Jan. 21, 2026
Au Pair Affair Murders Trial: Prosecution Rests, Defense Begins
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RSS Feed Amy and T.J. get you updated on one of the most salacious murder trials in recent history. A former IRS agent, Brendan Banfield is fighting for his freedom, charged with a double homicide for the murders of his wife, Christine and a stranger prosecutors say Banfield, along with the help of his au pair turned lover, lured to his home to set up for his wife’s death. The prosecution’s case against Banfield rests primarily on the testimony of the au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães, who told jurors about their plan to “get rid of” Christine and pin the murder on Joseph Ryan, a man who believed he was coming to the Banfield home to participate in a BDSM sexual fantasy.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, Welcome to Amy and TJ Presents. We have been following one of the most salacious murder trials we have ever witnessed. It has been dubbed the O Pair affair murders trial. It sounds catchy and maybe even a little cutesy, but there is nothing about this trial that is any of those things. This is as salacious as they get.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Yes, and so, folks, Yes, we will focus on this Amy and TJ Presents with the Brendan Banfield trial out of Fairfax County, Virginia. Robes, this is one in which it's exactly what it sounds like. There wasn an a fair involving an old pair. It's almost a cliche at this point. Old pair comes from Brazil, ends up in an affair with the guy, and now it's who people are dead. One of those is the wife of Brendan Banfield. The other is an unsuspecting stranger who was lured to the house that Brendan Banfield. According to authorities, Robes wanted to frame him for the murder of the wife. Now that's the short and quick, clean version. The details are what make this thing unbelievable.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Yes, according to prosecutors Brendan Banfield, who by the way, is a former IRS agent, but they claim he along with his o pair. Her name is Juliana Perez Mahales. She was only twenty twenty one at the time. The prosecutors say that they conspired because they had started this affair. They wanted to live happily ever after together, but he needed to get rid of his wife. Prosecution said that for Brendan Banfield, divorce was not an option because of money and because of custody of his young daughter, and so, according to them, they came up with a plan of going onto a fetish website called Fetlife fetlife dot com.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: I finally remember it. That's why I jumped in here.
00:01:54
Speaker 3: You got excited. Did you check it out? Like you said you were going to nervous? I don't want it for you.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want it on my computer either, just one of those like let's not even go there.
00:02:03
Speaker 3: But I am a little curious.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: We've been talking about it a lot about this website. But the plan was, according to prosecutors, that they posed as Brendan's wife, Christine and said that she was looking for a violent sexual experience where she wanted a man to come to her home while she was pretend sleeping, coming to the home with a knife, cut her clothes off, rape her at knife point, and no matter how much she said to stop or screamed, he should just keep going. And they found a taker.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: So those are just deep. Look, people are into their thing, they do their thing, and knock yourself out for them. I think it's fair to say, generally speaking, most people can't relate to something like this and wanting something like this. But hey, this guy Joseph Ryan, Joe Ryan, we've been hearing a lot about, had nothing to do with any of these people, wasn't connected to the family in any way. He answered an ad on a website and ends up dead and a part of the scheme, as they say now, ropes a big part of this, Which is what's an interesting factor here, according to the old pair who has testified, is that it took them a little while to find a take her.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Yes, because we are learning about how these fetish websites or even just the fetish lifestyle works.
00:03:26
Speaker 3: But there is safety and trust.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: Involved, obviously, if you're asking someone to violently do something to you to satisfy sexual needs. Most people have understanding is that they meet in person first, they established trust, basically connect and say even over coffee or a drink, Yeah, here's what I want.
00:03:47
Speaker 2: It sounds crazy, but it was explained to us by an attorney who has dealt with a bunch of these cases and her defends attorney career. There's a code to this, there are rules to this that people in that community respect.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Yes, so unfortunate for Joseph Ryan.
00:04:01
Speaker 1: According to prosecutors, he agreed to participate in this sexual fantasy without meeting in person because every other person, according to the O pair's testimony, who they tried to reach out to, they were basically going on email and trying to set up this scenario and several people said I'd like to meet in person first, and then they're like onto the next, onto the next, onto the next, until they found Joe Ryan who said he would do this.
00:04:30
Speaker 3: And the plan was, according.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: To Juliana, that they found out or they knew when his wife, Christine was off work.
00:04:39
Speaker 3: She's a er nurse.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: I mean, she's an intensive care pediatric nurse, and so she obviously works crazy long hours and so there are days where when she's off she sleeps late into the morning. I understand she does overnight shifts, so they knew when she was going to be asleep. They left the door unlocked. They had this whole plan. The little girl, the four year old, was in the basement with an iPad, and the plan was that when Joe Ryan was doing what he thought he came here that was mutually agreed upon to do, Brendan would walk in and shoot Joe Ryan and tell authorities he was stabbing my wife to death. I broke in and found this man attacking my wife and I shot him. And then he, according to the au pair, stabs his wife with the knife that Joe Ryan brought in his sexual fantasy role playing and make it look like Joe Ryan actually killed his wife. And that was the plan.
00:05:36
Speaker 2: Um, yeah, I mean it's you would think, or they thought it was a good plan. Brendan Banfield comes in, saves the day, tries to save his wife, kills an intruder. That intruder, unfortunately, sadly, had already killed the wife. And that was supposed to be the store.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: And that was the nine to one one call. That is what they actually said happened to authorities, But it was months later they actually ended up arresting the pair for her role, and she It took her almost a year, but she ended up finally admitting that she did fire the fatal shot they believe into Joe Ryan, and therefore she was charged with murder. And the defense's point is the prosecution flipped her to make up this story and to give her this story and feed this story to jurors to ultimately get the person they wanted, which was Brendan Banfield. He's been charged with a double homicide and endangerment to his daughter because this all happened while she was in the home. So he is looking at life behind bars and he is now fighting for his life in this murder trial. But the O pair's testimony, and she took the stand last week, is the foundation.
00:06:49
Speaker 3: And it might be if the jurors don't believe the O.
00:06:53
Speaker 1: Pair, the prosecution doesn't have a case. Her testimony is the key to secutors winning this case.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: And let's be clear here, and we put ourselves as we watch these in the position of the jurors as journalists, but also of the jurors and in this case, sitting in there. It's hard to imagine how she came across that cross that well, to a lot of the jurors, it wasn't. It was more, it wasn't necessarily the story versus her demeanor, how she reacted, how she came off in a lot of what she's doing being combative with the defense attorney at times. Do you know what? She didn't seem like she had remorse. She didn't seem like she took responsibility for her own role in a way she if they believe every word out of her mouth, is still a tough messenger to get it from.
00:07:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely, she couldn't remember several key details when she went under cross examination. She couldn't remember who set up the fed life account her or Brendan. She couldn't remember who emailed some of those potential sexual fantasy partners. So there were a lot of problems for her when it came to remembering key details. If you want to be believed, and the jurors want to believe you know what happened, and what you're saying happened was true, to be missing major details like that is questionable. But perhaps one of her biggest problems was when the defense attorney had Juliana read letters that she wrote to Brendan and Brendan's mom. When she was in prison for nearly a year, she was depressed, she was suicidal. She was professing her forever love to Brendan. And then we saw the letters that she wrote her family about a Netflix offer being offered ten thousand dollars.
00:08:33
Speaker 2: Two different women in these letters. Yes, once she got the deal, she became a different person based on those letters. In her own words, and again, she sounded like she was really spiraling downward for months and months and months, to the point she was talking about taking her own life. She was desperate, and then all of a sudden she's talking about I don't want to accept a Netflix deal. I want to negotiate. I can get other offers other places, and her tone, her demeanor, everything about her changed, and the argument from the defenses that yeah, she got a sweet deal. This is it not true Robes. It's the understanding that she fired the fatal blow into Joseph absolutely Ryan. So the woman that did that is going to get to go home free. Yeah, So the jury is looking at that and is going to have to consider how much to how much weight to give her testimony When I mean, it's clear she has a lot of incentive to say.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: Whatever is absolutely I actually wrote the quote down when she talked to or what she had to read the letter she wrote her family about this Netflix deal, So she had to read this with jurors listening. I'm going to sit down talking with them negotiating. I want to higher amount, especially since my whole life will be exposed to everyone and they're going to be making a lot of money off it. We deserve something, And the defense attorney really honed in on you deserve something. Didn't you just admit to shooting and killing a man, but you deserve something. That was a maybe it wasn't a Perry Mason moment, but it was a big moment for the defense.
00:09:59
Speaker 2: Well, there's you're always watching try and that's a lot of blood evidence, there's a lot of DNA stuff to go over, there's a crime scene stuff, a lot of investigators up there, detectives and whatnot. Yeah, and so you're waiting on a moment that was one of the more dramatic ones. And it's not one that he had planned because of course they have their list of questions. But he honed in on the word deserve because when you hear that you. You all, we all kind of go, wait a minute, what and he said it as plain like he was thrown off by her.
00:10:26
Speaker 3: What he said, you shot a guy like girl, you deserve jail time?
00:10:30
Speaker 2: He said, he absolutely incredible. You shot somebody.
00:10:34
Speaker 3: Why do you deserve You don't deserve thousands of a moment.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: That was a moment that the jury will remember.
00:10:40
Speaker 3: I agree. I agree.
00:10:42
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we're going to tell you how the prosecution rested their case this week and what the defense has in store for the jury. Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ Presents. Where we are going over the very latest in the O Pair affair murders trial.
00:11:07
Speaker 3: This week, the prosecution rested its case.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Of course, its case is almost entirely built around the O pairs testimony and whether or not the jury is going to believe her version of events. But they did promise some blood evidence that they said would connect Brendan Banfield to killing his wife. And we did hear from this blood stained expert who said, and this does match the O Pair's testimony that after the killings, she says that Brendan adjusted the bodies to make it look like Joe Ryan stabbed his wife, Christine, and so this blood stain expert said that Joe Ryan's wounds flowed like the blood flowed in multiple directions, which would suggest he was moved after he was shot. And then she said that Christine's blood appears to have been intentionally spilled onto Ryan's hands and pants instead of naturally coming out of a wound. She was describing how blood acts. You said you found that testimony fascinating.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: Well, I we watch a lot of true crime and how many times we hear that phrase bud spatter and it splattered and there's bud spatter, right, there's different word. I So much of these crimes have to do with blood and how it behaves. She just I thought was very good. Initially I was sitting there as a student wanting to take notes as she explained how blood behaves. I found that very interesting. She was We've heard a lot of blood experts. She's spoke in a way that spoke to me.
00:12:39
Speaker 3: We understood it.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: AKA, we understood it, which is not always the case when you're listening to people who are scientists. Like when you start having scientists described DNA and exclusions, I start to like glaze over exactly. So she actually made blood evidence interesting. The prosecution rested the last of their eighteen witnesses that they've called over these last nearly two weeks was Christine Banfield's father.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: I wasn't really sure why this was.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: Important what they got out of him, but he testified to Christine's medical condition that makes her bleed and bruise more easily.
00:13:15
Speaker 3: So I don't know what the jurors got out of it.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: You hear Christine's father is testifying, and I don't know, it didn't land maybe the way he wasn't he wasn't And so yes, the defense now begins its case. And look, their main goal was, and this mostly happened during cross examination, was to debunk this catfishing narrative that he was with the au pair and planning all of this and her version events they're trying to say, is the prosecution's version events that.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: They handed to her.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: She studied it and then she regurgitated it when she got up on the witness stand. But look, the other big thing they have is the digital forensics. And there is a member within the police department who has said he is a digital forensics expert, that the evidence does not prove that someone other than Christine the wife logged into that beet life account, and he had his findings peer reviewed by a team at the University of Alabama who agreed with him that you cannot say that Christine herself didn't set up this fet life account, and that is damning to the prosecution.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: Oh, if they believe she did it, then the story is over, the trial is over, the outcome is assured, because if the whole thing is that he set this up to kill her, and you're telling me he didn't set up the account itself, then there is no rest of the story.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: There's reasonable doubt as to what exactly happened in that bedroom and why it happened and how it happened.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: And this is about who you believe.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: But also, and this was the opening statement of Brendan Banfield's defense attorney, he said, in the world of digital forensics, there is a saying digital forensics doesn't lie. People lie, And there's going to be plenty to see. You're going to see manipulation within the police department. So that is going to be explosive testimony, and the defense is putting on a defense and we will be watching.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: Want to let you all know too.
00:15:17
Speaker 1: We sat down with Alison Triesel, criminal defense attorney Alison Triesel, So if you've been a fan of this feed in this podcast, you will know that name because she has helped us and walked us through a couple of these trials we've been watching. She has some very very interesting takes on what we've seen in this O pair affair murders trial. She's really into this one, so look for that. That episode will post shortly after this one, so please please please check that out. But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside my partner TJ.
00:15:49
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, Welcome to Amy and TJ Presents. We have been following one of the most salacious murder trials we have ever witnessed. It has been dubbed the O Pair affair murders trial. It sounds catchy and maybe even a little cutesy, but there is nothing about this trial that is any of those things. This is as salacious as they get.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Yes, and so, folks, Yes, we will focus on this Amy and TJ Presents with the Brendan Banfield trial out of Fairfax County, Virginia. Robes, this is one in which it's exactly what it sounds like. There wasn an a fair involving an old pair. It's almost a cliche at this point. Old pair comes from Brazil, ends up in an affair with the guy, and now it's who people are dead. One of those is the wife of Brendan Banfield. The other is an unsuspecting stranger who was lured to the house that Brendan Banfield. According to authorities, Robes wanted to frame him for the murder of the wife. Now that's the short and quick, clean version. The details are what make this thing unbelievable.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Yes, according to prosecutors Brendan Banfield, who by the way, is a former IRS agent, but they claim he along with his o pair. Her name is Juliana Perez Mahales. She was only twenty twenty one at the time. The prosecutors say that they conspired because they had started this affair. They wanted to live happily ever after together, but he needed to get rid of his wife. Prosecution said that for Brendan Banfield, divorce was not an option because of money and because of custody of his young daughter, and so, according to them, they came up with a plan of going onto a fetish website called Fetlife fetlife dot com.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: I finally remember it. That's why I jumped in here.
00:01:54
Speaker 3: You got excited. Did you check it out? Like you said you were going to nervous? I don't want it for you.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want it on my computer either, just one of those like let's not even go there.
00:02:03
Speaker 3: But I am a little curious.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: We've been talking about it a lot about this website. But the plan was, according to prosecutors, that they posed as Brendan's wife, Christine and said that she was looking for a violent sexual experience where she wanted a man to come to her home while she was pretend sleeping, coming to the home with a knife, cut her clothes off, rape her at knife point, and no matter how much she said to stop or screamed, he should just keep going. And they found a taker.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: So those are just deep. Look, people are into their thing, they do their thing, and knock yourself out for them. I think it's fair to say, generally speaking, most people can't relate to something like this and wanting something like this. But hey, this guy Joseph Ryan, Joe Ryan, we've been hearing a lot about, had nothing to do with any of these people, wasn't connected to the family in any way. He answered an ad on a website and ends up dead and a part of the scheme, as they say now, ropes a big part of this, Which is what's an interesting factor here, according to the old pair who has testified, is that it took them a little while to find a take her.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Yes, because we are learning about how these fetish websites or even just the fetish lifestyle works.
00:03:26
Speaker 3: But there is safety and trust.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: Involved, obviously, if you're asking someone to violently do something to you to satisfy sexual needs. Most people have understanding is that they meet in person first, they established trust, basically connect and say even over coffee or a drink, Yeah, here's what I want.
00:03:47
Speaker 2: It sounds crazy, but it was explained to us by an attorney who has dealt with a bunch of these cases and her defends attorney career. There's a code to this, there are rules to this that people in that community respect.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Yes, so unfortunate for Joseph Ryan.
00:04:01
Speaker 1: According to prosecutors, he agreed to participate in this sexual fantasy without meeting in person because every other person, according to the O pair's testimony, who they tried to reach out to, they were basically going on email and trying to set up this scenario and several people said I'd like to meet in person first, and then they're like onto the next, onto the next, onto the next, until they found Joe Ryan who said he would do this.
00:04:30
Speaker 3: And the plan was, according.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: To Juliana, that they found out or they knew when his wife, Christine was off work.
00:04:39
Speaker 3: She's a er nurse.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: I mean, she's an intensive care pediatric nurse, and so she obviously works crazy long hours and so there are days where when she's off she sleeps late into the morning. I understand she does overnight shifts, so they knew when she was going to be asleep. They left the door unlocked. They had this whole plan. The little girl, the four year old, was in the basement with an iPad, and the plan was that when Joe Ryan was doing what he thought he came here that was mutually agreed upon to do, Brendan would walk in and shoot Joe Ryan and tell authorities he was stabbing my wife to death. I broke in and found this man attacking my wife and I shot him. And then he, according to the au pair, stabs his wife with the knife that Joe Ryan brought in his sexual fantasy role playing and make it look like Joe Ryan actually killed his wife. And that was the plan.
00:05:36
Speaker 2: Um, yeah, I mean it's you would think, or they thought it was a good plan. Brendan Banfield comes in, saves the day, tries to save his wife, kills an intruder. That intruder, unfortunately, sadly, had already killed the wife. And that was supposed to be the store.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: And that was the nine to one one call. That is what they actually said happened to authorities, But it was months later they actually ended up arresting the pair for her role, and she It took her almost a year, but she ended up finally admitting that she did fire the fatal shot they believe into Joe Ryan, and therefore she was charged with murder. And the defense's point is the prosecution flipped her to make up this story and to give her this story and feed this story to jurors to ultimately get the person they wanted, which was Brendan Banfield. He's been charged with a double homicide and endangerment to his daughter because this all happened while she was in the home. So he is looking at life behind bars and he is now fighting for his life in this murder trial. But the O pair's testimony, and she took the stand last week, is the foundation.
00:06:49
Speaker 3: And it might be if the jurors don't believe the O.
00:06:53
Speaker 1: Pair, the prosecution doesn't have a case. Her testimony is the key to secutors winning this case.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: And let's be clear here, and we put ourselves as we watch these in the position of the jurors as journalists, but also of the jurors and in this case, sitting in there. It's hard to imagine how she came across that cross that well, to a lot of the jurors, it wasn't. It was more, it wasn't necessarily the story versus her demeanor, how she reacted, how she came off in a lot of what she's doing being combative with the defense attorney at times. Do you know what? She didn't seem like she had remorse. She didn't seem like she took responsibility for her own role in a way she if they believe every word out of her mouth, is still a tough messenger to get it from.
00:07:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely, she couldn't remember several key details when she went under cross examination. She couldn't remember who set up the fed life account her or Brendan. She couldn't remember who emailed some of those potential sexual fantasy partners. So there were a lot of problems for her when it came to remembering key details. If you want to be believed, and the jurors want to believe you know what happened, and what you're saying happened was true, to be missing major details like that is questionable. But perhaps one of her biggest problems was when the defense attorney had Juliana read letters that she wrote to Brendan and Brendan's mom. When she was in prison for nearly a year, she was depressed, she was suicidal. She was professing her forever love to Brendan. And then we saw the letters that she wrote her family about a Netflix offer being offered ten thousand dollars.
00:08:33
Speaker 2: Two different women in these letters. Yes, once she got the deal, she became a different person based on those letters. In her own words, and again, she sounded like she was really spiraling downward for months and months and months, to the point she was talking about taking her own life. She was desperate, and then all of a sudden she's talking about I don't want to accept a Netflix deal. I want to negotiate. I can get other offers other places, and her tone, her demeanor, everything about her changed, and the argument from the defenses that yeah, she got a sweet deal. This is it not true Robes. It's the understanding that she fired the fatal blow into Joseph absolutely Ryan. So the woman that did that is going to get to go home free. Yeah, So the jury is looking at that and is going to have to consider how much to how much weight to give her testimony When I mean, it's clear she has a lot of incentive to say.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: Whatever is absolutely I actually wrote the quote down when she talked to or what she had to read the letter she wrote her family about this Netflix deal, So she had to read this with jurors listening. I'm going to sit down talking with them negotiating. I want to higher amount, especially since my whole life will be exposed to everyone and they're going to be making a lot of money off it. We deserve something, And the defense attorney really honed in on you deserve something. Didn't you just admit to shooting and killing a man, but you deserve something. That was a maybe it wasn't a Perry Mason moment, but it was a big moment for the defense.
00:09:59
Speaker 2: Well, there's you're always watching try and that's a lot of blood evidence, there's a lot of DNA stuff to go over, there's a crime scene stuff, a lot of investigators up there, detectives and whatnot. Yeah, and so you're waiting on a moment that was one of the more dramatic ones. And it's not one that he had planned because of course they have their list of questions. But he honed in on the word deserve because when you hear that you. You all, we all kind of go, wait a minute, what and he said it as plain like he was thrown off by her.
00:10:26
Speaker 3: What he said, you shot a guy like girl, you deserve jail time?
00:10:30
Speaker 2: He said, he absolutely incredible. You shot somebody.
00:10:34
Speaker 3: Why do you deserve You don't deserve thousands of a moment.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: That was a moment that the jury will remember.
00:10:40
Speaker 3: I agree. I agree.
00:10:42
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we're going to tell you how the prosecution rested their case this week and what the defense has in store for the jury. Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ Presents. Where we are going over the very latest in the O Pair affair murders trial.
00:11:07
Speaker 3: This week, the prosecution rested its case.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Of course, its case is almost entirely built around the O pairs testimony and whether or not the jury is going to believe her version of events. But they did promise some blood evidence that they said would connect Brendan Banfield to killing his wife. And we did hear from this blood stained expert who said, and this does match the O Pair's testimony that after the killings, she says that Brendan adjusted the bodies to make it look like Joe Ryan stabbed his wife, Christine, and so this blood stain expert said that Joe Ryan's wounds flowed like the blood flowed in multiple directions, which would suggest he was moved after he was shot. And then she said that Christine's blood appears to have been intentionally spilled onto Ryan's hands and pants instead of naturally coming out of a wound. She was describing how blood acts. You said you found that testimony fascinating.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: Well, I we watch a lot of true crime and how many times we hear that phrase bud spatter and it splattered and there's bud spatter, right, there's different word. I So much of these crimes have to do with blood and how it behaves. She just I thought was very good. Initially I was sitting there as a student wanting to take notes as she explained how blood behaves. I found that very interesting. She was We've heard a lot of blood experts. She's spoke in a way that spoke to me.
00:12:39
Speaker 3: We understood it.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: AKA, we understood it, which is not always the case when you're listening to people who are scientists. Like when you start having scientists described DNA and exclusions, I start to like glaze over exactly. So she actually made blood evidence interesting. The prosecution rested the last of their eighteen witnesses that they've called over these last nearly two weeks was Christine Banfield's father.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: I wasn't really sure why this was.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: Important what they got out of him, but he testified to Christine's medical condition that makes her bleed and bruise more easily.
00:13:15
Speaker 3: So I don't know what the jurors got out of it.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: You hear Christine's father is testifying, and I don't know, it didn't land maybe the way he wasn't he wasn't And so yes, the defense now begins its case. And look, their main goal was, and this mostly happened during cross examination, was to debunk this catfishing narrative that he was with the au pair and planning all of this and her version events they're trying to say, is the prosecution's version events that.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: They handed to her.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: She studied it and then she regurgitated it when she got up on the witness stand. But look, the other big thing they have is the digital forensics. And there is a member within the police department who has said he is a digital forensics expert, that the evidence does not prove that someone other than Christine the wife logged into that beet life account, and he had his findings peer reviewed by a team at the University of Alabama who agreed with him that you cannot say that Christine herself didn't set up this fet life account, and that is damning to the prosecution.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: Oh, if they believe she did it, then the story is over, the trial is over, the outcome is assured, because if the whole thing is that he set this up to kill her, and you're telling me he didn't set up the account itself, then there is no rest of the story.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: There's reasonable doubt as to what exactly happened in that bedroom and why it happened and how it happened.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: And this is about who you believe.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: But also, and this was the opening statement of Brendan Banfield's defense attorney, he said, in the world of digital forensics, there is a saying digital forensics doesn't lie. People lie, And there's going to be plenty to see. You're going to see manipulation within the police department. So that is going to be explosive testimony, and the defense is putting on a defense and we will be watching.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: Want to let you all know too.
00:15:17
Speaker 1: We sat down with Alison Triesel, criminal defense attorney Alison Triesel, So if you've been a fan of this feed in this podcast, you will know that name because she has helped us and walked us through a couple of these trials we've been watching. She has some very very interesting takes on what we've seen in this O pair affair murders trial. She's really into this one, so look for that. That episode will post shortly after this one, so please please please check that out. But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside my partner TJ.
00:15:49
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.