Man convicted in plot to kill art dealer Brent Sikkema in Brazil
A Manhattan jury convicted Daniel Sikkema in a Brazil murder-for-hire plot that prosecutors said was fueled by a bitter divorce and a fight over money.
A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Daniel Sikkema on May 22, 2026, after prosecutors said he arranged for his estranged husband, art dealer Brent Sikkema, to be killed in Rio de Janeiro and used a burner phone line to carry out the plot.
Brent Sikkema, 75, was found stabbed 18 times in his Rio de Janeiro townhouse in January 2024. Daniel Sikkema, 55, now faces a mandatory life sentence after the jury found him guilty of murder-for-hire conspiracy resulting in death, turning a violent death overseas into a case built across divorce proceedings, federal investigators and multiple jurisdictions.
Prosecutors said Daniel Sikkema funneled more than $10,000 to the alleged hitman and promised more money, while telling people he expected to get more from Brent Sikkema’s death than from a divorce. The government said that financial motive sat at the center of the case, which had been investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
At trial, a witness testified that in December 2023 Daniel Sikkema said, “Oh, well I truly hope that he’s dead, that he dies,” a statement prosecutors used to argue that the killing was not spontaneous but planned amid a bitter separation. Daniel and Brent Sikkema had a teenage son.
Brent Sikkema was a major figure in the New York art world, co-owning Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in Manhattan, later referred to as Sikkema Malloy Jenkins. Over nearly three decades, he represented artists including Kara Walker, Vik Muniz, Jeffrey Gibson and Arturo Herrera, and the gallery and his peers described him as a respected dealer with a multimillion-dollar estate and an eye for significant contemporary art.
Daniel Sikkema was arrested in April 2024. Federal prosecutors later indicted him in February 2025, and the alleged hitman was arrested in Brazil and remains jailed there. The conviction closes one chapter in a case that linked a prominent New York gallery, a divisive divorce and a killing carried out in Brazil, while leaving Daniel Sikkema to await sentencing on a mandatory life term.
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