Denali Brehmer Moved from Online Sex Work to Murder-for-Hire
Schilmiller and Brehmer met online several months before Hoffman’s murder. In an interview from behind bars, Brehmer said she began selling sexual images and videos to Schilmiller and received payment via PayPal. Brehmer explained that she even continued to oblige as his requests became more perverted because he was sending her substantial sums of money.
“This sounds like traditional, extortive grooming,” Adam Scott Wandt, assistant professor and deputy chair for technology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The escalating pattern of requests, the delivery of proof of ‘I'm real, here’s some money.’”
Weeks before Hoffman’s death, Schilmiller offered Brehmer $9 million to rape and murder someone and send him photos and videos of the killing. She agreed.
“Obviously, for most people, if someone online asked them to kill someone else, they wouldn’t,” Dr. Christian L. Hart, a psychology professor at Texas Woman’s University, tells A&E Crime and Investigation. “But there's a lot of variability in how susceptible people are, especially if there's something desirable if they do comply.”
Hart names money as the one thing that can sway “people to make moral exceptions for behaviors they might not otherwise engage in.”
“But I think [Brehmer] probably had some higher levels of psychopathic traits, because the vast majority of people wouldn't follow through with something like that,” he adds.
Denali Brehmer Obliged Her Catfish’s Request
After deciding to kill, Brehmer enlisted four other teenagers to help her by promising to give them a share of the millions she expected to receive from Schilmiller. In addition to McIntosh, Caleb Leyland, then 19, provided a truck to drive to the murder location. The other teens, a boy and a girl, were not tried as adults, and their cases have been kept confidential.
The group chose Hoffman, who considered Brehmer her “best friend,” as their victim. Hoffman’s family later said she had a developmental disability that caused her to operate intellectually at about a seventh-grade level and made her more vulnerable.
To execute their plan, Brehmer and McIntosh invited Hoffman to go hiking on June 2, 2019. In the woods, they bound her with duct tape. McIntosh then shot Hoffman and pushed her body into the river.
Brehmer sent Schilmiller photos and videos of a bound Hoffman via Snapchat. Brehmer also shared images of Hoffman’s body after she was shot.
“This isn't like a standard murder for hire,” Wandt notes. “Murder-for-hire cases that we see across the internet, they're focused on specific individuals that the defendant or suspect wants to see killed. This was killing for the purpose of [Schilmiller’s] enjoyment.”
Though Schilmiller had asked Brehmer to both rape and murder someone, police said there were no signs that Hoffman experienced sexual assault.
Denali Brehmer’s Arrest Revealed a New Crime
After arresting Brehmer in June 2019, investigators found child sexual abuse materials on her phone. They soon learned that, after Hoffman’s murder. Schilmiller blackmailed Brehmer to sexually assault two girls. Her phone contained texts in which he instructed her on how to commit the assaults.
Brehmer’s co-conspirators were all arrested within days of Hoffman’s murder. After Schilmiller’s arrest in Indiana, he was extradited to Alaska to face charges in the state of the murder.
In July 2023, Brehmer and Schilmiller each pleaded guilty in federal court to the production of child pornography. They each received 30-year sentences.
Brehmer pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in state court in February 2023 and received a sentence of 99 years in prison; the court ordered Brehmer to serve a maximum of 30 years behind bars and the rest of her life under supervised release Schilmiller also received a 99-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation to commit murder in the first degree in August 2023.
Leyland and McIntosh each reached deals to plead guilty to second-degree murder. Leyland submitted his plea in November 2023 and received a 30-year sentence in August 2024. McIntosh pleaded guilty in May 2024. His sentencing was scheduled for August 2025, though it has not been publicly reported.
Is It Possible to Prevent Similar Crimes in the Future?
“Simply creating a fake profile in and of itself is not illegal, but if you do it with the intent to do harm, then it becomes criminal,” Elizabeth Jaffe, a professor at John Marshall Law School, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “But law enforcement agencies have limited resources.”
Wandt says social media sites themselves could help combat these crimes.
“If two people are talking on Snapchat about murder or molesting children, Snapchat certainly has the ability to identify that and bring it to the authorities. They’re not doing that right now,” he explains. “There’s a ton of stuff that we could do—legally, I'm not talking about violating the Fourth Amendment—within the boundary of the current law to force social media companies to crack down on this type of activity. We're making a significant mistake as a society not holding social media companies more responsible for activity that occurs on their platforms.”
