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- Brent Sikkema was stabbed 18 times in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 14
Murdered NYC art dealer Brent Sikkema has left his ex-lover $1million in his will but had disinherited his estranged husband, who is now a suspect in the case.
Sikkema, 75, co-owner of Sikkema, Jenkins & Co, was stabbed 18 times by his alleged killer, Cuban national Alejandro Triana, 30, in his house in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 14 – a day before he was due to return to his Chelsea apartment.
His estranged husband Daniel Sikkema, 53, is now a suspect in the case after Triana claimed he was offered $200,000 by Daniel Sikkema to carry out the murder.
Daniel Sikkema was arrested by FBI agents in New York last month on passport fraud charges but has since been released on a $1million bond on the condition he wears a GPS ankle monitor. He is also wanted in Brazil for the murder of his husband.
Brent Sikkema’s new will, drafted just two days before he was killed, now revealed that he had disinherited his husband and instead left $1million to his ex-lover, the New York Post reports.
The 75-year-old left $1million in a trust to Carlos Ramos, a Cuban national who Sikkema had helped to move to the US. Ramos, Sikkema’s former lover, will receive $75,000 a year for life, according to court records.
Sikkema stated in the new will: ‘I anticipate that I will not be married at the time of my death.
‘Nonetheless, for the avoidance of doubt, I specifically and fully disinherit Daniel Sikkema a/k/a Daniel Garcia Carrera regardless of whether he is my legal spouse at the time of my demise or not.’
Daniel Sikkema is planning to contest the will and has hired an attorney to do so.
Sikkema’s estate includes his 50 per cent stake in the Sikkema, Jenkins & Co art gallery, $1million in his accounts, several properties in three different countries and his private art collection.
Among the properties are the $2.8million three-bed, three-bath apartment in Chelsea where Sikkema lived close to his gallery and his rowhouse in Rio de Janeirop, where he was murdered.
Brent and Daniel Sikkema were married for more than 15 years and welcomed a son, Lucas, 13, via surrogate.
Lucas is set to inherit the majority of his father’s estate, but will not receive any payouts until he is 30.
His other father, Daniel Sikkema, was arrested to passport fraud charges in relation to Lucas’s passport last month.
A court document filed by the FBI agent in charge of the investigation found Daniel Sikkema ‘willfully and knowingly’ lied on an application for a lost passport he submitted for the couple’s son.
The application was submitted around February 8, three weeks after the prominent art gallery owner was stabbed dead at his Rio de Janeiro home by suspect Alejandro Triana.
Triana was arrested on January 15 and confessed to the killing, telling investigators that Daniel Sikkema had offered to pay him $200,000 to carry out the murder.
Daniel Sikkema and Brent Sikkema initiated custody proceedings in May 2023 for their 13-year-old son and in January began to go over their divorce settlement.
As part of the custody agreement, Brent Sikkema, had possession of the boy’s Spanish and American passports.
On January 21, Daniel Sikkema’s lawyer visited the apartment of Brent Sikkema and was denied access by the building management.
Daniel’s lawyer called the executor of the art gallery owner’s estate and asked for permission to enter the premises to retrieve the travel documents.
The lawyer was informed by the executor that he had custody of the passports and placed them in a safe in the apartment, declining to turn them over.
Five days later, Daniel Sikkema emailed the executor to say that he needed the boy’s expired Spanish passport.
‘I have to order the new passport and as a requirement I have to deliver the expired one,’ Daniel Sikkema wrote, according to court documents.
He added he also need the boy’s American passport because they had were going to travel overseas.
Once Brazilian authorities charged David Sikkema for the murder of Brent Sikkema, the executor appeared before the Family Court of the State of New York on February 15 and requested the custody of the boy, indicating that he feared David Sikkema would flee with the boy to Cuba.
The petition was dismissed by the court on March 5.
The executor removed the passports from the safe later in February and turned them over to Daniel Sikkema’s lawyer on March 14.
However, the FBI learned that Daniel Sikkema filed an application for a United States passport and provided a statement for a lost or stolen passport on behalf of his son on February 8.
In the statement, Daniel Sikkema claimed the boy had lost his American passport book while on vacation with his ‘other father’ in Europe in August 2023.
The Rio de Janeiro Civil Police and Public Ministry have filed an order with the state’s court seeking Daniel Sikkema’s arrest and reached out to the United States Department of Justice.
Triana told Brazilian law enforcement that Daniel Sikkema did not agree with the amount of money that he was offered in the divorce settlement and that he was worried that Brent Sikkema’s relationship with ‘an Uruguayan or a Paraguayan’ man would possibly dictate how the couple’s assets would be split.
Triana met the couple in Cuba and worked for them as a handyman at their properties in the communist island. He told investigators that Daniel Sikkema was also upset over Brent Sikkema spending ‘a lot of money on drugs, parties and prostitutes.’
Surveillance camera footage obtained by DailyMail.com from Gabriel Security Company showed that Triana began monitoring Brent Sikkema’s home in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Jardim Botânico around 2.30pm on January 13.
He walked into the residence on January 14 at 3.43am with a key that Daniel Sikkema allegedly mailed him from the US.
Triana could be seen exiting the home at 3.47am and removing gloves before he drove away.
The autopsy showed Brent Sikkema was stabbed 18 times, mostly in the neck and chest.
Triana was arrested January 15 after police found him sleeping in a car in Ureaba, Minas Gerais, 615 miles from the killing site of Jardim Botânico.
Sikkema was born in Morrison, Illinois, and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute.
The prominent art gallery owner was the director of exhibitions at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester in 1971.
He later served as the director of Vision Gallery in Boston from 1976 to 1980 and was its owner from 1980 to 1989.
Sikkema founded his New York City art gallery in 1991 as Wooster Gardens in Soho. In 1999, the art gallery was moved to its current location in Chelsea.
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