strength. She refuses to meet anyone in public, refuses to meet anyone in public. She is going to arrange and I see you, I see you. Nurse with a young child is going to arrange to have some stranger bring a knife tire up ten raper at seven twenty in the morning at her own home.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: I give you that.
00:14:37
Speaker 1: I was really disturbed by that, but that timeline made no sense.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: You're just getting your husband out of the house, your daughter just leaving yeah, and you have.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: Here's your lunch.
00:14:50
Speaker 1: If any if anyone is delayed or doesn't leave when they said they were going to, you're must That was a hard one for me.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: And don't meet me in public. I mean we talked about this last time and I have I have had a BBSM case and in that community, that's not how things are done. That's not how things are done.
00:15:10
Speaker 4: Okay, by the way, about the laptop quest.
00:15:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry TJ, but now you've got me. I'm like sweating. My question about the laptop is a different one than yours or all right, it is did they have access to it? If someone would have said that laptop only remained at her nursing station, okay, that, but it was in a home that they all could access. That means that you can't exclude those two. You can't exclude those two from using it because they all had access to it. And you look at her history, her life history, and this is someone that all of a sudden is going to have this random guy she's going to communicate as Anastasia and rule out anyone that wants to meet publicly. That doesn't make sense and come at seven twenty in the morning for a little knife play. I mean, I'm watching, you know, I'm watching a little morning news on KTLA. I don't know what to tell you.
00:16:18
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, Yeah, let me try this again, Alison. I should have asked it this way. What was the smoking gun? From a forensics standpoint, everything you said, Allison, I agree with it. All looks bad. That that doesn't make sense, and chances are that's bullshit, but we were desperately looking for something to go. Okay, if I can forget what those two witnesses said, I still can rely on this piece of evidence to put him in jail.
00:16:48
Speaker 3: Okay, and that there was not In my mind, there was not an evidentiary smoking gun. The totality. It was the totality of the case. It was the brutality of the physical evidence, the digital evidence, the unbelievable tale that who, I mean, what was the motivation for Christine to be involved in this? I mean what? And then what was Brandon's? And Brandon's was readily apparent. Everybody can understand that he didn't want the divorce, he didn't want to share custody, he all of these things, and then there's a thirty eight page letter that he writes to Juliana, I'm professing his love. So you know you're looking at all of that and you're saying, this makes way more sense to me.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, it comes down to common sense. I still I think what I can speak. We talked at nauseum about this, and I do think this is. Both of our big hang ups were those two detectives with the Fairfax County Police Department, the digital forend experts to two of them who both who.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: Get booted because they're not they don't have the same theory of the case.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: They were reassigned because they didn't fall in line with the catfishing theory, and so that for me was really an important part of my thought.
00:18:19
Speaker 2: I said this, I'm pretty sure he did it. I'm pretty sure he's guilty.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: But if I were on that jury, I don't know how I would feel having watched all of this, especially because of those two defense witnesses that would typically have been prosecution witnesses. That probably wasn't good for their career or their standing within the Fairfax County community police community to be on that stand testifying for the defense.
00:18:48
Speaker 2: But that was important for me in terms of me thinking. We thought it was going to be a hung jury.
00:18:56
Speaker 1: Us.
00:18:56
Speaker 3: So what I have to say is, I'm now going to fly both of you out here to be jurors on every case that I have not in a bad way, not a bad way, because you are the jur that you want. You want to be questioning the evidence. You want to listen intently and listen to both sides, don't prejudge the case, listen to both sides, and keep an open mind. You absolutely want that, no question, I mean that. That's but at the end of the day, right, you've got to say to yourself, did is Did he have a motive to do this? Even though motive is not necessary? Could he have done this? Could it be the way the prosecution explained it? How compelling is their evidence? And the totality of their evidence was very strong? Those two government employees, My answer to that is their testimony was wiped away when the prosecutor said, but you can't tell us who was at the keyboard. Can't tell us who's at the keyboard, right, I mean they didn't. They weren't able. They weren't able to say that it was Christine. They weren't able to say that, And so it kind of brings you back to what I was talking about is was it accessible to Brandon and Juliana And ultimately, and ultimately their supervisor had a theory of the case. The jury believed that theory of the case because he's been convicted, and the supervisor felt that they were not they were not following the evidence where he believed that it should lead.
00:20:42
Speaker 4: So, yeah, Alison, we saw the two digital forensics guys totally differently, like they might have been the most credible people to us on the stand. And when those two guys are saying the entire prosecution theory, we don't believe it based on this, And to your point, the prosecutor said, we don't know for sure who's behind that computer. That means they don't know if it was Juliana or Brendan either. And when those guys said definitively, we believe that there was a time that that fet life account was used, and those other two people were out of the house when they gave that, I got to listen to that, and so we got we did. We got hung up on those two very credible guys.
00:21:25
Speaker 3: And that look, that is not unreasonable, But I think that you've got to take a step back, look at the totality of the evidents that was presented, and then you know, I'm telling you when when when I heard Brandon's account of the day and the incident and her turning to him, which is, by the way, he didn't need to say any of that, he didn't need to say. She turned to me, you know, head head half removed from body and says, oh, I'm bleeding out. I'm sorry, I love you. I mean, that's ridunculous, TJ.
00:22:06
Speaker 2: When you put it like that, I get.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: You know, what was what was a hard thing for me where I really got hung up on Brendan's account of what happened. I had a hard time believing that Brendan sitting there as an IRS agent trained with his firearm as government issue firearm, who says police while he's claiming I forgot Joe Ryan is basically got his naked wife with a knife and decides at that point not to drop the knife, not to say hands up and say can I leave? And then when Brandan says you're under arrest, you know I've got I've got I've got a gun trained on you. He then makes the decision to start stabbing Christine I was like.
00:22:50
Speaker 2: That makes no sense.
00:22:52
Speaker 3: You would drop the knife. For your listeners that don't watch this, I want them to know that I'm doing that emoji with my hand smack in my face because police, are you kidding? This is your wife who's being raped and killed by somebody. Police, you know you're gonna use the effort and you're going, I mean, come on, but but then like to have Joe Harap ahead. She's not gonna turn to you and say I'm sorry, I love you.
00:23:20
Speaker 4: What I saw it in a movie once, I think is something poetic?
00:23:36
Speaker 2: You know it?
00:23:37
Speaker 1: You know what's so frightening though, Alison and this, I just feel, Look, it's crazy because I've been We've been in an around cases not like this, but adjacent to.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: This or equally evil for most of.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Our careers, for all of us have about a three decade career now at this point covering this kind of stuff. And still I find it so hard to believe that someone could be that. It blows my mind, right, I mean, think about what it took for him to do what he's been convicted of.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: I can't get my head around that.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: And I think that in any case like this, where the facts are so gruesome, right, They're so unbelievably gruesome and cruel and heinous to someone that you have been with for nineteen years, okay, and who is the mother of your child. For someone to concoct a plot like this carry it out, it's very hard to get there mentally, to mentally wrap your head around the person who is an IRS agent, who's sitting there in a suit, who looks like an IRS agent okay, looks like a tax guy, could have actually done something like this, killed an innocent man, set him up, and then stabbed his wife to death and let this innocent man take the fall. And then he testifies that his wife had had multipleeral affairs, no evidence of that, that she was into this BDSM sex play. And when you start to unravel his story a little bit, I think it was easier for the jurors to say, wait, he's willing to say this about her, He's willing to just do and say anything.
00:25:30
Speaker 2: Oh yes.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: And before that, before he goes and throws his dead wife under the bus and this stranger under the bus and completely maligns their characters, he's talking about doing multiplication tables with his daughter. You know, it was was it was just so to know and to believe now that the jury got it right, that he is guilty of all that the prosecution accused him of. To think that that human exists and is masquerading as a normal nice guy is just depressing as hell.
00:26:07
Speaker 3: And it's it's you know, it's an unspeakable crime. It's an unspeakable crime. And I do think that there was a miscarriage of justice in the sentence that Juliana got, because she's as culpable as he is.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point, Alison, because I have a hard time with the fact that she was so well, I know she was only twenty one was, but still that's old enough to know better to be immediately willing to go along and then after the fact to move in and become the wife basically and the mommy and have no issue and problem with it until you get arrested.
00:26:42
Speaker 2: That is disturbing. And to know that she's now out in the.
00:26:45
Speaker 1: World, available and free to live her life, and I don't know, that's a scared.
00:26:53
Speaker 3: I mean, there is a miscarriage of justice here. You know, the prosecution thought that without her they wouldn't if you TJ if you you ask me, I guess with the smoking gun in the cases, I think that the prosecution certainly thought that without Julianna's testimony, they weren't going to get a conviction.
00:27:12
Speaker 4: M Yeah, well they had to have and they went after for a year.
00:27:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and you know, and they were pretty they were pretty straightforward with the jury about the deal that she got, about how you know, was she ever going to get a job as a nanny again? I mean, I should hope not. And you know, was she going to make some money from some type of movie deal maybe? And how long it took them to get her to cooperate and you know, by the way, you know that they intentionally arrested her first and put so much pressure on her for months and months to get her to flip. But I do agree with them that their case needed her testimony to pull absolutely absolutely to wrap it all up.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: They did well. Alison Treesa, once again, you were right, Hey, we were wrong.
00:28:09
Speaker 3: Hey something. There are times where I say, oh, the jury's not going to convict, and they're out for an hour and they convict. I mean, I had a case where it was I live in Los Angeles, it was in Orange County and the jury went back to deliberate and I promise you I hadn't even gotten on the freeway yet, and they came back with a verdict. So you know, as a defense attorney, you lose more than you win. So I think that when I when I watch a case like this, I understand what a small percentage of cases go to trial, why they go to trial, and what usually the outcome is.
00:28:47
Speaker 4: We love chopping it up with you. We try to avoid texting seriously because we have so many questions come up that we're arguing about it. And said, man, if we had an attorney we could talk to, she's probably in the middle of the case.
00:28:58
Speaker 3: You know there's a burning question, ask me why not.
00:29:03
Speaker 4: Well, they're all burning questions to us, but they're not worth interrupting your work. But we just do that to say thank you and we love you and we trust you with your words. So thank you for spending time. We know we're going to see you plenty because there's plenty more trials to go around, so.
00:29:17
Speaker 3: You know, there's always there's always a good trial somewhere.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: Alis.
00:29:20
Speaker 4: It's so good to see you as always. Thank you for guiding us be well, I see you
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ Presents. And we have been dying to talk to our friend Alison Treesel. She has been our legal guide through so many of these trials we have been following, and man did we closely follow and were frankly a little shocked at this week's verdict in the Brendan Banfield aka the O Pair.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Affair double murder trial.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: And look, TJ and I sat through almost every minute of this trial, all the testimony, from opening statements to closing arguments or was it opening arguments to closing statements? I always get it confused opening statements to closing arguments. Yes, and the verdict still was a little surprising to us. And Alison Treesel very famous, renowned, experienced, thirty plus year career of criminal defense, high profile cases.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: She's out of LA.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: You've seen it all at this point, really, I mean you've even seen a BDSM trial, So I mean you've walked the walk, You've talked to talk you watched this trial as well.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: What was your reaction to the verdict.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: Not only am I not surprised at all by the verdict at all, I'm surprised that the jury deliberated for nine hours. I mean I once he took the stand and made statements like his wife, who had according to him, been stabbed at that point multiple times in the neck, turns to him and says, I'm sorry, I'm bleeding out. I love you. That is a bunch of poppycock, okay, And I don't know if that's a legal term I use at all the time. Not believable, he lied through his teeth. And by the way, I didn't like Juliana. I mean I didn't like her on the stand. I don't like her as a witness, but I found her to be far more credible, far more believable, and her testimony lined up with the evidence that was ultimately presented in the case. And then the ultimate nail on the call fin the ultimate and maybe the best witness out of all witnesses, right, The prosecution called twenty, at least twenty witnesses in their case in chief, and the defense calls witnesses. Juliana's on the stand for two days, Brandon's on the stand for two days. But I think the best witness was the prosecution's rebuttal witness of the manager that said meeting meeting there was no meeting. I mean that alone. You know, there's a jury instruction and says, if you don't believe a portion of somebody's testimony, you can disregard all of it.
00:03:06
Speaker 4: So was that the issue?
00:03:07
Speaker 3: Then?
00:03:07
Speaker 4: Do you think you would have had a he would have had a better chance of not being convicted had he not gotten up on the stand.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because I thought about that. Let me just run through a few things with people. So, you know, for a case to go to trial, about ninety to ninety five percent of all criminal cases across the country do not go to trial. They resolve, you know, whether it's a plea, a dismissal, diversion. So it's unusual for cases to actually make their way to trial. The conviction rate for trial. For the conviction rates are very very high, right, So it's like a ninety percent conviction rate when a case goes to trial, and of those cases, only a very small percentage, you know, maybe twenty five percent, thirty percent of defendants testify. And the reason that they don't testify is you don't have to prove a thing. You don't have to It is is completely the prosecution's burden. They must prove by beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed the offense. You don't have to call a witness. And the problem is not in the direct examination, it's the cross and will your client's story stand up to cross? And from where I'm sitting, I found his direct to be unbelievable and I found her cross to just destroy his story. So did he have a choice? You know, he seemed to be taking these notes that he was very active in his defense, right, he was sitting there furiously taking down notes throughout the entire trial. And the decision to testify was ultimately his. And maybe he believed that he was crafty enough and smart enough to outwit that your But it did not help him. It did not help him.
00:05:06
Speaker 2: Wow, did it hurt him?
00:05:09
Speaker 3: So there were parts that hurt him. So the explanation were the the question about from the prosecutor that said we didn't use the towel, the blanket, the sheets to stop bleeding. That hurt him. The It was unbelievable for him to say that this was a nothing burger of a relationship with Juliana after they had been shown these love letters, for him to call Julian say that he only fell in love with her once she saved his life. That was like an oh please moment for me and I found that statement that you know, it took him two minutes to say it, but it undid in my in my opinion, any good that his testimony would would have done for him. When he said, with her neck, I mean, imagine her, this woman cannot speak, I mean, this woman had her entire neck is gutted. And he says that. She turns to him and says, I'm bleeding out. I'm so sorry. I love you. I mean, come on, if it was a movie, you'd say, I'm taking a potty break right now, all right now. But now I'm gonna ask you guys, because.
00:06:28
Speaker 4: Look, no you're the expert.
00:06:31
Speaker 3: Was about did you believe his testimony? What was it?
00:06:35
Speaker 4: It wasn't him. I almost canceled, I think we but almost canceled the two of them out because his story seemed unbelievable, parts of it like give me a freaking break, and then she happened to be so unlikable. So it was almost two different things. It wasn't just that her story was ridiculous. Some parts, she couldn't remember some stuff, but she wasn't a great witness. He wasn't a great witness. So we got hung up on the where the devices were and with whom and who logged onto the feed. We got caught up and all that stuff.
00:07:08
Speaker 3: Okay, because so one of the things that happens, and this is this is great that we're talking about. It is if you are watching minute by minute as a as a trial unfolds, and you you get stuck on an issue, you do miss the big you do forget about the big picture of the case. Okay, you forget about well, jurors have to you know, and prosecutors in this case, this is a if true, which it which judging by the verdict, it we now he he now is guilty. And you don't have to say allegedly, Okay, you don't have to say allegedly this or you know, you know he's guilty. He did this. So this was a sinister plot. This was a plot that most people on the planet would never think of, right so to to set up this fetish site. And and also, by the way, if I'm a jur and I'm thinking about the fact that he comes up with the oh she was having affairs too, and you know, one time I knew that she was into b DSM, but there then we learned that there's no proof of that at all. There's no proof of that. I think, you know, this is a real son of a bit. This is a I mean for him to do this, to tarment, tarnish his late wife, to disparaiture, to say all of these things. And then you think of the cruelty of this plot to kill his wife when all of us say, well, why didn't you just get a divorce, Why didn't you just get a divorce? You had to kill her and your daughter was there and you and then you kill this innocent man and you set him up. I mean, how deranged are you? And and when you think about that big picture right as a juror, and you say, I don't believe him. I don't believe him. And is he capable of this? And if you can get to those two things, you're going to convict.
00:09:00
Speaker 2: And to exactly what you're saying.
00:09:02
Speaker 1: It's so hard to see this guy who looks he's an IRS agent, looks like your next door neighbor, who's telling you that he didn't do it, and he's saying, why would I do something that egregious, that elaborate, that manipulative for someone who I just started sleeping with six weeks ago, that that was a hard thing for me to come as a human because to believe that someone could do that, and that's your reason, that was a hard thing.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: I wanted to believe him.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: I wanted to think he didn't do those things.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Is sorry to cut you off. Did it make sense to you that he would take Juliana to a gun range? Did that make sense to you? I mean, really, did it make sense to you that someone with a blood disorder would tell someone to bring a knife for knife play? Did it make see these kinds of things? And I also when he said that is an absurd line of questioning, well, that was so overly dramatic and such a forced response that it wasn't believable to me. Juliana was not likable. I am not going to tell you. And by the way, the deal that she got, if I'm a juror, and maybe I spend an hour during that nine hour deliberation saying, this girl would have said anything for a deal like that, anything for a deal like that.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: That was the other thing that TJ and I kept talking about like, how can you believe what she's saying if she would say anything at this point she got her freedom, she might forget even the money that she might get from Netflix or any sort of like made for TV movie that could be made or a book that could happen from this, forgetting that part of it, and just the idea that she went from saying I'll die for you, I'll do anything for you, I would never betray you to completely testifying against him to get out of jail for free. It was just hard to take her testimony as fact, all.
00:11:19
Speaker 3: Right, And there was a jury instruction about it, right, There was a jury instruction about it. And even though she was not likable, her testimony aligned with the evidence in this case, it aligned with the evidence in this case, and that is extremely important. So it was corroborated and his was disproven. His testimony was disproven. And when I'm talking about the strength of that rebuttal witness, here he is talking about how important this meeting was and how it was a career defining meeting, right, I mean it was a career defining meeting. And someone who has no horse in this race, no horse in this race, you know, one of the things that you do when when someone has no motive. Right. So, so Juliana get out of jail free card, right, Brandon Bansfield, he's he, he's he. If convicted, he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Right. So they both have a vested interest in the outcome. Somebody reaches out to the prosecutor has no vested interest in the outcome of the case, comes forward and says, I was the manager on that day and there was no meeting. There was no meeting. That was That was a pretty powerful witness.
00:12:49
Speaker 4: But that's the thing, Alison, No, okay, I listen my question. What was the smoking gun? From an evidentiary standpoint? And that is my problem because no.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: No, no, don't stay what I'm doing.
00:13:06
Speaker 4: I have so many I have so many give me.
00:13:11
Speaker 3: Wait a minutej Now you've got me all riled up. So many Okay, so many that I'm going to start with the basics. Okay, they're having an affair. They're having an affair, and so automatically, the first thing is he's getting rid of her, so that Juliana can PLoP right in, How does how does she PLoP right in? Well, that little Brazilian jersey that she had that was in one closet, then goes to the other closet. The picture of their family change. What changed did Victoria and Brandon change? Nope, just the woman, Just the woman right next to the bed. Boom. Okay, the gun range, the gun range. Who takes uh someone that you're barely interested? And then suddenly she's got the gun and she knows how to use it and she shoots somebody. Okay, a fat like, don't teach. I'm not done. I haven't even started.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I've even started.
00:14:05
Speaker 3: The fat life website for for a nurse. A nurse who has no prior history of being involved in BDFSM lifestyle. She's going to arrange to have some strength. She refuses to meet anyone in public, refuses to meet anyone in public. She is going to arrange and I see you, I see you. Nurse with a young child is going to arrange to have some stranger bring a knife tire up ten raper at seven twenty in the morning at her own home.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: I give you that.
00:14:37
Speaker 1: I was really disturbed by that, but that timeline made no sense.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: You're just getting your husband out of the house, your daughter just leaving yeah, and you have.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: Here's your lunch.
00:14:50
Speaker 1: If any if anyone is delayed or doesn't leave when they said they were going to, you're must That was a hard one for me.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: And don't meet me in public. I mean we talked about this last time and I have I have had a BBSM case and in that community, that's not how things are done. That's not how things are done.
00:15:10
Speaker 4: Okay, by the way, about the laptop quest.
00:15:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry TJ, but now you've got me. I'm like sweating. My question about the laptop is a different one than yours or all right, it is did they have access to it? If someone would have said that laptop only remained at her nursing station, okay, that, but it was in a home that they all could access. That means that you can't exclude those two. You can't exclude those two from using it because they all had access to it. And you look at her history, her life history, and this is someone that all of a sudden is going to have this random guy she's going to communicate as Anastasia and rule out anyone that wants to meet publicly. That doesn't make sense and come at seven twenty in the morning for a little knife play. I mean, I'm watching, you know, I'm watching a little morning news on KTLA. I don't know what to tell you.
00:16:18
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, Yeah, let me try this again, Alison. I should have asked it this way. What was the smoking gun? From a forensics standpoint, everything you said, Allison, I agree with it. All looks bad. That that doesn't make sense, and chances are that's bullshit, but we were desperately looking for something to go. Okay, if I can forget what those two witnesses said, I still can rely on this piece of evidence to put him in jail.
00:16:48
Speaker 3: Okay, and that there was not In my mind, there was not an evidentiary smoking gun. The totality. It was the totality of the case. It was the brutality of the physical evidence, the digital evidence, the unbelievable tale that who, I mean, what was the motivation for Christine to be involved in this? I mean what? And then what was Brandon's? And Brandon's was readily apparent. Everybody can understand that he didn't want the divorce, he didn't want to share custody, he all of these things, and then there's a thirty eight page letter that he writes to Juliana, I'm professing his love. So you know you're looking at all of that and you're saying, this makes way more sense to me.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, it comes down to common sense. I still I think what I can speak. We talked at nauseum about this, and I do think this is. Both of our big hang ups were those two detectives with the Fairfax County Police Department, the digital forend experts to two of them who both who.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: Get booted because they're not they don't have the same theory of the case.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: They were reassigned because they didn't fall in line with the catfishing theory, and so that for me was really an important part of my thought.
00:18:19
Speaker 2: I said this, I'm pretty sure he did it. I'm pretty sure he's guilty.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: But if I were on that jury, I don't know how I would feel having watched all of this, especially because of those two defense witnesses that would typically have been prosecution witnesses. That probably wasn't good for their career or their standing within the Fairfax County community police community to be on that stand testifying for the defense.
00:18:48
Speaker 2: But that was important for me in terms of me thinking. We thought it was going to be a hung jury.
00:18:56
Speaker 1: Us.
00:18:56
Speaker 3: So what I have to say is, I'm now going to fly both of you out here to be jurors on every case that I have not in a bad way, not a bad way, because you are the jur that you want. You want to be questioning the evidence. You want to listen intently and listen to both sides, don't prejudge the case, listen to both sides, and keep an open mind. You absolutely want that, no question, I mean that. That's but at the end of the day, right, you've got to say to yourself, did is Did he have a motive to do this? Even though motive is not necessary? Could he have done this? Could it be the way the prosecution explained it? How compelling is their evidence? And the totality of their evidence was very strong? Those two government employees, My answer to that is their testimony was wiped away when the prosecutor said, but you can't tell us who was at the keyboard. Can't tell us who's at the keyboard, right, I mean they didn't. They weren't able. They weren't able to say that it was Christine. They weren't able to say that, And so it kind of brings you back to what I was talking about is was it accessible to Brandon and Juliana And ultimately, and ultimately their supervisor had a theory of the case. The jury believed that theory of the case because he's been convicted, and the supervisor felt that they were not they were not following the evidence where he believed that it should lead.
00:20:42
Speaker 4: So, yeah, Alison, we saw the two digital forensics guys totally differently, like they might have been the most credible people to us on the stand. And when those two guys are saying the entire prosecution theory, we don't believe it based on this, And to your point, the prosecutor said, we don't know for sure who's behind that computer. That means they don't know if it was Juliana or Brendan either. And when those guys said definitively, we believe that there was a time that that fet life account was used, and those other two people were out of the house when they gave that, I got to listen to that, and so we got we did. We got hung up on those two very credible guys.
00:21:25
Speaker 3: And that look, that is not unreasonable, But I think that you've got to take a step back, look at the totality of the evidents that was presented, and then you know, I'm telling you when when when I heard Brandon's account of the day and the incident and her turning to him, which is, by the way, he didn't need to say any of that, he didn't need to say. She turned to me, you know, head head half removed from body and says, oh, I'm bleeding out. I'm sorry, I love you. I mean, that's ridunculous, TJ.
00:22:06
Speaker 2: When you put it like that, I get.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: You know, what was what was a hard thing for me where I really got hung up on Brendan's account of what happened. I had a hard time believing that Brendan sitting there as an IRS agent trained with his firearm as government issue firearm, who says police while he's claiming I forgot Joe Ryan is basically got his naked wife with a knife and decides at that point not to drop the knife, not to say hands up and say can I leave? And then when Brandan says you're under arrest, you know I've got I've got I've got a gun trained on you. He then makes the decision to start stabbing Christine I was like.
00:22:50
Speaker 2: That makes no sense.
00:22:52
Speaker 3: You would drop the knife. For your listeners that don't watch this, I want them to know that I'm doing that emoji with my hand smack in my face because police, are you kidding? This is your wife who's being raped and killed by somebody. Police, you know you're gonna use the effort and you're going, I mean, come on, but but then like to have Joe Harap ahead. She's not gonna turn to you and say I'm sorry, I love you.
00:23:20
Speaker 4: What I saw it in a movie once, I think is something poetic?
00:23:36
Speaker 2: You know it?
00:23:37
Speaker 1: You know what's so frightening though, Alison and this, I just feel, Look, it's crazy because I've been We've been in an around cases not like this, but adjacent to.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: This or equally evil for most of.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Our careers, for all of us have about a three decade career now at this point covering this kind of stuff. And still I find it so hard to believe that someone could be that. It blows my mind, right, I mean, think about what it took for him to do what he's been convicted of.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: I can't get my head around that.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: And I think that in any case like this, where the facts are so gruesome, right, They're so unbelievably gruesome and cruel and heinous to someone that you have been with for nineteen years, okay, and who is the mother of your child. For someone to concoct a plot like this carry it out, it's very hard to get there mentally, to mentally wrap your head around the person who is an IRS agent, who's sitting there in a suit, who looks like an IRS agent okay, looks like a tax guy, could have actually done something like this, killed an innocent man, set him up, and then stabbed his wife to death and let this innocent man take the fall. And then he testifies that his wife had had multipleeral affairs, no evidence of that, that she was into this BDSM sex play. And when you start to unravel his story a little bit, I think it was easier for the jurors to say, wait, he's willing to say this about her, He's willing to just do and say anything.
00:25:30
Speaker 2: Oh yes.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: And before that, before he goes and throws his dead wife under the bus and this stranger under the bus and completely maligns their characters, he's talking about doing multiplication tables with his daughter. You know, it was was it was just so to know and to believe now that the jury got it right, that he is guilty of all that the prosecution accused him of. To think that that human exists and is masquerading as a normal nice guy is just depressing as hell.
00:26:07
Speaker 3: And it's it's you know, it's an unspeakable crime. It's an unspeakable crime. And I do think that there was a miscarriage of justice in the sentence that Juliana got, because she's as culpable as he is.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point, Alison, because I have a hard time with the fact that she was so well, I know she was only twenty one was, but still that's old enough to know better to be immediately willing to go along and then after the fact to move in and become the wife basically and the mommy and have no issue and problem with it until you get arrested.
00:26:42
Speaker 2: That is disturbing. And to know that she's now out in the.
00:26:45
Speaker 1: World, available and free to live her life, and I don't know, that's a scared.
00:26:53
Speaker 3: I mean, there is a miscarriage of justice here. You know, the prosecution thought that without her they wouldn't if you TJ if you you ask me, I guess with the smoking gun in the cases, I think that the prosecution certainly thought that without Julianna's testimony, they weren't going to get a conviction.
00:27:12
Speaker 4: M Yeah, well they had to have and they went after for a year.
00:27:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and you know, and they were pretty they were pretty straightforward with the jury about the deal that she got, about how you know, was she ever going to get a job as a nanny again? I mean, I should hope not. And you know, was she going to make some money from some type of movie deal maybe? And how long it took them to get her to cooperate and you know, by the way, you know that they intentionally arrested her first and put so much pressure on her for months and months to get her to flip. But I do agree with them that their case needed her testimony to pull absolutely absolutely to wrap it all up.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: They did well. Alison Treesa, once again, you were right, Hey, we were wrong.
00:28:09
Speaker 3: Hey something. There are times where I say, oh, the jury's not going to convict, and they're out for an hour and they convict. I mean, I had a case where it was I live in Los Angeles, it was in Orange County and the jury went back to deliberate and I promise you I hadn't even gotten on the freeway yet, and they came back with a verdict. So you know, as a defense attorney, you lose more than you win. So I think that when I when I watch a case like this, I understand what a small percentage of cases go to trial, why they go to trial, and what usually the outcome is.
00:28:47
Speaker 4: We love chopping it up with you. We try to avoid texting seriously because we have so many questions come up that we're arguing about it. And said, man, if we had an attorney we could talk to, she's probably in the middle of the case.
00:28:58
Speaker 3: You know there's a burning question, ask me why not.
00:29:03
Speaker 4: Well, they're all burning questions to us, but they're not worth interrupting your work. But we just do that to say thank you and we love you and we trust you with your words. So thank you for spending time. We know we're going to see you plenty because there's plenty more trials to go around, so.
00:29:17
Speaker 3: You know, there's always there's always a good trial somewhere.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: Alis.
00:29:20
Speaker 4: It's so good to see you as always. Thank you for guiding us be well, I see you