Daniel Sikkema was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, November 4, in Manhattan federal court for the murder-for-hire of his estranged husband, Brent Sikkema, the well-known New York art gallerist who was stabbed to death at his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 14, 2024. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald of the Southern District of New York and FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. announced the sentence, imposed by U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos. Sikkema, 56, of New York, was convicted 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.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

In addition to the life term, Judge Ramos sentenced Sikkema to five years of supervised release. The sentence closes the U.S. criminal case against the man prosecutors proved paid for the killing — a plot the Justice Department says ran for months in 2023, moved money through unwitting friends, family members and employees to hide where it came from, and ended with a hired killer calling a secret phone number minutes after the murder to report it done.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

The plot: divorce, a Rio residence and a former security guard

Beginning in 2023, Sikkema agreed to pay Alejandro Prevez to kill Brent Sikkema in Brazil, according to the superseding indictment, court filings and the evidence at trial as summarised by the Justice Department. At the time, the two men were engaged in contentious divorce proceedings. Brent Sikkema, the owner of a well-known art gallery in Manhattan, regularly stayed at a residence he owned in Rio de Janeiro. Hyperallergic reported that Prevez was the couple's former security guard — a man who knew the household he was sent to attack.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

To fund the plot, Sikkema — a U.S. and Cuban citizen — sent eleven payments to Prevez and to Prevez's romantic interest in Cuba. He concealed the source of each payment by using the identities of unwitting friends, employees and family members, the Justice Department said: people whose names carried the money without their knowledge of what it was for.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

January 14, 2024: the murder in Rio

On January 14, 2024, Prevez murdered Brent Sikkema at his residence in Rio de Janeiro, stabbing him 18 times. Minutes after the murder, Prevez called Sikkema multiple times on a secret phone number Sikkema had arranged for communications about the plot. Shortly afterwards, Sikkema secretly sent a $5,000 payment to Prevez for the murder, with the promise of additional payments to come. Brent Sikkema was 75; his body was found at the residence, and the killing immediately drew international attention because of his standing in the art world.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

Four days later, on January 18, 2024, Brazilian law enforcement arrested Prevez for his involvement in the murder. His criminal case remains pending in Brazilian courts, the Justice Department said on Wednesday — meaning the hired-killer half of this case is still unresolved in Brazil even as the man who paid for it begins a life sentence in the United States. Hyperallergic reported that Daniel Sikkema himself was arrested in Manhattan about two months after the murder, initially on passport fraud charges, with the murder-for-hire counts added later.

Source: Hyperallergic (Nov. 4, 2026)

The victim: a gallerist who shaped careers

Brent Sikkema co-founded the Manhattan gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Company — now Sikkema Malloy Jenkins — with his business partner Michael Jenkins in the early 1990s, Hyperallergic reported. Over nearly three decades the gallery represented and showed artists including Kara Walker, Sheila Hicks and Vik Muniz, and Brent Sikkema was widely regarded as a dealer who built long relationships with artists rather than trading on fashion. That standing is why a domestic murder-for-hire, arranged from New York and carried out in Rio, became one of the most closely followed criminal cases in the international art world.

Source: Hyperallergic (Nov. 4, 2026)

What the FBI said

“Sikkema's sick scheme to murder his estranged husband has culminated in a life behind bars,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. said. “The FBI and its law enforcement partners will continue to utilize every tool available to ensure that criminals who perpetrate the cruelest crimes have no way out. Justice will find you.” The U.S. Attorney thanked the FBI's New York Field Office and its Legal Attaché Office in Brazil, the Justice Department's Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and Office of International Affairs, the Civil Police and Federal Prosecutor's Office of Rio de Janeiro, the Military Police of Minas Gerais, and the Fiscalía Provincial de Castellón in Spain.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

Background: why this was a U.S. federal case

Although the murder itself happened in Brazil, the plot was organised from the United States by a U.S. citizen against a U.S. citizen — which is what brought it into federal court in Manhattan under the murder-for-hire and conspiracy-to-murder-in-a-foreign-country charges. The case was handled by the Southern District's General Crimes Unit and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Meredith Foster, Remy Grosbard, Alexander Li and Nicholas Pavlis. At the May trial, Sikkema's defence had argued the case was circumstantial; his lawyer said after the verdict that the defence was disappointed and planned to appeal — the jury nonetheless convicted on all three counts, and Wednesday's mandatory-scale outcome, life in prison, is the sentence Judge Ramos imposed.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)

What happens next

Daniel Sikkema begins serving life in federal prison; there is no trial left to come in the United States. The separate Brazilian prosecution of Alejandro Prevez, arrested on January 18, 2024, remains pending in Brazilian courts, according to the Justice Department, and any appeal Sikkema files against his conviction or sentence would be heard by the federal appeals court in New York. For Brent Sikkema's gallery, family and artists, Wednesday's sentence is the final U.S. court chapter of a case that began with a killing in Rio nearly three years ago.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York / DOJ (Nov. 4, 2026)