Daniel Sikkema
Introduction
Daniel Sikkema, a 56-year-old New York man, has been sentenced to life in federal prison for orchestrating the murder-for-hire of his estranged husband, Brent Sikkema, the owner of a well-known Manhattan art gallery, who was stabbed to death in Rio de Janeiro on January 14, 2024. A federal jury in the Southern District of New York convicted Daniel Sikkema on May 22, 2026, after a two-week trial on charges of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, and U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos imposed the life sentence alongside five years of supervised release. Prosecutors described the plot as a killing “driven by greed” that Sikkema set in motion by manipulating friends, family, and employees to conceal the payments that funded it.
Background Information
The marriage had already collapsed into litigation by the time the plot began. Beginning in 2023, Sikkema and Brent Sikkema were engaged in contentious divorce proceedings, and Brent — whose gallery made him a fixture of the Manhattan art world — regularly stayed at a residence he owned in Rio de Janeiro. That Brazilian home became the murder scene. Daniel Sikkema, a United States and Cuban citizen, agreed to pay a man named Alejandro Prevez to kill his husband there, and bankrolled the arrangement through a laundering method designed to hide his own hand: eleven payments sent to Prevez and Prevez’s romantic interest in Cuba, each routed through the identities of unwitting friends, employees, and family members so the money’s true source stayed buried.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted and sentenced. Sikkema was convicted at trial on murder-for-hire and related conspiracy counts and sentenced to life in prison plus five years of supervised release.
On January 14, 2024, Prevez murdered Brent Sikkema at the Rio residence, stabbing him eighteen times. Minutes after the killing, Prevez called Daniel Sikkema repeatedly on a secret phone number the two had arranged specifically to communicate about the murder plot — calls that tied the husband directly to the crime’s execution. Shortly afterward, Sikkema secretly sent Prevez a $5,000 payment for the murder, with a promise of additional payments to come. The paper trail, the secret phone line, and the identities of the unwitting payment conduits became the core of the government’s trial case, presented under a superseding indictment along with public court filings and the trial evidence itself.
The aftermath moved quickly on the hitman’s side of the plot. On January 18, 2024 — four days after the stabbing — Brazilian law enforcement arrested Prevez for his involvement in Brent Sikkema’s murder, and his criminal case remains pending in Brazilian courts. Daniel Sikkema’s own case ran through investigation, indictment, and the May 2026 jury verdict before reaching the life sentence. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jamie McDonald said after sentencing, “Today’s life sentence holds Daniel Sikkema accountable for a cold, calculated murder-for-hire plot that resulted in the murder of his husband,” adding that the defendant’s actions “demonstrated a profound disregard for human life and the rule of law.” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. put it more bluntly: “Sikkema’s sick scheme to murder his estranged husband has culminated in a life behind bars.”
Public Reaction and Consequences
The case drew attention because of its setting in the art world, where Brent Sikkema’s gallery made him a known figure, and because of the unusual federal jurisdiction — an American charged in the United States for a murder carried out in Brazil, prosecuted under foreign-murder and murder-for-hire statutes. The life sentence removes any question of release: at 56, Sikkema’s federal term ends only in death, and the supervised-release term that would follow prison is moot in practical terms. The sentencing announcement credits cooperation across borders that made the prosecution possible, including the FBI Legal Attaché Office in Brazil, the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro, the Military Police of Minas Gerais, and Spain’s Fiscalía Provincial de Castellón, alongside the Justice Department’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and Office of International Affairs.
Current Status
Sikkema is sentenced to life in prison, with the sentence imposed by Judge Ramos following the May 22, 2026 jury conviction. Prevez, the admitted killer, awaits the outcome of his pending case in Brazilian courts, where he was arrested January 18, 2024. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Meredith Foster, Remy Grosbard, Alexander Li, and Nicholas Pavlis handled the prosecution for the Southern District of New York’s General Crimes Unit, with the FBI’s New York field office leading the investigation that connected the Cuba-bound payments, the secret phone number, and the post-murder cash transfer into a single murder-for-hire conspiracy.
Impact on Their Career/Life
A life sentence for hiring his husband’s killer is the terminal consequence a criminal case can produce, and it forecloses every future Sikkema might otherwise have had: at 56, he will die in federal custody barring an appellate reversal of the jury verdict. The conviction record — murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, all proven at trial rather than admitted — marks him as the architect of a plot that took a Manhattan gallery owner from his family, and the five-year supervised-release term attached to the sentence remains on the books even though a life term renders it academic. For the victim’s community, prosecutors framed the sentence as the accountability that “reflects the strength and perseverance” of those who pursued the case across two hemispheres.
Sources
- U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, “Daniel Sikkema Sentenced To Life In Prison For Murder-For-Hire Of His New York Art Gallerist Husband In Brazil,” November 4, 2026. source