Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Seven: Verdict
167 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, we talk about a trial in the news that has finally concluded a bizarre saga that keeps coming up in true crime news.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS. Our theme song is No Scars from slip.fm
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Ad Information:
New Era Caps: https://zen.ai/dWeCYLHxxANOaZ6NcKocEw
Liquid IV: Link: https://zen.ai/45lYmDnWl1Z3cR66LBX5mA
Zencastr: Link: https://zen.ai/SFkD99OGWGNz_plc2c_Yaw
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
2026 Double Homicide Trial Overview
00:00:59
Speaker
It's been an interesting start to 2026 in terms of like what we've been doing in the the two months to start it off. I had a murder trial right off the bat that I was in the courtroom for, which was a double homicide that had a really strange split verdict. We may come back to that one, but the Brendan Banfield trial did happen.
00:01:25
Speaker
It did. And I watched the entire thing. I saw all of it. I missed the day. I've got to catch back up on that day, but I understand what happened that day from like the
Brendan Banfield Trial Verdict
00:01:36
Speaker
summaries. But at this point in time, everybody knows the the verdict has happened.
00:01:42
Speaker
And Brendan Banfield was found guilty on all counts. Correct. and he testified, which...
Au Pair Double Homicide Case Discussion
00:01:50
Speaker
His defense was one of self-defense, ah even though, ah well, self-defense and the defense of others, right? Right.
00:01:59
Speaker
And typically, when those cases go to trial, the defendant has to testify because the facts presented without some sort of substantial witness, which usually would have to be the defendant, you know, there's been information factual information presented to a grand jury where they said like these criminal charges could go forward and so ah self-defense and the defense of others is a defense that has to be raised right right right so in order to do so they have to do it ah somebody has to do it somebody has to testify and in this case
00:02:38
Speaker
the ah pair girlfriend, uh, she testified against him, right? Right. And just like the the quickest summary we can get out of here without interrupting you too much is this is the au pair murders we talked about at length in multiple episodes where there's a double homicide.
00:02:58
Speaker
and the idea was that the au pair and the young child of a couple, the man in the couple had come back in and a, man was quote-unquote attacking, end quote, the wife of the couple that apparently there was a profile on a fetish site where what's presented to us is the wife had set up a ah very early morning meeting that was sort of ah violent in nature, but it was going to be ultimately a consensual sexual encounter, and that the
00:03:37
Speaker
The defense presents
Juliana's Testimony and Language Barrier
00:03:39
Speaker
a story where the husband catches this man taking advantage of that consensual encounter and killing the wife and then kills the man. and it becomes a mess. You and I never thought this was going to go to trial. The au pair got a plea deal for manslaughter, ultimately, to testify against Brendan Banfield, the man in the couple,
00:04:05
Speaker
And that's kind of where we pick up with what you were saying. The au pair has testified. Correct. she so, and just to point out, she was offered to walk if she testified initially, and she refused to do so. She was in a relationship with Brandon Banfield and she thought that um they were going to be together.
00:04:27
Speaker
is she thought they were going to get away with this apparently at some point. Well, so did he. it It's not a situation they ever would have gotten away with, I don't think.
00:04:39
Speaker
Now, there is one sort of pivotal moment where we've we've talked about this case sporadically. It's been in the news section, right? Because it's so crazy.
00:04:51
Speaker
But it's made our true crime news. And essentially, everything was confirmed during the trial. and I feel like Juliana, who is the au pair, she testified truthfully, i feel like.
00:05:08
Speaker
And the defense for Brendan Banfield, the defense counselor, he I think he was pushing the wrong buttons as far as ah the communication he was having with her on the stand and how he thought the jury was interpreting it versus how it was probably actually being interpreted. Because... ah ah Juliana was a, ah not a member, she was a participant in the All Pair Program. And that is where young, usually I think it's women, young women come from other countries. And so English is her second language. She's from Brazil and her native language is Portuguese.
00:05:55
Speaker
Right. And so because of that, ah she she's fluent and completely capable of speaking in English. It's just, you can tell she's not a native English speaker, and she more than likely, in my opinion, learned English later in life. And so when people learn a language later in life,
00:06:21
Speaker
a And I don't know where she's at in this process. It's just the best way I can explain sort of what happened with regard to her testimony. When you learn a language later in life, you don't necessarily think in that language. And so when you're translating it in your mind, like connotations and the subtleties of, you know, having a conversation, they can be picked up or put down the wrong way.
00:06:50
Speaker
A hundred percent. And I think, so it heavily affects, while I agree with the translation situation, it heavily affects the cross-examination and the direct testimony to a degree to be asked questions about a situation like this. I think there's a, there's a high level of anxiety that comes with this um when you're in a situation First of all, where someone is being killed. Second of all, where you've been caught by the police and like there are expectations of how the truth is going to come out. And then there's also expectations that your words being used as the truth are not just being used to verify your story and decide your punishment. They're the linchpin the punishment of another person. And then it's further ah compounding the issues because you're in a romantic relationship to that person and you have been either duped or you've gone along with something so horrific that like shock is different.
00:08:00
Speaker
It's clearly worn on her, like the way she's answering questions, her appearance overall, everything has worn on her in this situation. And it kind of all comes out spilling out when she's being cross-examined by a defense attorney who, honestly, he did the job of of a guy that like knew we should be negotiating a plea. Yeah.
00:08:20
Speaker
But instead, like, we've gone to trial and like he's having her read all these messages back and forth between herself and her family and some of the Banfield family. And it it like it it is one of the most spectacular judicial disasters that I've seen in a very long time. And if you have time to sit down and watch it, you should watch the whole trial.
Juliana's Plea Deal and Trial Dynamics
00:08:43
Speaker
I agree. um In her testimony, she's confused about not just with the defense, but also with the prosecution. She is 25 years old at this point in time, but she was 21 when she came as an au pair, I believe. And so if you take that into consideration, she's pretty young is my point, but she is 25 years old.
00:09:07
Speaker
And the defense attorney and the prosecutor, they'd ask her questions. And she repeatedly said on the stand, do I have to be 100% Can I answer this question if I'm not And nobody would answer her, which, I mean, they really shouldn't.
00:09:26
Speaker
And the judge kind of at some point said, ma'am, I just need you to answer the question. Right. And so she stated on the stand after she had said that probably 10 or more times between the two different, you know, the direct, the cross, the redirect, the recross.
00:09:43
Speaker
After she had said that that many times saying, if I just think I know, but I'm not 100% sure, can I answer it? And nobody would tell her, like, no, don't answer it. She said, like, out loud, look...
00:09:57
Speaker
I've already told you, i don't know for sure. And I don't know if I can like sort of say who I think it more likely was like, because basically the questions were, did you write this message or did Brandon, uh, Brendan? And she'd say, well, some of them I can kind of tell are more like me and some are more like him, but I don't know for sure. Can I answer it? And the attorney took that,
00:10:24
Speaker
To say she was basically telling him on the stand she wasn't going to answer any of his questions. And I was like, that's not what she's saying at all. She's doing not what she's saying. She's just like, she was so confused by, like look, our legal process in the United States, the the whole concept of a trial, having a jury brought in going through like the the whole sort of presentation of the trial is confounding. It is like strange if you grew up in the United States and you have watched every episode of Law and Order.
00:11:02
Speaker
So it was particularly confounding to watch this very young and i don't want to say dumb, but naive comes the mind. gru Yeah, naive is a good word.
00:11:15
Speaker
And like, you know, she is sort of stuck and having to like be, you could clearly tell she does not want to be here. She just also does not want to be in jail.
00:11:29
Speaker
and And the reason I think her testimony was so credible is because if she had flipped, so to speak, at the very beginning, she would have walked away. They weren't going to charge her Correct. Because if you recall, in this case, the idea was Brendan Banfield returned to the home with after the au pair called him and said, hey, there's a weird car here and some man's going in the house.
00:11:56
Speaker
And Brendan alleged that the man, the weird man that they didn't know was killing his wife. He therefore shot him. and then later Juliana shot him as well. Right.
00:12:14
Speaker
that she So when she shot him, he was already incapacitated. She was charged with like second degree murder or something to that effect, I believe. Yes. Initially. But the idea was they wanted to get Brandon to confess or to take a plea because he was the mastermind behind it.
00:12:34
Speaker
And at first she wouldn't do it. And it comes out during the trial that the only way she's able to talk with her family in Brazil is because she hasn't like flipped on Brendan yet. And Brendan's mother is providing her with the money that she needs on her account in jail to talk to her family in Brazil. And again apparently had been paying for her legal services.
00:12:59
Speaker
ah Right. She also obtained an attorney, which um she thought that... So it's a little bit confusing, but at first she thought she was going to be together with Brendan. But if you recall, she was arrested ah substantially sooner than he was. Right. Because she had basically confessed to shooting Joe Ryan in a way that wasn't conducive to claim self-defense,
Defense Strategy and Crime Scenario
00:13:23
Speaker
right? Because ah once you've satisfied the are I don't know if it's – once you've ah neutralized the threat, right you can't kill someone just to kill them.
00:13:35
Speaker
For example, in this case, the first shot took him down in a way that he was no longer a threat. And just because he was moving doesn't mean that the threat was continuing.
00:13:49
Speaker
And you know it's kind of an it's an interesting topic because a lot of people, and myself included, I previously believed in the fact that you could absolutely you know kill someone that's in your house that's not supposed to be there, but that's not really the case. You can neutralize a threat, but you have to do so in the most...
00:14:11
Speaker
are the least deadly way possible, I guess. Is that the way it Yeah, that's the way that you would say it. We've kind of been taught by TV and movies that, like, it's okay to shoot someone when they're down.
00:14:25
Speaker
Right, but that's not the case. Like, if you shoot someone and kill them on the first shot, that's that. But if you shoot someone who is a threat in your home, and, like, you're supposed to call, like, for an ambulance immediately.
00:14:39
Speaker
And that kind of thing. And so, in this case, her case was the one that was cut and dry. And she initially did not flip on Brandon. They maintained the position that Christine, the wife who was the victim...
00:14:54
Speaker
had independently set up this ah rendezvous with Joe Ryan. and but And she did so in a way that between her husband leaving at 7 a.m. and her ah pay a pair and daughter, four-year-old daughter leaving, you know, shortly thereafter, 7.20 a.m. she was going to meet this random man who was going to come into her house because she had left the door unlocked and they were going have this, like, FED Life Encounter FET Life Encounter which you know it stands for like fetish life or whatever and which to me that was the it wasn't plausible from the very beginning she was the mom you kind of held right you held that the mom of a small child is not going to spend her 7 9 a.m.
00:15:46
Speaker
morning time that's not when she's going to set up in a Exactly. She's not going to do that. And not to mention the fact this was a sight unseen meeting, which means they did not meet in public to begin with. A lot of the trial kind of focuses on how like that was kind of, it was, we, you and I talked about how like Christine was Joseph Ryan's unicorn. Joseph Ryan was Brent, Brendan Banfield's unicorn because of the fact most people, even on FetLife,
00:16:17
Speaker
They want to meet ahead of time. They want to get a level of security and safety. Yes. Correct. And I promise you the premise that Christine Banfield would have ever invited a man from FetLife to come to the home she shared with her four-year-old daughter.
00:16:40
Speaker
is like, it's a very, very small statistical probability that she ever would have done that. Much less... Doing the actions that, like, we're expected to believe if all of that were to be true.
00:16:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No, she... This was a tragic, tragic, just really not thought out situation. And i I'm so surprised by it because Brendan Banfield has...
00:17:10
Speaker
relied on his intelligence his entire life, I would say. and that's been his whole thing as far as, because he testifies and he talks and he talks and talks and talks. and I think he never had like a self-awareness check in this whole situation because nothing he's saying makes any sense.
00:17:39
Speaker
And I can't believe that anybody listening to him would ever think it made any sense. But to him, it's like, you know, I thought my trial was going to already have happened and I would already be out of here. And like, it was crazy because he's the only one that's buying what he's putting down.
00:18:00
Speaker
And it was bad from the jump. And i think Juliana at some point, I'm not sure what changed her mind. ah She says during the trial, she's going to do the right thing by testifying. That's that's what she said.
00:18:16
Speaker
ultimately said she got a 10 year sentence and considering, uh, and that was from a plea deal. i don't know that she's been sentenced yet, but that's, that's what's going to happen. And considering the fact that they were going to let her walk away, if she flipped immediately and gave them the story, like, it's not like her situation got better.
00:18:37
Speaker
no she, she even complains about like, so this is something that happens that people may or may not know. If you retain an attorney, you're paying for their time. So people think like, I'm going to use the word paid attorney versus appointed attorney, but really a paid attorney is someone that's been retained by you or your family for your situation. And appointed attorney in most cases, when you're dealing with a murder case is that's going to be um
00:19:09
Speaker
someone who is like a public defender, frequently a capital defender, and you're going to probably get more from that relationship than you would for most retained attorneys unless they just happen to be murder attorneys or death charge attorneys. And she complained about that.
00:19:30
Speaker
um She complained about a number of things just related to the fact that like she hadn't seen him, they hadn't brought her anything, but that attorney brought her a deal, That was basically, hey, if you testify against Brendan Banfield, who is apparently paying my bill, um then you'll go home.
00:19:49
Speaker
And if you don't, then you're going to trial. And so that was the best deal that could have come out of this. And she ended up testifying against them anyways, and now has to go do a significant prison sentence.
00:20:03
Speaker
Right. And she wanted her, it was a very strange, I could tell that her youth based on the messages because she like wants her attorney to come see her. So she has a visitor.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah. it's the craziest thing. Like she's like, Oh, and like his laptop is dead and like, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, and I get what she's saying. And, you know, becauseing and because the defense attorney is making her read her messages to her family that have been translated from, ah Portuguese into English. Cause she's talking to her family in her native language. And you can tell on the stand that she's thinking and wanting to respond in her native language and forcing herself to translate into English.
00:20:42
Speaker
Correct. And she, so this is all like in the past and what's going on. And you can tell that at that point she was still maintaining that like she had, that there was no plan that she just did what Brandon said, Brendan said to do.
00:20:58
Speaker
it, it You know, this is where she ends up. And it comes up that she is looking to make a deal for her financial future based on everything she's been through. Right. that was an interesting kind of pivot, which...
00:21:18
Speaker
The defense attorney was making the point that, like, ooh, you're going to make $10,000 off of your role in this story. Prosecutor comes back and says, well, but is $10,000 really a lot of money in Brazil? Like, what have you done to your life? Which is essentially, people in Brazil have less opportunity to begin with.
00:21:38
Speaker
Right. In a lot of cases, which is exactly why the Au Pair program exists, to bring... ah to to take young ladies from one country to another country so they can have perhaps other opportunities, but it also is culture exposure, right?
00:21:54
Speaker
And she has basically flushed everything down the toilet because she's going to have this conviction, right? And she's going to be immediately deported when she gets out of jail because she's overstayed her welcome here.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right. And so the defense attorney wants us to believe that this person that Meg just so aptly described to us. is the diabolical mastermind who put all of this
Insights into Brendan Banfield's Defense
00:22:20
Speaker
together. Because that's the other thing that happens when you wait until the eve of trial and you kind of just jump in headfirst because you don't know exactly how the process is going to prosecutor is going to present the case, is ah the defense attorney, if you don't have a solid plan, you end up having to sort of
00:22:40
Speaker
cross cross wires and piecemeal your story together. And it shows so much during the cross-examination
00:22:50
Speaker
Juliana. And i cannot explain to you like how much of a disaster it is, but I firmly believe that the defense attorney thinks it's going to come across that way. And it doesn't.
00:23:03
Speaker
So in addition to like Juliana, And her ability to communicate coming across oddly to a jury, as Meg aptly pointed out, it also comes across as if Banfield, the defendant here, completely took advantage of this girl.
00:23:24
Speaker
The entire time. And like, and i'm I'm not knocking her. called it naive earlier. i think youth plays into this and makes that naivete double.
00:23:37
Speaker
And I think that like, she never thought all of these things were actually going to happen. i I think you're probably right because who would?
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, until the moment you're standing there and for some reason Brendan Banfield has set all this up, it did work, you were hardest pounding out of your head, and gunshots start being fired, and you witness Banfield stabbing his wife, essentially.
00:24:07
Speaker
like i don't know that she had any clue what was happening up until that point. I don't think she did honestly. i think that, you know, i think the way that, again, i feel like the fact that Portuguese is her native language and English is a secondary language has to do, I think that plays in here.
00:24:27
Speaker
i think that while they might have had these like affair daydreams and stuff, I think that at the end of the what happened, she was probably like, wow, I can't believe that actually happened.
00:24:42
Speaker
And I also think ah she had the gun specifically in case somehow Joseph Ryan got the situation turned around on Brendan Banfield and Juliana because ah he was concerned that he wouldn't be able to do what he was trying to do, which would be kill Joseph Ryan and then murder Christine Banfield in a way that made it look like Joseph Ryan had killed her and that's why he had killed him.
00:25:22
Speaker
The defense attorney... He tried to emphasize, first of all, that there was no plan. And second of all, that if there was a plan, that Juliana was responsible for the plan. She had orchestrated it it all, right? And pick a lane, right?
00:25:39
Speaker
I mean, none of that made any sense to anybody. And it's weird that a guy who had relied on his intelligence his entire life was would have come up with such a stupid plan. And that's the that's the other thing about this trial. I encourage people, like like we're synopsizing this in like 40 minutes to an hour chunks.
00:26:04
Speaker
Watching the whole thing is an experience where you will walk away learning a lot about the state of humanity. And i say that because we learn things in this trial that like, if you were to tell me like,
00:26:22
Speaker
in other circumstances, I would never believe you. For instance, it turns out that Christine Banfield, one of the decedents, one of the victims in this case, was a sexual assault nurse examiner for one of the things that she had done in her nursing career.
00:26:40
Speaker
um Another thing was that Brendan Banfield had been having affairs. He doesn't look like a guy that
00:26:49
Speaker
in my opinion, i mean, he's completely average. There's nothing super creepy about him, except for his stoicism throughout this process where it becomes more and more obvious that he's done this.
00:27:01
Speaker
um He basically was having an affair on you know the mother of his child, and because he wanted some kind of different life that he doesn't ever really even explain to the person he's asking to commit these atrocious crimes with him.
00:27:20
Speaker
You know, some vague stuff about money and custody comes up, but realistically, like we discover he's been having these affairs and like, I, do you imagine him as a guy that's like suave and affairs make sense?
00:27:34
Speaker
No, absolutely not. Yeah. It just gets worse. the And then he talks and it gets worse. Oh, it's so bad. And he made it seem like the affair part was run of the mill. And of course, that kind of contradicts the fact that like, if it was so run of the mill that, oh, Christine was probably just having an affair. That's why this guy, random guy showed up at the house.
00:27:57
Speaker
Then why did he go there? Why did he shoot him? Why did he confront him? Well, because she he was killing her, supposedly. But the other part is, like, Joseph Ryan had found his unicorn in Christine Banfield, even though it wasn't really her. Like, she was somebody, a a beautiful woman who was trying to orchestrate something that Joseph Ryan was actually on FetLife trying to find, like a real person, right? Some version of it, yeah. Yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
Right. And so he like hit the fat life lottery. he kind of did until he didn't. Well, it wasn't real, right? None of it was real because like it just, and it's depicted in the messages that kind of come out during court, like this type of thing, essentially, if you were to believe that it was Christine Benfeld who did it, she would have,
00:28:57
Speaker
I had gotten online, messaged with a guy, said, hey, okay, I want to do this. We're going to do this fake rape scene. And the way we're going to orchestrate it is I'm going to be at home sleeping.
Joseph Ryan's Role and Death
00:29:12
Speaker
The front door is going to be unlocked. You're going to come in. You've got to bring everything with you. And we're going to do this in my bedroom.
00:29:19
Speaker
Well, he's going, I mean, for one thing, i don't i don't know anything about this type of lifestyle in this community that has you know come together online. But most of the people that they interacted with, they said that was too much, like that they weren't willing to do it. They had to do a meet and greet in a public place first, right? Right. Right.
00:29:43
Speaker
And Joseph Ryan parked his, I believe it was his mother, his mother's vehicle in the Banfield driveway. He left identifying stuff right there.
00:29:55
Speaker
yeah There was absolutely no indication whatsoever that he was actually going to harm Christine in any way, shape, or form. He thought he was going there for a sexual rendezvous that was completely consensual and set up between the two of them.
00:30:10
Speaker
Right, and and we're not, just for the record, we're not kink-shaming. we're not nothing at all. like i we we are We are pointing out the absurdity of setting up this type of triple entendre murder. So, on the one hand, you have to develop the scenario that, like...
00:30:33
Speaker
these two people were meeting and then you have to develop a secondary scenario where one of those people was sort of not doing what had been agreed upon. And he was quote unquote, killing the person that he's meeting, which takes you to like level five. And then you have to really, and for, from his role in this, like that's not something he would have done. Like he was in it for the fantasy of the encounter. Yeah.
00:31:02
Speaker
There was no reason for him to kill her. Right. And then the third part of the entendre is then you have the hero husband coming in and saving the day, except everyone's dead. But then as the au pair girlfriend shoots Joseph Ryan, the kill shot, not the defense shot, the kill shot, because she panicked and she didn't understand the concept of the fact that just because he was moving because he needed medical attention. Right. Right.
00:31:29
Speaker
Was not a signal for her to shoot, which I am not so sure if she had not shot him. That we would be here. I don't know for sure how it would have gone. It might have been Joseph Ryan being arrested and having to prove his innocence that he didn't kill Christine Danfield.
00:31:48
Speaker
It could have been. it very well could have been. i don't think, I don't know for sure, but I do think that it was, you know, the amount of time that went by, the fact that, like, there was another gun. i mean, you know, if you remember back when we first saw, like, the news, I don't think we saw it when it happened. Maybe we did. But I think we saw it as ah the au pair was, as Juliana was arrested for it. I think that's when we first ah started kind of,
00:32:17
Speaker
covering it in the news. I'm not really sure actually now that I think about it, but it was a strange thing because why did he have a gun and why did she have a gun? And come to find out he is IRS special agent or trying to be a special agent.
00:32:35
Speaker
And they are law enforcement. They're sworn law enforcement officers who carry guns and badges. And so that's why he had a gun. And then she had a gun because he had given it to her and put it and she had put it in her pocket. Right. Well, that was one of the other things I think was a miscommunication between the au pair and Brandon Banfield, because I think Juliana was supposed to get the gun. It was supposed to be somewhere in the house locked away, and it turned out it wasn't. She was carrying it on her person to the zoo that day.
00:33:07
Speaker
Which she was never going to the zoo, but. Right, right. And he told her at, she testifies that he told her to, I feel like when it was like clear that the confrontation was over, so before she shot him.
00:33:25
Speaker
He told her to go put the gun up, I think. I think because he was like shouting out the numbers to the shape the safe to her, that's what she testified to. It was weird. We couldn't figure out what exactly he was saying. I think he was saying, hey, go put the gun away because you don't need it. Because the only thing he was concerned about is what if somehow Joseph Ryan can turn the situation around on him?
00:33:51
Speaker
yeah Because he's confronting a guy he doesn't know in his bedroom, right? Yeah. And like what if there had been anything about Joseph Ryan that had caused him to be able to defensively react to brandon Brendan Banfield at that moment?
00:34:09
Speaker
He wanted Juliana to be able to shoot him if necessary. He did not want her to take a kill shot unnecessarily because that brought in just a whole lot of in other complications, complications. And I, you know, I told you kind of flippantly, I was like, yeah, he probably should have translated that part in Portuguese. So she really understood what he was saying. Cause all he was telling her, he she was just an insurance plan with the gun. He didn't want her to shoot him as well. I, that really, it took me a long time to wrap my mind or actually I never did until trial because I was like, why would she have shot him later? And then she like told
00:34:50
Speaker
you know, when she's talking, she's completely honest about all this stuff. Oh yeah. And it's sort of like, wait, what? And she thought you can tell from her testimony. She thought the sign of him moving was an indication that he was still alive and they weren't going to get away with their plan, which is why she shot him which is terrible. And is she made no bones about it during the testimony. However,
00:35:21
Speaker
Brendan's version of that when he testified was that she shot him because he was going to hit him and the show are he had hit him in the shoulder blades or something. It was ridiculous. I believe that the medical examiner testified that Joseph Ryan, he was shot in the head and he would have been blinded.
00:35:42
Speaker
I believe is what they said. Yeah. And ah he wouldn't have been able to see. And it was a confusion confusing situation anyway. Brandon Benfield testified that he came in the room and shouted federal law enforcement or something like that.
00:35:58
Speaker
a Stop. what What did he say? it was it was something ridiculous. i don't know the exact quote. He had his gun drawn and he's he said, you know, ah Law enforcement, stop what you're doing. Federal officer, something like that. it was like, you know, he probably had waited his entire life to do that.
00:36:18
Speaker
And so, you know, they were confused. Well, Supposedly, according a mixture of Juliana's testimony and Brendan's testimony, indicates that Christine said something to the effect of, Brendan, he has a knife, and that Christine told Juliana to call 911, and she did. like she called 911, yeah, she did.
00:36:42
Speaker
And so that gives you an idea of how like crazy it was because Juliana called 911 and Brendan told her to stop the call. He gave her the next sign, like where, you know, you're telling somebody, draw your you draw your thumb across your throat.
00:36:58
Speaker
Right. And then, so the icing on the cake, one of the most repulsive things I've ever seen in my entire life was ah Brendan Banfield recounting Christine Banfield's last moments.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah. and he said that she took his hand and put it on the huge hole she was bleeding out from in her neck.
00:37:23
Speaker
And then, like, she put his other hand on top of it. And, like, they'd have this whole hand thing going on. And that she told him that she loved him and that she was sorry. And the medical examiner had testified that more than likely she would have been ah rendered unable to speak, not to mention the fact that she had five stab wounds. And the situation as it were, so Brendan is saying that Joe Ryan did those stabs. Well, yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
Even the testimony, his lying testimony, did not line up to a situation that would have allowed Joseph Ryan five stabs to make all those wounds. In other words, some of those stabs happened after Joseph Ryan had been shot. Right.
00:38:15
Speaker
And so that makes no sense. And, you know, it it was insulting because in in real life, which I get this happened, but like none of this was real life except that the two victims died, right?
Brendan Banfield Guilty Verdict
00:38:31
Speaker
it The rest of it was all completely like fantasy land. But she he didn't say like, please tell our daughter I love her.
00:38:43
Speaker
yeah Like, he didn't bring anything up about their four-year-old daughter. And that really was kind of the, like, if you're going to lie and make up her last words anyway, at least make it not about you. But everything about this case was about him.
00:39:00
Speaker
Everything was him. Yeah. And it has the ending that it should have, and that is he's been found guilty. um he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
00:39:11
Speaker
Correct. And he was found guilty on ah all the the charges that they finally ended up presenting. The charging documents and the jury instructions is actually quite confusing.
00:39:23
Speaker
yeah Because I think there was some ah ambiguity with regard to one of the charges. One of the charges was like you had to have, it was two murders in the same Three-year activity period. Something like that. And the judge was trying to explain to the prosecutor like how like that's just one charge. That's both murders, but one charge, right? Yeah. And so it was confusing. But anyway, everything they presented, including, i believe they ended up going with the child endangerment as opposed to the child of neglect or abuse. Right. Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
And so he was found guilty of that as well because he absolutely was guilty of that. um He was in charge of that situation. And it was so weird how he just really couldn't even take responsibility for the fact that, like, his daughter never should have been in the house when that was happening.
00:40:25
Speaker
or never been exposed to that because it never happened in the first place is what is with the ideal situation. Oh, yeah. But, like, even, so the, so if you think about this, which it's pointless to do because it's all bad, there was no reason for Juliana to be there, much less the four-year-old daughter in this setup. He could have done it all himself and taken himself down, right? Right. Actually, if he would have done it all himself, it probably would not have gotten the scrutiny that it did. You're right. ah Part of the initial...
00:41:00
Speaker
of my initial interest in this case was the bizarre nature of how it unfolded. Right. Right. Because, um, having been a mom and a nanny, i know for a fact that anytime I had driven like an hour or something and realized I forgot lunches, would be buying lunch that day. i would not be turning around and going back. That was the very first thing I was like, that makes absolutely no sense. Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
And so based on that, like, you know, my radar was going off and i don't know how much I agree with. I feel like they could have probably made this case somehow.
00:41:42
Speaker
And I'm not so sure. I feel like the the nanny got you know, what she got. ah i feel like she was duped, but that doesn't change the fact that essentially she shot Joe Ryan in cold blood. She should have known he wasn't a risk, right?
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah. And I do understand that that is... A situation most of us are never going to face, and we never would really even process it. But, you know, they set that situation up to begin with, and she was killing him because he wasn't dead yet, not because he was going to hurt somebody.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah. i yeah So it's especially aggravated murder. um thats That's what I think you were getting at with. ah So they get an aggravating factor out of the fact that he used a firearm in the commission of a violent felony.
00:42:34
Speaker
And then they get the fact that he commits two in their prescribed period of time, which I believe in Virginia is three years. But in this case, it's it's essentially 10 minutes. um He commits two murders.
00:42:46
Speaker
And they do find him guilty of the, the, crimes for having his kid in the house while he's doing this. You know, I look at this, and I think the reason you're saying why you were fascinated with it, I think I'm just fascinated with multiple murders. I've always been that way. i understand the things that happen between two people.
00:43:10
Speaker
And how you end up with a a murder or an accidental death or or some other type of ah violent confrontation. What I didn't understand from the jump was like how you get this other guy in the mix.
00:43:24
Speaker
And I thought it was going to be explained. Because like we you and I have heard different things along the way. There was a shuffling of the local police department at one point. There was all of these defense illusions that potentially...
00:43:40
Speaker
There had been evidence that it was only Christine Banfield on her devices, and all of that sort of fell apart when it finally gets to trial. And ah yeah we even had mentioned the prosecutor that was originally on this case had some very serious personal issues, including... being drunk during the day, but I got to be honest, I don't, you know, if I were working this type of case and had gotten this far with it and was this annoyed with it, I might be drinking during the day too. It's that kind of case.
00:44:13
Speaker
And at the end of the day, like, so to clarify, it is absolutely horrible the way Christine Banfield died. It must've been so confusing.
00:44:24
Speaker
But the thing that I think draws me in so much here is Joseph Ryan, in his last moments, must have been so confused before his incredibly tragic death as to like what was happening. like He showed up because he thought he was going to have some type of casual encounter related to something he had been talking to someone about and made like all the things clear. And that person, and asked... him to do a specific set of things in his mind, whether that was his thing or like, he was just like, you know what?
00:45:03
Speaker
I can get into this cause she's beautiful and I dig this or whatever. The last moments when those shots were fired must have been chaotic And horrifying.
00:45:19
Speaker
Absolutely horrifying. What a terrible way to die for those two. Yeah, I agree. It's actually one of the worst that um i've that I've ever – I wouldn't even imagine this type of situation. Yeah, no, I wouldn't have either. um I don't have a lot more on that right now. um you know I thought it would be more of a case that I would want to do a deep dive into, but the truth is, at the end of it all, it was pretty self-explanatory.
00:45:48
Speaker
And it had been all along. Yeah. And it was a waste. All of it was a waste. And I hate it that they couldn't have realized that earlier. I feel like maybe if she Juliana had a been a little bit older and a little less taken advantage of, she would have been like, no, what are you talking about? We're not doing this. Right. But she wasn't in that type of position that Brendan Banfield was essentially her boss.
00:46:13
Speaker
Right. Right. And it's none of these things are ever going to work out. it it, it's always a bad idea. And it just seems like a waste that didn't need to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. I've been, ah ah to give a little preview, I've been really sucked into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.
New Case: Nancy Guthrie's Disappearance
00:46:40
Speaker
You. Oh my goodness. What happened to her? I don't know. I've been looking at these Scottsdale Bitcoin home invasions and wondering if all that's tied together. Yeah, it's ah it's a little bit.
00:46:52
Speaker
ah So I've seen sort of mixed, ah what it common to I guess, commentary on it where people are like, oh, why is this a big deal? Why is this in the news? Okay, so an 84-year-old woman who lives alone being taken in the middle of the night is absolutely newsworthy. It has nothing to do with anything else. The fact that, because that doesn't happen very often.
00:47:21
Speaker
Okay. I realized that, you know, older people go missing, but like they wander off. They, it it's not typically a situation where somebody is taken from their bed at night.
00:47:36
Speaker
Right. Okay. That's an odd thing. There's not a whole lot of motive, not just for Nancy Guthrie, but like for any 84 year old woman to be taken in their sleep, ah except for money, which is unclear at this point, if that's really what the motive is or not, because they're taking weird ways of if, if it's even the people who have seen her and If it's even them, like, they're it doesn't seem like they're directly communicating with the children that would need that they would need to be communicating with. Because from what I've seen, the children are ready and willing to talk with them. And they're going to, like, TMZ and other local news places.
00:48:21
Speaker
And they need to talk with the kids, right? So i don't I don't know if that's going to end up being for real. But I just don't see the motive otherwise. i have played that situation over and over in my head. And there there's got to be something to it. But I don't know that it's going to end up being a stranger
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't. So I am torn on all of that right now. I haven't seen enough. I don't know enough about the situation from the family perspective to know if it would be. um like a direct family member, but like this, the reason I brought up the, the other Arizona stuff that's going on is because they were doing some similar things. They were coming in dressed as package delivery people, but that's usually like broad daylight, not late at night.
00:49:15
Speaker
exactly You've got this whole, maybe the ring camera was turned off thing that's happening. You've got, you know, ah you've got a number of things that like, uh,
00:49:28
Speaker
It sounds terrible for me to even say it this way, but like I'm wondering, like is this ushering in like a new type of like horrifying thing to to have on your list of fears?
00:49:42
Speaker
Well, fortunately, so the Ream Camber was actually apparently ripped off of the... of the door, of the frame that holds it to the door. I don't know if it was a ring camera. The doorbell camera was ripped off of the doorbell holder camera, the doorbell camera holder. Okay, so here's what will come from that.
Surveillance in Nancy Guthrie Case
00:50:05
Speaker
ah There will be an update that will show the last thing the camera saw before it was ripped off, right? Now, they said the account for this one wasn't set up.
00:50:19
Speaker
supposedly that's why they can't see it. i'm I don't know. I hear things. And then I also hear the sheriff say like, we've given out zero information. So nobody knows anything. Right. And so I hear things, but there were pictures of the door, uh,
00:50:34
Speaker
bell camera frame without the doorbell there, there was blood on the porch. There was a notification probably on her phone that said a person had been detected on a camera at two something or another. Yeah. ah So that would have been a different camera than the doorbell camera.
00:50:56
Speaker
And ah it makes me think that again, it didn't register. I i thought, and and this might have been true at some point and changed, I thought that Ring had certain footage even if you didn't subscribe.
00:51:14
Speaker
ah Ring has also, you know, grown monumentally in the past 10 years. So they may not keep footage. I don't even know that this is a Ring camera necessarily, but it seems like ah that's a pretty worthless thing.
00:51:30
Speaker
To have ah the doorbell cam have information that they can't get. Well, my... So, I don't know what doorbell camera does, but I do know... So, at least two companies here where I live and work, they...
00:51:46
Speaker
One of them heavily involves law enforcement and their networking. And I know that because I like have to write those requests. And basically you can get seven days worth of footage off of any of their doorbell cameras.
00:52:01
Speaker
Um, the other and removed now, Yeah, yeah. Like, it's not... it's ah Okay. like Like, seven days worth of information. even Like, some of it's pretty brief. Like, if they have no subscription and, like, they're really not using the doorbell camera, etc. Like, it might just be 30-second clips that you get. But you can get those clips anytime there's, like, the all the activation of that camera, ever how it's set up. and There's different ways to set them up.
00:52:32
Speaker
um But, like, I can get... seven days, like, and I'm saying that kind of leaning, I think it's ring, but does that they have like a whole law enforcement network that you can opt in, opt out of. So I'm not saying this person was, or wasn't opted in or opt out, whoever like set up this ring account.
00:52:51
Speaker
um But like, you can get it even if they don't keep it on an SD card or in a personal cloud account, you can get seven days worth of footage. And, you know,
00:53:03
Speaker
the So that's my experience so far. The other company, lake you you can get days worth, but... there's a like ah You end up basically having to have a court order to get it. like There's not a like a real high-functioning law enforcement relationship between the company and local agencies here. I don't know if that's nationwide or not. I just know here.
00:53:27
Speaker
um But the bottom line is, like if there's a camera, it's connected to the internet, so those two things have to be true, then more than likely ah information is being kept.
00:53:42
Speaker
that's exactly what i thought but that case is fascinating me there's another trial that we're probably going to talk about soon um that you i guess picked up on i think you said that you picked up in the middle of it because you the the benfield trial had when the banfield trial ended you kind of just like saw when it went to verdict watch right it switched and suddenly i was in this other trial yeah And I've seen multiple days of that trial at this point, and I have questions, so that'll probably come up soon.
00:54:11
Speaker
you know we have a number of other things going on. I'm guessing we end up revisiting Nancy Guthrie. um Certainly, if it's connected to the Scottsdale Bitcoin home invasions, I'll be looking at that, because they think the perpetrators in those home invasions were being extorted. So that's like a new level. You know, i I don't know. If you got caught for something like that, wouldn't you be shouting that from the rooftops? like They were. They were.
00:54:38
Speaker
Well, I didn't know. And so I was just thinking like, that's convenient for them, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously being extorted to do something does not alleviate your responsibility.
00:54:50
Speaker
And I don't know for certain, i don't know if in Nancy Guthrie's case, I don't know if it's going to be a home invasion, if it's going to be a burglary that...
00:55:01
Speaker
ah Maybe the person was there when she got home and they hid until later. But there's a pretty tight timeline of events that have been sort of laid out. And then to me, granted...
00:55:18
Speaker
It's kind of sketch, and and I realize when I look this up that you can't get the direct information, but somebody's got it. Her pacemaker stopped syncing with her ah watch. Her Apple Watch, yeah. Okay.
00:55:32
Speaker
And at that exact moment is when she was out of range, okay? Yeah. Okay. And so, in theory, they have different things ah pinpointed along the way.
00:55:48
Speaker
i don't think that door doorbell cameras don't monitor doors being opened, usually. No, not unless they're part of a package that, like, there's some way to signal that. No. Yeah. Well... But they would still have, essentially, a very tight timeline of events because of all those things you just mentioned.
00:56:07
Speaker
Well, right, but, and so I guess my point is, she could have only gotten so far, like, and they should be able to tell, and i I really, i have no idea what the pacemaker's thinking, what that distance would be like, because when I looked it up, all it says is, like, you need to keep it, like, six inches away from your pacemaker. That's what...
00:56:31
Speaker
yeah The Apple Watch needs to stay six inches away at all times or something like that. So I was having trouble getting like, you know, how many meters it was that you can go but away from it before it stops sinking. But that would give them valuable insight to the method in which she was transported.
00:56:53
Speaker
you know Was she in car in a car? Did she just walk off? I i think that they pretty much... a step My initial inclination in this case was that it would be more likely that she somehow got hurt, hit her head or something, and left on her own accord than being some sort of weird abduction.
00:57:15
Speaker
ah That does not appear to be what happened. They said she was very mentally sharp and she had mobility issues. And so if you could calculate... how far she had to have been because they have the exact time it quit sinking. Yeah.
00:57:31
Speaker
You would have an idea. You could draw a radius around the house and you could say, okay, at this point she crossed the line in this circle somewhere. Right. Yeah.
00:57:42
Speaker
My guess is it's only probably two ways, right? Like either one direction on the road or the other direction on the road. Now it's odd uh,
00:57:55
Speaker
She didn't, and well, I guess maybe if the perpetrator was in charge, he didn't allow her to take the stuff. Maybe he forced her to take the watch off. I don't know.
00:58:07
Speaker
But it's odd and it doesn't seem like it should be possible, especially since she does have cameras at her house. How could she have been taken and nobody know who it is, right? It's horrifying.
00:58:19
Speaker
Yeah, the whole thing is horrifying. I'm hoping that there's going to be a positive end. I may have to edit this episode because of the timing of it and when it's going to come out. I don't know if we'll know what's happened or not. But I think I will swing back around to that just because it's a high profile nature of this type of missing persons case that appears to, in all likelihood, have been an abduction.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:58:54
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating.
00:59:05
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
00:59:19
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
00:59:27
Speaker
No scars We're in trouble We took it too far
00:59:38
Speaker
I don't want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
00:59:49
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:00:00
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
01:00:18
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.