The ex-hooker accused of hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wealthy Manhattan art-dealer husband was convicted Friday for the cold-blooded slaying that left the victim viciously stabbed nearly two dozen times.
A federal jury took just two hours to find Daniel Sikkema guilty of conspiring to kill hubby Brent Sikkema, 77, after secretly shelling out thousands to a Cuban national who carried out the grisly murder plot at the prominent art dealer’s Brazilian vacation home in January 2024.
“The tragedy of Brent Sikkema’s death now has a meaningful measure of justice as a unanimous jury of New Yorkers has held Daniel Sikkema accountable for this senseless, cold-blooded murder,” Jay Clayton, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
Prosecutors argued that Daniel Sikkema, in his mid-50s, was broke and plotted the twisted murder-for-hire scheme in a desperate bid for cash, while locked in a bitter divorce and custody fight over their young son.
Jurors heard how Daniel Sikkema hired Alejandro Triana Prevez — the couple’s former security guard — and secretly funneled about $9,000 to him before and after he snuck into his estranged husband’s Rio de Janeiro bedroom and stabbed him 18 times in the face, chest and throat.
Defense attorney Richard Levitt didn’t dispute that Prevez killed the victim, but insisted his client’s payments to the alleged hitman were repaying a debt – and that he would never have wanted the father of their son dead.
“Does that sound like the work of an assassin to you,” Levitt told jurors of the knifing during closing arguments Friday, adding that Prevez “desperately wanted money” to buy a house in Spain for his paramour.
“If anyone had motive to kill Brent (Sikkema) it was Alejandro (Prevez). Alejandro took whatever cash was there.”
He stressed that Prevez allegedly texted his girlfriend that “she’ll be able to buy her dream house” after the killing, and scoffed that the $5,000 Daniel Sikkema transferred before the murder would never amount to payment for “a planned hit.”
Prosecutors argued the suspect’s warped plot was fueled by money woes – he was so broke he borrowed $13,000 from the couple’s housekeeper, whom he allegedly stiffed while quietly paying his alleged hitman.
During the trial, prosecutors quoted a series of voice notes they said Daniel Sikkema sent to friends and relatives during the couple’s divorce.
“It won’t be over until this man passes away,” he said in one of the recordings.
The suspect said in another, “I’m still fighting with this old bastard who won’t die,” according to the prosecutor.
The trial’s first witness, family friend Angela Liriano, testified that Daniel Sikkema repeatedly complained about money during the divorce.
She also recalled a chilling phone conversation she had with him while at work.
“I told him, ‘Brent was just here. He told me he was going to Brazil.’ [Daniel] said he wished [Brent] will die,” Liriano said. “I was in shock.”
The jury found him guilty of murder-for-hire conspiracy resulting in death, murder-for-hire resulting in death, and conspiracy to murder or maim a person in a foreign country.
He faces life in prison.
