FAIRFAX, Va. — Two days before a former IRS agent is scheduled to be sentenced for the brutal double murder of his wife and a stranger, those who worked alongside Christine Banfield are speaking out to reclaim the memory of a woman they say dedicated her life to protecting the vulnerable.
Brendan Banfield faces a potential life sentence on Friday following his February conviction for the stabbing death of his wife, Christine, and the shooting death of Joseph Ryan inside the couple’s Fairfax County home. Prosecutors argued Banfield conspired with his lover and family au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, in an elaborate plot to lure Ryan to the house through a sex fetish website to frame him as an intruder.
For Brad Garmon, a close friend and former colleague, the defense attorney’s theories was a painful distortion of the woman he knew. Garmon met Christine at the pediatric intensive care unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital, where she spent years caring for the region’s sickest children…