Daniel Sikkema is a convicted killer who has been found guilty of hiring Triana Prevez to murder his estranged husband Brent Sikkema
According to court documents Daniel Sikkema and his much older husband were having problems over the suggestion of an open marriage as well as a child custody dispute
Triana Prevez would be hired by Daniel Sikkema to murder his estranged husband. Triana Prevez would stab to death the multi millionaire at Brent’s home in Brazil
When Triana Prevez conscious got the better of him he would confess to the murder of Daniel Sikkema.
Daniel Sikkema would be charged at the Federal level with murder-for-hire conspiracy resulting in death.
Daniel would be convicted and now faces a mandatory life in prison
Daniel Sikkema Case
The estranged husband of a prominent New York City art dealer was convicted Friday of hiring a hitman to kill him in Brazil.
Daniel Sikkema, 55, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Brent Sikkema, 75, was found stabbed to death in his Rio de Janeiro townhouse in January 2024.
Daniel Sikkema, a U.S. and Cuban citizen who lived in New York, was arrested in April 2024. He was convicted in federal court in Manhattan of charges including murder-for-hire conspiracy resulting in death.
The alleged hitman was arrested in Brazil, where he remains jailed.
“Amid contentious divorce proceedings with his then-husband, Daniel Sikkema used a burner phone line to callously order the killing of his husband,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said.
Clayton described Brent Sikkema’s killing as a “senseless, cold-blooded murder” and said the verdict brings a “meaningful measure of justice.”
A message seeking comment was left for Daniel Sikkema’s lawyer.
Brent Sikkema had amassed a multimillion-dollar estate and owned a Manhattan contemporary art gallery that became Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, which says on its website that it has represented international artists like Kara Walker, Vik Muniz and Arturo Herrera for nearly 30 years.
Daniel Sikkema was in frequent contact with the alleged hitman before and after the killing, prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Pavlis told the jury in an opening statement that Daniel Sikkema had funneled over $10,000 to the man and promised him more money.
At the same time, Pavlis said, Daniel Sikkema bragged to others that he was going to get more money from his spouse’s death than he would have gotten from a divorce. He and Brent Sikkema had a teenage son.
“After his husband was brutally killed, the defendant tried to cover his tracks and cash in,” Pavlis said.
Daniel Sikkema’s lawyer, Florian Miedel, told the jury in an opening statement that case was built on circumstantial evidence and that there was no evidence to prove the guilt of his client.
“Life is messy. The truth is not always obvious,” Miedel said
Estranged husband convicted of murder-for-hire in killing of art dealer in Brazil – ABC News
Daniel Sikkema News
In a grisly case that shocked the art world, a Cuban-American man was found guilty of his role in a murder-for-hire plot that resulted in the stabbing death of his estranged husband, prominent New York art dealer Brent Sikkema, during a holiday in Brazil.
A federal jury on Friday found Daniel Sikkema guilty on three counts of conspiring to hire and pay a hitman to kill the 75-year-old dealer who was vacationing at their second home in Rio de Janeiro two years ago.
Daniel had remained in New York at the time with their son Lucas, now age 15.
“He bought and paid for his husband’s murder, and he manipulated friends to do it,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Foster about Daniel in her closing statement to the jury.
Daniel, who is in his mid-50s, didn’t show emotion when the verdict was read aloud or when he was led out of the Manhattan courtroom for the Southern District of New York. His son didn’t attend the verdict. His legal team declined to comment afterward on whether he would appeal. Before the trial, his lawyer said Daniel was innocent.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office had accused Daniel of hiring a Cuban security officer-turned-delivery-driver living in Brazil named Alejandro Triana Prevez to murder Sikkema amid a tumultuous, drawn-out divorce.
Neither legal team disputed the actual killing was by Prevez or the fact that Daniel secretly paid Prevez about $9,000 before and after the murder and then lied to friends and authorities about knowing the murderer. But Daniel’s defense attorney Richard Levitt told jurors that the payments were backpay for work Prevez had done for the couple in Cuba, and added that Daniel only masked their connection “because he was panicking after the murder.”
In the early morning hours of Jan. 14, 2024, Prevez walked into the Sikkemas’ townhome in Rio and grabbed a Santoku knife from the kitchen, police records said. He found Brent alone upstairs, asleep. Prevez stabbed him 18 times, according to court filings.
News of the killing spread quickly around the world because of Brent’s prominence as a respected New York art dealer who championed artists including Kara Walker and Vik Muniz through his gallery Sikkema Jenkins, which he started in the early 1990s with business partner Michael Jenkins. (That gallery is now renamed Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.) Within a few days of Brent’s death, Brazilian authorities located and arrested Prevez, who eventually claimed that he had killed the dealer at Daniel’s behest in exchange for money.
Prevez is currently in a Brazilian prison awaiting trial. Reached after the verdict, his lawyer said, “Mr. Alejandro Triana believes the sentence delivered justice, since Mr. Daniel was the mastermind behind the crime and repeatedly threatened him in order to have the murder carried out.”
The gallery declined to comment.
Some of the notoriety surrounding the investigation in Brazil stemmed from a handwritten confession Prevez wrote while in custody, in which he claimed Daniel had encouraged him to kill Brent. The confession was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal but wasn’t included in the U.S. case. Prevez later recanted the confession, his lawyer said.
Prosecutors also laid out a series of 11 wire-transfer payments and multiple calls and texts between Daniel and Prevez, often via housekeepers and other intermediaries in the months leading up to the killing and immediately afterward. Prevez tried to call Daniel minutes after the murder, records show.
Levitt told jurors that Daniel “would never be violent” and was merely venting to friends about the ongoing divorce proceedings and paying off old debts.
The couple, who met in 2007 and married six years later, did agree on one thing: By 2022, their marriage had begun to fall apart and they began divorce proceedings. But they remained locked in disputes for the next two years over custody of Lucas and the division of Brent’s assets, according to court documents. Brent disinherited Daniel from his will. At one point, Daniel wanted to settle for $6 million, according to an email he sent to Brent included in the court filings. James Deaver, Brent’s executor, said Brent rejected the request as excessive because he had amassed the bulk of his fortune years before the couple wed.
“We hope this brings closure to this tragic story and we can focus on the well-being of Lucas,” said Deaver, who serves as a trustee of Brent’s estate. Lucas has a legal guardian in Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, program director for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Culpeper Arts & Culture program. Lucas will also receive more of his inheritance once he reaches adulthood.
Daniel now faces a mandatory life sentence, though the court didn’t immediately disclose a sentencing date.
Art Dealer’s Estranged Husband Convicted in Murder-For-Hire Scheme – WSJ
