Daniel Sikkema gets life in prison for murder of gallerist Brent Sikkema

Daniel Sikkema was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for arranging the January 2024 murder of his estranged husband, New York gallerist Brent Sikkema, at his home in Rio de Janeiro.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos also ordered five years of supervised release. A Manhattan federal jury convicted Sikkema, 56, on May 22 of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.

“For months, the defendant manipulated friends, family, and employees to execute a killing driven by greed,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said in a statement.

Brent Sikkema, 75, founded the gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Urgent Matter previously reported.

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Court Documents: Sentencing submissions in Daniel Sikkema case

Court documents from the sentencing of Daniel Sikkema, filed October 2026 in Manhattan federal court.

Urgent MatterAdam Schrader

Under federal law, the two murder-for-hire counts carried either death or life in prison. Prosecutors said in October 2025 that they would not seek the death penalty, Urgent Matter previously reported.

In an October 15 sentencing letter, Sikkema’s lawyers wrote that “we do not ask the Court for something it cannot give.”

They asked Ramos to recommend that the federal Bureau of Prisons waive a policy that normally sends men serving life to a high-security penitentiary. They wanted Sikkema housed at a medium-security prison near New York City, preferably FCI Otisville, so his teenage son could keep visiting him.

In an October 28 letter, prosecutors said they took no position on that request and deferred to the Bureau of Prisons.

Prosecutors asked for life on all three counts. That included the foreign murder conspiracy count, which did not carry a mandatory life term.

Their letter draws on trial testimony, trial exhibits and a probation report to set out how prosecutors say the plot unfolded.

Daniel Sikkema filed for divorce on March 15, 2022, and the case was still open when his husband was killed, prosecutors wrote. On May 18, 2023, he wrote to Brent Sikkema, “I want 6 million dollars transferred to my account … the alimony that corresponds to me for having been married to you.”

Brent Sikkema offered $1 million, and Daniel Sikkema turned it down, prosecutors said. At the time of the murder, Daniel Sikkema was receiving $8,000 a month in alimony plus rent.

By that summer, he was telling people he wished his husband would die. “I’m still fighting with this old bastard who won’t die,” he said in a July 14, 2023, audio message.

Around that month, prosecutors said, he hired Alejandro Prevez, a Cuban native then living in São Paulo, to kill Brent Sikkema at his townhouse in Rio de Janeiro.

Prosecutors said he hid his role by having people close to him send money in their own names. Maria Gomez, a former housekeeper at the couple’s Manhattan apartment and godmother to their son, and her daughter Jessica Gomez sent Prevez three Western Union payments totaling $1,900 between July 31 and August 23, 2023.

Daniel Sikkema told Jessica Gomez he was passing along money that Prevez’s family in Cuba had sent him, prosecutors wrote. A friend in Florida sent Prevez $600. A cousin in Cuba sent $300 to Prevez’s romantic interest, Dailyn Hidalgo Hernandez.

Before the trial, U.S. prosecutors questioned Hernandez in Castellón de la Plana, Spain, and she described receiving thousands of dollars, Urgent Matter previously reported.

Pedro Mainer had worked for Daniel Sikkema as a handyman in Cuba. After Mainer moved to New York in 2023, he stayed with Sikkema for a few months. Sikkema persuaded him to leave his passport behind when he moved to a shelter.

Sikkema used Mainer’s identity to send Prevez five Western Union payments totaling $1,700 between October 18, 2023, and January 5, 2024. He also used Mainer’s name to ship Prevez a DHL package.

Prevez set up a secret phone line for Sikkema, which prosecutors called the “Raimundo Number.” He used the Brazilian identification number of Maria das Dores, who had worked for the couple as a housekeeper for more than 10 years. She did not know her number had been used, prosecutors wrote.

Prevez went to Brent Sikkema’s townhouse in August 2023 and took photos inside, prosecutors said. He made a second trip in December 2023 to carry out the killing but did not complete it.

After the August trip, Daniel Sikkema wrote to Prevez, “Thanks very much Ale for everything you’re doing. There will be a day when life rewards us for all this.”

In a December 11, 2023, audio message, he said, “Let’s see if instead of getting divorced, I end up a widower, which would suit me much better.”

Prevez entered the house at about 3:42 a.m. on January 14, 2024, while Brent Sikkema was asleep, and stabbed him 18 times, prosecutors wrote. He left at about 3:57 a.m. and called Daniel Sikkema on the secret line almost right away.

Brazilian autopsy records show wounds to Brent Sikkema’s heart and left lung and no defensive injuries on his arms, Urgent Matter previously reported.

Simone Nunes found his body the next day. Prosecutors described her as Brent Sikkema’s friend and lawyer.

“I was the person who found his lifeless body, and that experience profoundly affected my emotional health and my will to live,” Nunes wrote in a victim impact statement. She wrote that she developed post-traumatic stress disorder and took medical leave, and that Brent Sikkema’s estate stopped paying her during that time.

On January 15, Daniel Sikkema had his cousin in Cuba deliver thousands of dollars to Hernandez and promised more, prosecutors wrote. The U.S. Attorney’s Office put that payment at $5,000.

Investigators recovered only one message between the two men from the days after the killing, prosecutors wrote. It was a bunny emoji Daniel Sikkema sent Prevez on Facebook Messenger. Prosecutors said he also urged Prevez to flee to the United States.

Brazilian police arrested Prevez on January 18, 2024. His case is still pending in Brazil, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Daniel Sikkema told Nunes he did not have Prevez's phone number. He told Brent Sikkema’s niece he did not know Prevez was in Brazil. After his arrest on passport fraud charges on March 20, 2024, he denied making the payments in Mainer’s name to federal agents.

Several weeks after the killing, he met Mainer at a restaurant in Queens, prosecutors wrote. He told Mainer he had accidentally used his passport to send money to Prevez and asked him to claim he sent it if police asked.

At the same meal, he brought up $3,000 he had promised Mainer more than a year earlier for construction work in Cuba. He said he would pay once “he got over this problem,” prosecutors wrote. Mainer saw the offer as an attempt to buy his “silence.”

Within weeks of the murder, prosecutors said, Daniel Sikkema asked for an appraisal of Brent Sikkema’s art gallery and tried to move into his New York apartment. He also planned to rent out the Brazilian properties and talked about selling all of Brent Sikkema’s artwork in Brazil.

He described the Rio property where his husband was killed as a “dream,” prosecutors wrote.

“He’s better off dead, he’s better off dead … when I go to claim what’s rightfully mine, I’m going to be ruthless, absolutely ruthless, with all of them,” he said in a March 2, 2024, audio message.

He said that as the surviving spouse he was entitled to 30% of Brent Sikkema’s property, about $7 million, more than he would have received in the divorce, prosecutors wrote. Around March 2024, he served a notice on the estate’s attorney claiming that share.

His lawyers, Richard Levitt and Florian Miedel, wrote that he had gone more than five decades without a criminal conviction. They said government witnesses who had known him for years described him as kind and nonviolent.

They wrote that he raised the couple’s son as a full-time caregiver and that the end of the marriage should not be reduced “simply to a dispute over money.” His divorce lawyer testified at trial that he filed for divorce because of Brent Sikkema’s substance abuse and feared for his own safety and his son’s, the defense wrote.

“We emphasize that none of this justified Brent’s killing. Nothing could,” the lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors called that account “entirely contrary to the record.” They wrote that Daniel Sikkema had not lived with his husband for about nine months before the killing and that the two had agreed on custody by May 2023.

Prosecutors also wrote that he had “repeatedly tried to paint Brent as a drug addict” and had never expressed remorse.

The defense letter describes a childhood in Cuba marked by poverty and abuse. It says Sikkema plans to appeal and, on his lawyers’ advice, did not discuss the crime with probation officers.

Since February 2025, he has been held at MDC Brooklyn, where he earned a GED, worked in food service and tutored other prisoners in English, his lawyers wrote. They also wrote that he was disciplined in July 2025 for having an item classified as a dangerous weapon.

Relatives and friends in Cuba, Spain and New York sent letters supporting him. Several described donations he made to children’s homes in Cuba.

“In our lives, there is a before and an after having met Dany,” wrote Eduardo Elías, the godfather of Sikkema’s son.

Prosecutors submitted four victim impact statements. Ada Cowlishaw, Brent Sikkema’s niece, wrote that she keeps replaying videos of her uncle walking into his house for the last time and of the man who stabbed him going in and coming back out.

“I have watched that video and found myself wanting desperately to scream at the screen—to warn him, to tell him not to go inside, to somehow stop what I know is about to happen,” Cowlishaw wrote.

She wrote that her family had recently moved to Nashville, closer to her uncle, and that she had been planning a visit.

Maria das Dores Rodrigues wrote in Portuguese that Brent Sikkema “was so much more than just a boss,” in a translation filed by prosecutors. Prosecutors said Das Dores’s identification number was used to open the secret phone line.

Gabriel Nunes, Simone Nunes’ son, wrote that Brent Sikkema helped pay for his athletic training and competitions.

The couple’s son testified at trial that he “loved” Brent Sikkema “very much,” prosecutors wrote.

Daniel Sikkema is also wanted in Brazil, where an Interpol Red Notice is active against him over the killing, prosecutors wrote. He and Prevez are co-defendants in the Rio de Janeiro case, which had not yet reached trial as of May.

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