Murder-for-hire trial underway in the stabbing death of a New York City art dealer

NEW YORK (AP) — The estranged husband of a prominent New York City art dealer said he wished his spouse was dead before the co-owner of a contemporary art gallery was found stabbed to death in his Brazilian townhouse, a witness testified Tuesday as a murder-for-hire trial got underway in Manhattan.

Angela Liriano, a retired pharmacist and the murder-for-hire trial's first witness, said she was shocked at the way a “very mad” Daniel Sikkema spoke about his estranged husband, 75-year-old art dealer Brent Sikkema, when she told him that she heard that his spouse was going to Brazil.

“He said: ‘Oh, well I truly hope that he’s dead, that he dies,'” Liriano told the federal court jury of her December 2023 phone conversation with Daniel Sikkema.

A month later, Brent Sikkema was found stabbed 18 times in his Rio de Janeiro townhouse.

An alleged hitman was arrested in Brazil, where he remains jailed. Daniel Sikkema, 55, a U.S. and Cuban citizen who lived in New York, was arrested in April 2024 and held without bail on federal murder-for-hire charges alleging that he arranged the killing.

Brent Sikkema had amassed a multimillion-dollar estate and owned a Manhattan contemporary art gallery that became Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, which says on its website that it has represented international artists like Kara Walker, Vik Muniz and Arturo Herrera for nearly 30 years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Pavlis told the jury in an opening statement that the government will use witness testimony, digital and financial records, and location data to show that Daniel Sikkema was in frequent contact with the alleged hitman before and after the killing.

Pavlis said Daniel Sikkema had funneled over $10,000 to the man and promised more money was on the way while bragging to others that he was going to get more money from his spouse's death than he would have gotten from a divorce. The prosecutor told jurors they would see the defendant tell lies to the FBI in a recorded interview.

“After his husband was brutally killed, the defendant tried to cover his tracks and cash in,” Pavlis said.

Defense attorney Florian Miedel told the jury to be aware of “assumptions, suggestions, inferences that prosecutors will ask you to draw from circumstantial evidence.”

He said no hitman would testify and there was no evidence to prove the guilt of his client.

“Life is messy. The truth is not always obvious,” Miedel said as he urged jurors to understand that people sometimes say extreme things in the midst of a contentious divorce.

Miedel said his client was raising a 13-year-old son with his spouse and would never take a parent away from the child he loved.

“Even though they had an ugly divorce, they shared a lot,” the lawyer said.

He also said there was no evidence that Daniel Sikkema knew before the killing that he would be better off financially with the death rather than a divorce.

Miedel also told jurors not to hold it against his client if he chooses not to testify.

Liriano said that she had grown so close to the couple through her job that she accompanied them on a trip to Cuba in 2018, when she said Daniel Sikkema showed her around and was “very nice, always.”

She said that when the couple prepared to divorce after a 2022 separation, Daniel Sikkema had complained that he wasn't getting enough money because he wanted $8 million rather than the $6 million he might get.