A federal judge has sentenced Daniel Sikkema to life in prison for his role in the murder-for-hire killing of his estranged husband, the New York art dealer Brent Sikkema. The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI announced the sentence on November 4, describing the case as a cold and calculated plot.

Brent Sikkema, 75, a co-owner of the Manhattan gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Company, was found dead in his Rio de Janeiro residence in January 2024. He had been stabbed 18 times. Prosecutors said Daniel Sikkema paid the couple's former security guard, Alejandro Prevez, to carry out the killing while the pair's divorce proceedings were dragging on. Shortly after the stabbing, Daniel Sikkema sent Prevez $5,000 and promised further payments. Brazilian police arrested Prevez four days after the murder, and he still awaits charges in Brazil's courts.

Daniel Sikkema was arrested in Manhattan two months after the killing, initially on passport fraud charges, before facing further counts of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder for hire, and conspiracy to murder a person in a foreign country. A federal jury found him guilty on those charges following a two-week trial in May. Alongside the life term, he was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

Prosecutors said the defendant spent months manipulating friends, family members and employees to arrange a killing driven by greed, showing a profound disregard for human life and the rule of law. Brent Sikkema co-founded the gallery, then called Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, with his business partner Michael Jenkins in the early 1990s. It showed artists including Kara Walker, Sheila Hicks and Vik Muniz, and today represents more than 30 artists.