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A federal jury in Manhattan found the Cuban American Daniel García Carrera —known as Daniel Sikkema— guilty of three charges for conspiring to hire and pay a hitman who killed his husband, the prominent New York gallery owner Brent Sikkema, 75 years old, during a vacation in Brazil in January 2024.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the jury of the Southern District of New York took just two hours last Friday to deliver its guilty verdict on three charges: conspiracy to commit murder for hire resulting in death, murder for hire resulting in death, and plot to assassinate a person in a foreign country.
D. Sikkema showed no emotion when the ruling was read in the Manhattan courtroom, reported WSJ.
The defendant faces mandatory life in prison. The sentencing date was not immediately announced by the court.
In her closing argument of the trial, assistant prosecutor Meredith Foster was emphatic: "He bought and paid for the murder of his husband, and manipulated friends to do it."
The prosecutors argued that Daniel, 55 years old, hired Alejandro Triana Prevez —a former Cuban security officer turned delivery person in Brazil— to commit the crime amid a tense and protracted divorce process.
In the early morning of January 14, 2024, Triana entered the residence of Brent Sikkema in the Jardim Botânico neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, took a kitchen knife, and stabbed him 18 times while he was asleep, according to court records.
Neither party disputed that Triana was the material author of the crime, nor that Daniel secretly paid him about $9,000 before and after committing the murder. The prosecution presented 11 bank transfers and multiple calls and messages between the two, channeled through domestic workers and other intermediaries, in the months leading up to the homicide and thereafter.
The defense, led by lawyer Richard Levitt, argued that the payments were overdue debts for work Triana had performed for the couple in Cuba and that Daniel concealed his connection to him "because he was in a panic after the murder."
During the trial, prosecutors played voice recordings that García sent to friends during the divorce, where he uttered phrases such as: “This won't end until this man dies” and “I’m still fighting with this old bastard who won't die,” according to the newspaper The New York Post. The witness Angela Liriano, a family friend, testified that Daniel expressed his wish for Brent to die when she informed him that he was traveling to Brazil.
Daniel was formally charged in February 2025 by the U.S. Department of Justice, after the Brazilian authorities ordered his arrest in February 2024.
The couple met in 2007 and married in 2013. In 2022, they began the divorce process, with disputes over the custody of their son Lucas — now 15 years old — and the division of their assets. Brent disinherited Daniel in his will. In an email included in the court documents, Daniel had asked for a settlement of 6,000,000 dollars, which Brent rejected as excessive.
The executor of Brent's estate, James Deaver, stated: "We hope this brings closure to this tragic story and that we can focus on Lucas's well-being." The child currently has a legal guardian and will receive the majority of his inheritance when he reaches adulthood.
Brent Sikkema was a respected dealer of contemporary art in New York. He founded his gallery in the 1990s alongside his partner Michael Jenkins and represented artists such as Kara Walker and Vik Muniz. After his passing, the gallery was renamed Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.
Triana remains imprisoned in Brazil awaiting his trial. His lawyer stated that "Mr. Daniel was the mastermind behind the crime and repeatedly threatened him to carry out the murder."
Daniel García Carrera was born in Camagüey, Cuba, in 1970; he emigrated to Spain in 1998 and later settled in the United States. In a 2006 autobiography titled Billete al paraíso, he recounted how he fled his country after a childhood and youth marked by hardships, and worked in Spain as a male escort.
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