‘Premeditated contract killing’: Suspect who thought he was being paid $500K in catfish murder sentenced to decades in prison

An Alaska judge sentenced a 24-year-old man to 40 years in prison with 10 suspended for his role in the murder-for-hire killing of a woman set up by a catfisher living in his grandmother’s basement.

Caleb Allen Russell Leyland pleaded guilty in November to second-degree murder in the death of Cynthia Hoffman, who was bound in duct tape and shot to death near a waterfall just north of Anchorage in 2019. Leyland was one of six people, most of whom were teenagers at the time, to be charged in the plot, though two were processed through the juvenile courts. Daren Schilmiller, 26, posed online as a man named “Tyler,” offering Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer $9 million to kidnap and kill her friend Hoffman and send photographic proof.

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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. A judge previously sentenced him to 99 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 45.

Brehmer pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the first degree. The judge sentenced her in February to the maximum term of 99 years with no time suspended.

Prosecutors said Leyland, enticed by the allure of $500,000, gave Brehmer and then-16-year-old Kayden McIntosh the car they used to trick Hoffman into taking a trip to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Chugiak, on June 2, 2019, and then going on a hike through Thunderbird Falls. There, Brehmer bound Hoffman with duct tape — all the while taking photographic proof for her perceived benefactor.