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In this Sunday, June 9, 2019 photo at left, Denali Brehmer, 18, stands at her arraignment in the Anchorage Correctional Center in Anchorage, Alaska. At right is her murder victim, Cynthia Hoffman. (Image at left: Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News via AP; image at right: Anchorage Police Department)
Murder victim Cynthia “CeeCee” Hoffman, 19, believed that Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer, 23 was her best friend, but now, more than four years after she was bound in duct tape and shot to death near a waterfall, that so-called best friend received a virtual life sentence in an Alaska court for carrying out the heinous act.
According to her father, CeeCee Hoffman had a learning disability that kept her from being the best at academics, but she followed through and graduated in 2018 from Service High. After school, she and her sisters worked with their dad on job sites, measuring windows, churning concrete, and working hard. The weekend she disappeared, she was supposed to get some cash from her dad and go to the mall — a reward for helping him prepare a camper. She told her dad she was on the way to get her portion of the money. But she never did.
While acknowledging the defendant’s relative youth, Judge Andrew Peterson on Monday maintained that Brehmer knew what she was doing and that this was not a “youthful indiscretion,” according to The Alaska Department of Law.
Seeing video of CeeCee duct taped on the ground at Thunderbird Falls on the banks of the Eklutna River in her final moments was “one of the most difficult pieces of evidence I’ve had to watch in this position,” he said.
Brehmer had pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the first degree. The judge sentenced her to the maximum term of 99 years, none suspended, and determined her to be a “worst offender.”
“The Court should find that Miss Brehmer engaged in one of the most serious crimes that we have in Alaska,” prosecutor Patrick McKay Jr. said. “She executed Cynthia Hoffman in a murder-for-hire plot. She conspired with numerous other individuals in and outside of Alaska, including juveniles, forever altering everybody’s life. She may not have pulled the trigger, but this never would have happened it if it weren’t for Denali Brehmer.”
Brehmer and five other people were charged in connection to the incident, though two are being processed through the juvenile courts. One of the adult defendants, Darin Schilmiller, 25, posed online as a man named “Tyler,” offering Brehmer $9 million to kidnap and kill one of her friends and send photographic proof.
In actuality, however, “Tyler” was a broke, unemployed Indiana resident living in his grandparents’ basement. He pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation to commit murder in the first degree, and also a federal charge of conspiracy to produce child pornography for asking Brehmer for child sexual abuse material. Peterson previously sentenced him to 99 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 45.
“This was intentional, premeditated murder-for-hire,” Peterson said at Schilmiller’s sentencing. “You plotted with other co-defendants to kill somebody you never met for no reason other than the sheer thrill of controlling others and seeing it be done.”
The judge added that Schilmiller intentionally caused Hoffman’s death “for power, for control, for your fetishes,” Anchorage Daily News reported.
Kayden McIntosh allegedly confessed to being the actual gunman. The case against him is set for trial. Caleb Leyland pleaded guilty to murder. Authorities said he lent McIntosh and Brehmer his car in exchange for $500,000. His sentence is set for June 10, 2024.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
