Say hello to Joseph Nathan Ryan, “a Springfield, Va., resident who lived with his grandmother and a small dog,” according to the Washington Post, until one day in February 2023, when he was shot to death as “part of an elaborate ruse that lured a man interested in sexual fetishes” to the home of a married couple “in a well-to-do suburb of the nation’s capital.”
My brother Kirby told me about this story, and after doing some research, I remarked to him what I’ve often said before: “There’s a reason why some things are called ‘fantasies,’ because if you try to do them in real life, bad things happen.” Certainly, Joseph Ryan would agree, were he still alive to discuss the subject. What brought Ryan to the home in Herndon on the day of his death was a website called “FetLife,” catering to the devotees of bizarre sexual fetishes, where Ryan’s account handle was “tacosupreme7000.” He had been communicating with an account with the handle “Annastasia9.” The photo associated with the “Annastasia9” account was of a 37-year-old woman.
Christine Banfield was a pediatric ICU nurse, the mother of a 4-year-old, but according to prosecutors, she was not involved in the kinky BDSM practices that “Annastasia9” had been discussing on FetLife with Joseph Ryan. In fact, it is alleged, she apparently had no idea that her photo was being used on this site, because “the elaborate ruse” was apparently a setup hatched by her husband, Brendan Banfield, and the couple’s 22-year-old Brazilian au pair, Juliana Peres Magalhães.
It took investigators a long time to get enough evidence to bring charges, first against Magalhães, in April, and then last month against Brendan Banfield. Both are charged with the death of Ryan, but so far not with the death of Christine Banfield who, it seems, was stabbed by Ryan, who apparently came to the Banfield home with the idea that “Annastasia9” wanted to be tortured with a knife. Sounds crazy, right? The Washington Post calls it “a case that has become an internet sensation, prompting an episode on ‘Crime Stories With Nancy Grace,’ a social following on TikTok and fervid coverage in Brazilian media outlets.”
Frankly, it’s got enough dramatic twists and turns it could be a Netflix series, and here’s just a little ironic plot twist:
In a Facebook post that included a link to her online petition protesting the COVID-era suspension of foreign travel visas, Christine Banfield wrote: “Our au pair has become a part of our family and we share our love of America with her and she shares her Brazilian culture with us.”
Yeah, there was lots of cultural sharing between Christine’s husband and their au pair, which affair prosecutors allege was the motive for the “elaborate ruse” that got both Christine and Joseph Ryan killed. As I understand it, the prosecution’s theory is that Brendan Banfield and Magalhães had been sexually involved for some months prior to that deadly day in February 2023. Banfield set up this FetLife account “Annastasia9,” which lured Ryan to the Banfield home with the idea of acting out some kind of fantasy involving sex at knifepoint. So then Brendan Banfield and Magalhães claim to have discovered this knife-wielding “intruder” in the Banfield home, fatally stabbing Christine. Ryan is then shot to death, supposedly in self-defense, thereby eliminating the only witness who can explain what’s happening. If they got away with it, Brendan Banfield and Magalhães would then carry on their romance, but despite the deviousness of this scheme, somehow prosecutors were able to figure it out, and so a trial is now scheduled for November.
Among the many possible lessons that might be learned from this bizarre case, arguably the most crucial is this: You have no idea who is really behind that sexy-looking online profile you might encounter in your Internet browsing. It is very easy to create fake personas on the Internet — or so I have been told by the former deputy Minister of the Interior of Nigeria, who sent me an email inviting me to get rich with his assistance.
If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably neither good nor true. Scammers are everywhere, but when Joseph Ryan went pursuing his fantasies on FetLife, he apparently had no doubt that “Annastasia9” was who she said she was. A lack of skepticism can get you killed, and while most murders perpetrated through such online impersonation schemes are not as luridly fascinating as the plot that killed Joseph Ryan, it certainly illustrates the point I made to my brother: “There’s a reason why some things are called ‘fantasies,’ because if you try to do them in real life, bad things happen.” Be careful out there, y’all.
Somewhere in one of my picture folders I have a photo of a coffee-drinking lass on a bed wearing a T-shirt* with the sentence “Yes, But First, Coffee”. Until I find it again, this pic from Rule5Texan on X will do quite nicely.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Today is my 65th birthday — old enough to qualify for Social Security, but still working. It’s been four days since I updated the blog, but my day job kind of interfered with the blogging schedule this week. Also, I keep doing that thing where I begin an article, write hundreds or even thousands of words, and then abandon the draft because some news event interrupts. Do not accuse me of early-onset Alzheimer’s — I’ve always been somewhat scatter-breained this way, before they had such terms as “ADD” or “multi-tasking” to describe my modus operandi.
My greatest joy in journalism was the years I spent, from 2008 to 2012, in a blur of frenetic travel, doing shoe-leather reporting on the campaign trail. Being on the scene, reporting what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, provided infinitely more satisfaction than the mere quote-and-comment stuff of blogging. But the rigors of the campaign trail take their toll — it’s a young man’s game, and I was something of a senior citizen in the traveling press corps even when I was not yet 50. Nowadays, it seems, the business of covering campaigns is done mainly by kids fresh out of college, no doubt as a cost-saving measure by financially strapped media organizations.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s been so long ago that I was careening around upstate New York covering the Doug Hoffman campaign, furiously ratting the tip jar to pay for my gas and the rental car (that got ambushed by a deer one foggy night). That grassroots populist Tea Party campaign against the GOP Establishment (remember Dede Scozzafava?) was, as those of us who witnessed it predicted at the time, a template for the 2010 midterms, when Republicans recaptured the House in a historic landslide (see “The Republican Mandate,” Nov. 25, 2010). And, when you look at it in retrospect, one can trace a direct path from the populism of the Tea Party movement to the campaign that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and which now, less than a month before Election Day, bids fair to return Trump to the White House again.
Excuse the nostalgic reverie, but you get to be this old and find that most of what you have to offer the younger generation is (a) fabulous tales of Ye Olden Days, and (b) advice that they will, of course, ignore.
Portrait of the Author as an Old Man
However frustrating it is to get old, however, it is still preferable to the alternative. Merely being alive can be considered an achievement, at this point and, like Carl Spackler said after telling his story about the Dalai Lama: “So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”
Speaking of old guys, it’s a great misfortune that my old blog buddy John Hoge died last year. As you know, Hoge was an alumnus of Vanderbilt University and yesterday, the Commodores upset the Alabama Crimson Tide, the first time in 40 years that Vandy beat ’Bama, and the first time they had ever beat a team ranked No. 1 in the country. Why did this tragedy strike the Tide, which was riding high after knocking off Georgia a week earlier? My brother Kirby could preach you a sermon about what’s wrong with Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, but you probably wouldn’t want to hear that sermon. However, having received total consciousness (thank you, Dalai Lama), I view this world-historic event — Vandy beating Alabama — as a timely omen of November 5.
Maybe it’s just me who sees it this way, but if lowly Vanderbilt can triumph over the top-ranked team in the country, isn’t it possible that Donald Trump can achieve something no president has done since Grover Cleveland, winning the presidency in two non-consecutive terms?
What did I gain from that experience? Well, not total consciousness (again, thank you Dalai Lama), but merely walking across Harvard Yard has a mystical way of imparting the spirit of elite enlightenment, and from that experience I obtained a crucial esoteric insight that, to celebrate the occasion of my 65th birthday, I will now share with readers, i.e., the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
SOTD
Regardless of how poorly my Senators did this year, I miss playing, and I am already poring over the cards of players who will definitely be available next year as well as looking at players from the playoff teams who will probably be available in the draft after those teams trim their rosters in the off-season. If nothing else, we’ll have the Designated Hitter rule in effect, which means we’ll have space for a slugger with an iron glove on the roster without having to worry about his impact on the defense.
In other news, the era of T.I.T.S. is over at Flappr. Sad! Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Happy Friday, Comrades of the Commentariat. Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
