[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/GettyImages-609565684.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tOpening statements and witness testimony were heard in a Manhattan court on Tuesday in the murder-for-hire trial following the 2024 killing of New York art dealer Brent Sikkeman.<\/p>\n
\n\tSikkema was found brutally murdered in January 2024 in his Rio de Janeiro apartment. Alejandro Triana Prevez, a 30-year-old Cuban national, was arrested just days later, and claimed that the dealer\u2019s ex-husband, Daniel Carrera Sikkema, had offered him $200,000 to carry out the crime. Carrera Sikkema was arrested two months later in New York; shortly later, the Brazilian legal team representing Prevez resigned. In February 2025, Carrera Sikkema was charged with hiring Prevez.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAssistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Pavlis said 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,\u201d reports the AP, adding that Carrera Sikkema bragged about the payout he would receive after his estranged husband\u2019s death and lied in a taped interview with the FBI.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe killer \u201cimmediately made a phone call,\u201d Pavlis said, per the New York Post<\/em>. \u201cWho did he call? He called that man, Daniel Sikkema, that man who hired and paid him to kill Brent.\u201d The paper reports that Pavlis told the jury that Carrera Sikkema sent the killer thousands of dollars through various intermediaries, including \u201ca housekeeper, her daughter, a handyman, and even the suspect\u2019s romantic partner.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA witness, retired pharmacist Angela Liriano, took the witness stand and said that in a phone call, Carrera Skikkema had said of Brent, on learning that he was traveling to Brazil, \u201cOh, well I truly hope that he\u2019s dead, that he dies.\u201d She testified that she had become very close to the two men and that Carrera Sikkema had complained that he might get only $6 million in the pending divorce.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDaniel did not hire Alejandro to kill Brent,\u201d his lawyer, Florian Miedel, told jurors, per the Post<\/em>, which reports that Carrera Sikkema was unemotional on the witness stand, even when shown photos of his ex-husband\u2019s bloody corpse.<\/p>\n \n\tThe defense warned the jury not to put too much stock in \u201cassumptions, suggestions, inferences\u201d and \u201ccircumstantial evidence,\u201d downplaying some of Carrera Sikkema\u2019s statements as extreme things uttered amid a combative divorce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/trial-begins-brent-sikkema-murder-case-1234785483\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/GettyImages-609565684.jpg?w=1024″] Opening statements and witness testimony were heard in a Manhattan court on Tuesday in the murder-for-hire trial following the 2024 killing of New York art dealer Brent Sikkeman. Sikkema was found brutally murdered in January 2024 in his Rio de Janeiro apartment. Alejandro Triana Prevez, a 30-year-old Cuban national, was arrested just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1936465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1936465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1936465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1936465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1936465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}