Jan. 22, 2026
Au Pair Affair Murders Trial: The Defense Of Brendan Banfield
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RSS Feed Amy and T.J. get you caught up on the latest in the salacious BDSM murder trial where prosecutors say Brendan Banfield conspired with his au pair/lover to kill his wife and pin her murder on a stranger. The defense began its case on Wednesday with a much anticipated digital forensics officer who was reassigned from the case. As the defense tries to poke holes in the prosecution’s narrative, the state has been extremely effective in knocking down any suggestion that Banfield wasn’t the mastermind behind the double murder.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. It is Thursday, January twenty second, and we have been riveted by this O pair affair murders trial and the defense of Brendan Banfield has begun. The prosecution rested its case earlier this week, and we just wanted to get you updated on all of the latest happenings inside that Fairfax County courthouse. We've been watching it pretty much NonStop. There's a live stream that's just going on in this apartment, and his defense has been rigorous. Now we should get you updated just in case you're a little bit behind on this case. We've been covering it, but for those of you just tuning in. Brendan Banfield is a former IRIS agent. He's charged with the aggravated murders of his wife, Christine Banfield, and another man, his name is Joe Ryan, who prosecutors say he lured along with his O pair to the home believing that he was participating in a mutually agreed upon fantasy rape sexual encounter. But the idea was, according to the prosecutors and according to the old pair who was testified, that they were setting Joe Ryan up to make it look like he was killing his wife and that Brendan would then shoot Joe Ryan and be the hero. All of that is now playing out in court, and the defense now has it's shot at trying to poke some holes into that prosecution's narrative. And yesterday was fascinating. The defense seemed a little rattled, would you not say, TJ.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: Yes, the guy the defense attory. We've been giving a lot of credit for how he's performed and how he handled himself and how he handled a bunch of prosecution witnesses. He has seemed to be thrown quite a bit by objections from the prosecution and from the reaction from the judge, who has been very even throughout the trial.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. And so they began, as most defense attorneys began with emotion to dismiss, saying that prosecutors failed to provide enough evidence and from the trial we were watching, it almost seemed silly that he went through this, but its standard stuff, and the judge did deny that request for a motion to dismiss. But they brought on that much anticipated digital forensic's officer. His name is Detective Brendan Miller. What did you make of his testimony.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: I haven't made anything of any of their testimony. I've been waiting for something, and they tease things in the opening statement about what we might see, but at least so far haven't necessarily seen anything that landed.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So Brendan Miller is the detective, and we've talked about him before. Who Well, he testified that it was Christine's phone, that's Brendan Banfield's wife, that was used to create the fet life account that was used to lure Joe Ryan. The defense is trying to say, hey, it could have been Christine who did it. It certainly wasn't our client, it wasn't Brendan, and so that was important to the defense and we were really anticipating this testimony because we thought, hey, this might be the thing, because if they can convince jury the jury that Brendan did not lure this man, but that it was in fact Christine who was into this fet life account. And by the way, fetlife dot com we've been learning as we go along here, this is a fetish website that was used to communicate between someone. The prosecutors say it was Brendan and the O pair and Joe Ryan. So this testimony fell flat in my opinion, because the cross was pretty dramatic. The prosecutor was able to get Miller to admit that he could not say who is behind the screen of that phone. He only knew it was Christine's phone. And with now hearing the O Pairs testimony, Juliana magales that she is admitting to and testified that she and Brendan used that phone. It kind of did nothing, would you not say? I mean, it was a meh moment. Unfortunately, he wanted a Perry Mason moment.
00:04:02
Speaker 2: Didn't happen, I know, And they set us up for that. They told us we would hear something different, and the big moment came where the big person that was supposed to say yes. Essentially, this guy's forensics showed that it was her that was on the phone, given that she was the one at that time that should have been in possession of the phone. So he said, as far as forensics goes, yes, she was logged in and it showed him on that end, and he believed that she was on the phone. However, he couldn't. No one can say one hundred percent unless they were sitting right there. Yeah, if she.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Was unless you have visual corroboration, I believe is what they were saying. The only thing that was interesting. And I don't know where this goes and what the defense does with it, but that same detective did acknowledge and did testify that he was reassigned against his will, that he was taken out of the investigation and he was the lead digital forensics guy, and he said this. He finally admitted it took a while, it was related to my work in the Banfield case. Does that raise enough questions for the jury? Does that create any sort of win for the defense to get that detective to acknowledge that he was reassigned because of his opinions?
00:05:13
Speaker 2: The bar is low, So if you have to point to that is maybe a win that they scored or a point they scored. That doesn't say a whole lot. We don't know why he was reassigned. It's here, it's his word versus somebody else's word. I just says a juror. I couldn't take that into the jury room and think a whole lot of it.
00:05:33
Speaker 1: And there were so many objections by the prosecution. It felt like every question the defense attorney asked there was objection and it really rattled him.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she was on point. I give her a credit. The prosecutor, she had to be paying very close attention. But it was going on every every I mean, damn, it felt like every question for a little while.
00:05:57
Speaker 1: It did, and it was effective because you could just see him and you pointed out when we were watching it that the defense already kept looking up like he was trying to find words. He was trying to find a reason or a new way to ask a question to get what he wanted out of this witness. But it really it was not a good day, and in fact, you could see the stress even on Brendan Banfield's face as he was watching this all go on. Now, the defense did move on trying to undermine the blood evidence that the prosecution had. They had their own blood expert who said, and you liked this woman, she was actually a great witness, but testifying how blood basically works and how you can get a lot of information. And the point was the prosecution is saying Brendan Banfield moved the body of Joe Ryan to make it look like Joe Ryan stabbed Christine. And so they were talking about where the blood flowed and how they could tell whether or not the body was moved. So the defense brings up its own blood spatter analyst who said that there was not enough evidence to determine that blood drops were dripped from above, because that's what the prosecution says Brian Banfield did, and that is what Juliana testified to as well. So I don't know how effective that was, but it did cast some doubt.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: Not enough, I mean, just not enough. You gotta okay, just fine, they'll cancel each other out. If they're both credible, they cancel each other out, and it still leaves you with this other mountain of evidence. A key eyewitness in the AH pair. No, I mean they just didn't score big enough points to go into that jury room in my opinion and question, what is a hell of a story.
00:07:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's on cross examination we should point out. So, yes, they had their blood spatter experts say yeah, there's definitely not enough evidence to be able to say if someone dripped that blood onto Joe Ryan's body, But on cross examination, she then had to concede it was possible that the blood droplets on Joe Ryan did get dripped onto him, even if she didn't agree with the prosecution's experts, so it really was kind of a tough day for the defense. Now when we come back, we are going to talk about why Brendan Banfield got very emotional in court as his defense began, and it wasn't because he was upset with his attorney or how things were going. He was wiping away tears for quite a while. Welcome back everyone, as we go over the defense of Brendan Banfield. They have now been in court now for the second day of the defense portion of this trial. We were expecting a little bit more. We were expecting at least some moments where you're thinking to yourself, Wow, this is really throwing the prosecution's narrative into question, and as a juror, I'm wondering if that could be true. None of that happened yesterday. Maybe we had too high of an expectation, but it wasn't. It wasn't the defense we were promised, at least so far in opening arguments.
00:09:17
Speaker 2: It's the one where you could expect when there's as much evidence against you, this is they're doing the best they can. And our favorite attorney tells us, Alison Triesel, there's a stinker of a case, and this is a stinker and they're doing the best they can, and it's kind of making the point that they got nothing.
00:09:34
Speaker 1: Yes, And so the defense, in addition to bringing up this digital forensics officer who we were hoping to hear a lot more from, and then this blood spatter expert, they have been bringing up detectives who were there on the scene, and notably, they brought up one of the detectives who was basically with Brendan Banfield throughout, even accompanying him to the hospital. And so they played the body cam video for jurors, and their focus, the defense's focus was trying to get the officer to talk about Brendan's emotional reaction that day, but we could only hear the audio. The jurors saw the video, and certainly Brendan saw the video as well, and while this was being played out, Brendan was very emotional. He was wiping away tears. And notably, we should point out there are family members of Brendan and Christine in that courtroom, as you might imagine, and several folks who were there, Reporters who were in the courtroom said everybody was crying and that's a tough thing to have to watch and to relive for jurors, for the victims' family members. But Brendan himself was emotional. I don't know what kind of weight that carries with the jury. They're certainly watching the defendant in these moments.
00:10:52
Speaker 2: I'll tell you, sitting and we always say we put ourselves in the position of the jurors and sitting in that jury box. If I had seen him doing that, I wouldn't have thought much of it because of the way Again, you can't interpret I don't know what's going on as his head or his heart, but just looking at it as a juror, I didn't buy it.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a moment in court that really threw me the and this worked against the defense. But the defense attorney was asking the police officer, hey, wasn't he on his knees over his wife's body when you came in? And the prosecution was able to come back and say, when you saw him there on his knees over his wife's body, was he applying pressure to the wounds? Did he use a blanket, did he use any of the sheets, did he use anything available to him? Did he look like he was trying to stop the bleeding, and the officer said, no, that was damaging. That was damning. All right.
00:11:44
Speaker 2: I didn't, don't get me wrong, and that I didn't for me, I didn't think that much of it in a panic situation like that, And who knows what to do? Have you been trained in first aid? You see all that blood? You know, I actually didn't think too terribly much of that, But I get your point.
00:11:58
Speaker 1: So they are now today calling several more witnesses throughout the day to day, and by the way, we want to you know, we are following this, We are continuing to watch this, but this is expected to be a very long day in court today and normally this trial, the jurors get Friday off. But we heard the judge say, because of this impending snowstorm, this massive snowstorm that's hitting pretty much all of the country, but the mid Atlantic and the Northeast are going to get walloped with snow we expect, so they say today is going to be a very long day to make up for any potential absences because of this incoming weather. But throughout the day to day they're continuing right now to call detectives and it's unclear. I can't really see where the defense is going right now, but they do have a ton of witnesses that they are expecting to testify today and into tomorrow. I can't think of what more they could do or say, because the two things we were promised by the defense and opening arguments was this forensic, this digital forensic officer who was going to just blow the theory that Brendan was behind the cat fishing that didn't happen. Then they said they were going to be able to show the blood efforts, was going to show that Brendan took no part in staging a crime scene that fell flat. I can't think of what else more this defense can possibly do to try and swaye the jury.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: And that's why we have a trial, right We'll see what the judge said, clear this thing is going to wrap up. She said they'll have this case soon, certainly by next week. So this is coming down to it. I don't know how much more. They don't have a lot more time. So if they are waiting for their big moment, they are waiting until the very end.
00:13:34
Speaker 1: Well we will be watching so you don't have to because we have these trials. We have multiple trials we've been watching and have live stream throughout the apartment as we're monitoring all of the events. But this again is supposed to go a little bit later into tonight. If anything significant happens, of course we will hop back on and we will bring you the very latest in this compelling trial that the at least the nation is watching. All eyes on Fairfax County will continue to monitor it and bring you all the latest. But as always, we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside my partner t J. Holmes. We will talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. It is Thursday, January twenty second, and we have been riveted by this O pair affair murders trial and the defense of Brendan Banfield has begun. The prosecution rested its case earlier this week, and we just wanted to get you updated on all of the latest happenings inside that Fairfax County courthouse. We've been watching it pretty much NonStop. There's a live stream that's just going on in this apartment, and his defense has been rigorous. Now we should get you updated just in case you're a little bit behind on this case. We've been covering it, but for those of you just tuning in. Brendan Banfield is a former IRIS agent. He's charged with the aggravated murders of his wife, Christine Banfield, and another man, his name is Joe Ryan, who prosecutors say he lured along with his O pair to the home believing that he was participating in a mutually agreed upon fantasy rape sexual encounter. But the idea was, according to the prosecutors and according to the old pair who was testified, that they were setting Joe Ryan up to make it look like he was killing his wife and that Brendan would then shoot Joe Ryan and be the hero. All of that is now playing out in court, and the defense now has it's shot at trying to poke some holes into that prosecution's narrative. And yesterday was fascinating. The defense seemed a little rattled, would you not say, TJ.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: Yes, the guy the defense attory. We've been giving a lot of credit for how he's performed and how he handled himself and how he handled a bunch of prosecution witnesses. He has seemed to be thrown quite a bit by objections from the prosecution and from the reaction from the judge, who has been very even throughout the trial.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. And so they began, as most defense attorneys began with emotion to dismiss, saying that prosecutors failed to provide enough evidence and from the trial we were watching, it almost seemed silly that he went through this, but its standard stuff, and the judge did deny that request for a motion to dismiss. But they brought on that much anticipated digital forensic's officer. His name is Detective Brendan Miller. What did you make of his testimony.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: I haven't made anything of any of their testimony. I've been waiting for something, and they tease things in the opening statement about what we might see, but at least so far haven't necessarily seen anything that landed.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So Brendan Miller is the detective, and we've talked about him before. Who Well, he testified that it was Christine's phone, that's Brendan Banfield's wife, that was used to create the fet life account that was used to lure Joe Ryan. The defense is trying to say, hey, it could have been Christine who did it. It certainly wasn't our client, it wasn't Brendan, and so that was important to the defense and we were really anticipating this testimony because we thought, hey, this might be the thing, because if they can convince jury the jury that Brendan did not lure this man, but that it was in fact Christine who was into this fet life account. And by the way, fetlife dot com we've been learning as we go along here, this is a fetish website that was used to communicate between someone. The prosecutors say it was Brendan and the O pair and Joe Ryan. So this testimony fell flat in my opinion, because the cross was pretty dramatic. The prosecutor was able to get Miller to admit that he could not say who is behind the screen of that phone. He only knew it was Christine's phone. And with now hearing the O Pairs testimony, Juliana magales that she is admitting to and testified that she and Brendan used that phone. It kind of did nothing, would you not say? I mean, it was a meh moment. Unfortunately, he wanted a Perry Mason moment.
00:04:02
Speaker 2: Didn't happen, I know, And they set us up for that. They told us we would hear something different, and the big moment came where the big person that was supposed to say yes. Essentially, this guy's forensics showed that it was her that was on the phone, given that she was the one at that time that should have been in possession of the phone. So he said, as far as forensics goes, yes, she was logged in and it showed him on that end, and he believed that she was on the phone. However, he couldn't. No one can say one hundred percent unless they were sitting right there. Yeah, if she.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Was unless you have visual corroboration, I believe is what they were saying. The only thing that was interesting. And I don't know where this goes and what the defense does with it, but that same detective did acknowledge and did testify that he was reassigned against his will, that he was taken out of the investigation and he was the lead digital forensics guy, and he said this. He finally admitted it took a while, it was related to my work in the Banfield case. Does that raise enough questions for the jury? Does that create any sort of win for the defense to get that detective to acknowledge that he was reassigned because of his opinions?
00:05:13
Speaker 2: The bar is low, So if you have to point to that is maybe a win that they scored or a point they scored. That doesn't say a whole lot. We don't know why he was reassigned. It's here, it's his word versus somebody else's word. I just says a juror. I couldn't take that into the jury room and think a whole lot of it.
00:05:33
Speaker 1: And there were so many objections by the prosecution. It felt like every question the defense attorney asked there was objection and it really rattled him.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she was on point. I give her a credit. The prosecutor, she had to be paying very close attention. But it was going on every every I mean, damn, it felt like every question for a little while.
00:05:57
Speaker 1: It did, and it was effective because you could just see him and you pointed out when we were watching it that the defense already kept looking up like he was trying to find words. He was trying to find a reason or a new way to ask a question to get what he wanted out of this witness. But it really it was not a good day, and in fact, you could see the stress even on Brendan Banfield's face as he was watching this all go on. Now, the defense did move on trying to undermine the blood evidence that the prosecution had. They had their own blood expert who said, and you liked this woman, she was actually a great witness, but testifying how blood basically works and how you can get a lot of information. And the point was the prosecution is saying Brendan Banfield moved the body of Joe Ryan to make it look like Joe Ryan stabbed Christine. And so they were talking about where the blood flowed and how they could tell whether or not the body was moved. So the defense brings up its own blood spatter analyst who said that there was not enough evidence to determine that blood drops were dripped from above, because that's what the prosecution says Brian Banfield did, and that is what Juliana testified to as well. So I don't know how effective that was, but it did cast some doubt.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: Not enough, I mean, just not enough. You gotta okay, just fine, they'll cancel each other out. If they're both credible, they cancel each other out, and it still leaves you with this other mountain of evidence. A key eyewitness in the AH pair. No, I mean they just didn't score big enough points to go into that jury room in my opinion and question, what is a hell of a story.
00:07:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's on cross examination we should point out. So, yes, they had their blood spatter experts say yeah, there's definitely not enough evidence to be able to say if someone dripped that blood onto Joe Ryan's body, But on cross examination, she then had to concede it was possible that the blood droplets on Joe Ryan did get dripped onto him, even if she didn't agree with the prosecution's experts, so it really was kind of a tough day for the defense. Now when we come back, we are going to talk about why Brendan Banfield got very emotional in court as his defense began, and it wasn't because he was upset with his attorney or how things were going. He was wiping away tears for quite a while. Welcome back everyone, as we go over the defense of Brendan Banfield. They have now been in court now for the second day of the defense portion of this trial. We were expecting a little bit more. We were expecting at least some moments where you're thinking to yourself, Wow, this is really throwing the prosecution's narrative into question, and as a juror, I'm wondering if that could be true. None of that happened yesterday. Maybe we had too high of an expectation, but it wasn't. It wasn't the defense we were promised, at least so far in opening arguments.
00:09:17
Speaker 2: It's the one where you could expect when there's as much evidence against you, this is they're doing the best they can. And our favorite attorney tells us, Alison Triesel, there's a stinker of a case, and this is a stinker and they're doing the best they can, and it's kind of making the point that they got nothing.
00:09:34
Speaker 1: Yes, And so the defense, in addition to bringing up this digital forensics officer who we were hoping to hear a lot more from, and then this blood spatter expert, they have been bringing up detectives who were there on the scene, and notably, they brought up one of the detectives who was basically with Brendan Banfield throughout, even accompanying him to the hospital. And so they played the body cam video for jurors, and their focus, the defense's focus was trying to get the officer to talk about Brendan's emotional reaction that day, but we could only hear the audio. The jurors saw the video, and certainly Brendan saw the video as well, and while this was being played out, Brendan was very emotional. He was wiping away tears. And notably, we should point out there are family members of Brendan and Christine in that courtroom, as you might imagine, and several folks who were there, Reporters who were in the courtroom said everybody was crying and that's a tough thing to have to watch and to relive for jurors, for the victims' family members. But Brendan himself was emotional. I don't know what kind of weight that carries with the jury. They're certainly watching the defendant in these moments.
00:10:52
Speaker 2: I'll tell you, sitting and we always say we put ourselves in the position of the jurors and sitting in that jury box. If I had seen him doing that, I wouldn't have thought much of it because of the way Again, you can't interpret I don't know what's going on as his head or his heart, but just looking at it as a juror, I didn't buy it.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a moment in court that really threw me the and this worked against the defense. But the defense attorney was asking the police officer, hey, wasn't he on his knees over his wife's body when you came in? And the prosecution was able to come back and say, when you saw him there on his knees over his wife's body, was he applying pressure to the wounds? Did he use a blanket, did he use any of the sheets, did he use anything available to him? Did he look like he was trying to stop the bleeding, and the officer said, no, that was damaging. That was damning. All right.
00:11:44
Speaker 2: I didn't, don't get me wrong, and that I didn't for me, I didn't think that much of it in a panic situation like that, And who knows what to do? Have you been trained in first aid? You see all that blood? You know, I actually didn't think too terribly much of that, But I get your point.
00:11:58
Speaker 1: So they are now today calling several more witnesses throughout the day to day, and by the way, we want to you know, we are following this, We are continuing to watch this, but this is expected to be a very long day in court today and normally this trial, the jurors get Friday off. But we heard the judge say, because of this impending snowstorm, this massive snowstorm that's hitting pretty much all of the country, but the mid Atlantic and the Northeast are going to get walloped with snow we expect, so they say today is going to be a very long day to make up for any potential absences because of this incoming weather. But throughout the day to day they're continuing right now to call detectives and it's unclear. I can't really see where the defense is going right now, but they do have a ton of witnesses that they are expecting to testify today and into tomorrow. I can't think of what more they could do or say, because the two things we were promised by the defense and opening arguments was this forensic, this digital forensic officer who was going to just blow the theory that Brendan was behind the cat fishing that didn't happen. Then they said they were going to be able to show the blood efforts, was going to show that Brendan took no part in staging a crime scene that fell flat. I can't think of what else more this defense can possibly do to try and swaye the jury.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: And that's why we have a trial, right We'll see what the judge said, clear this thing is going to wrap up. She said they'll have this case soon, certainly by next week. So this is coming down to it. I don't know how much more. They don't have a lot more time. So if they are waiting for their big moment, they are waiting until the very end.
00:13:34
Speaker 1: Well we will be watching so you don't have to because we have these trials. We have multiple trials we've been watching and have live stream throughout the apartment as we're monitoring all of the events. But this again is supposed to go a little bit later into tonight. If anything significant happens, of course we will hop back on and we will bring you the very latest in this compelling trial that the at least the nation is watching. All eyes on Fairfax County will continue to monitor it and bring you all the latest. But as always, we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside my partner t J. Holmes. We will talk to you soon.