A federal jury in Manhattan found the estranged husband of a prominent New York gallerist guilty of ordering a gruesome murder that shook the art world.
The husband, Daniel Sikkema, was found guilty on Friday in the Southern District of New York of three counts of conspiring to hire and pay a hit man who repeatedly stabbed the gallerist, Brent Sikkema, with a kitchen knife in his vacation home in Rio de Janeiro in 2024. The couple were in the midst of a divorce, which included a custody battle over their teenage son.
“Amid contentious divorce proceedings with his then-husband, Daniel Sikkema used a burner phone line to callously order the killing of his husband in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,” Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the district, said in a news release. With the verdict, he added, “the tragedy of Brent Sikkema’s death now has a meaningful measure of justice.”
A lawyer for Mr. Sikkema did not immediately respond to questions of whether Mr. Sikkema would appeal his conviction. Before the trial, the lawyer maintained his client’s innocence.
Mr. Sikkema faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. It was not clear if a date for a sentence hearing had been set.
Brent Sikkema was 75 years old when Brazilian authorities found his body with 18 stab wounds in January 2024. Through his gallery, which is now called Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, he had long championed artists such as Kara Walker, Jeffrey Gibson and Vik Muniz. He was murdered at the start of what was to be a victory lap through the art world. Mr. Gibson had been selected to represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
The hit man whom Daniel Sikkema hired to kill his husband, Alejandro Triana Trevez, had worked as a security guard for the couple. The police in Brazil apprehended him shortly after the murder at a gas station about 600 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
Mr. Trevez, a Cuban national, eventually confessed and said Mr. Sikkema had promised to pay him for the killing. Mr. Trevez is awaiting trial in Brazil.
Mr. Sikkema’s legal team did not dispute that he had paid Mr. Trevez about $9,000 before and after the murder, or that he had lied to friends and to the authorities about his relationship with Mr. Trevez. According to The Wall Street Journal, which reported earlier on the verdict, a lawyer for Mr. Sikkema, Richard Levitt, told jurors that the money constituted back pay for work that Mr. Trevez had completed while the couple was in Cuba. Mr. Levitt said Mr. Sikkema had lied “because he was panicking after the murder.”
The authorities initially arrested Mr. Sikkema in March 2024 on one count of passport fraud, leading to concerns that he was planning to flee the country. As news of his husband’s death spread, he maintained his innocence, posting to social media a photograph of a black rose and a note written in Spanish: “Our son and I cry for you without tears, we cry for you in the way that hurts the most.”
Mr. Sikkema was born Daniel García Carrera and raised in Cuba. He spent a period working as an escort in Spain, an experience he chronicled in a 2006 autobiography, “Ticket to Paradise.” More recently, he posted videos to YouTube in which he provided tour-guide information on New York.
Brent Sikkema had been drawn to Rio de Janeiro for many years, describing his apartment there as a true urban “oasis.”
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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