Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Court TV/Facebook/Darin Schilmiller
Topics: Crime, Alaska, True crime
Joe Yates
Topics: Crime, Alaska, True crime
This article contains mentions of child abuse, rape, and murder which some readers may find distressing.
A woman who orchestrated the killing of her own 'best friend' believed she was going to become a millionaire by the end of it - but instead, she got a life behind bars.
In June 2019, 19-year-old Cynthia Hoffman was gagged and bound with duct tape and taken to a remote area in Alaska, near Thunderbird Falls, Chugiak, where she was executed by 16-year-old schoolboy Kayden McIntosh.
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But while McIntosh was the person who pulled the trigger, things were at play for a lot longer than his involvement.
It started when Denali Brehmer met Darin Schilmiller through an online dating website. Soon after they fell in 'love', it became apparent that Brehmer would do anything for Schilmiller - who claimed to be multimillionaire.
After he paid her 'a lot' of money for sexually explicit pictures and videos of children she was coerced into taking, the idea of murder was then thrown about by the 'millionaire', who was living in his grandparents' basement in Indiana.
Having been paid for previous crimes she committed, Brehmer, who was 18 at the time, was convinced the 21-year-old catfish would give her $9 million to kill her friend - although he specified that he wanted video footage of someone being raped before murdered.
So, on June 2, 2019, she borrowed 19-year-old Caleb Leyland's SUV, disclosing with him her plans to murder Hoffman for millions of dollars, and promising to pay Leyland handsomely. With McIntosh in the car, she convinced Hoffman that they were going on a trip to Thunderbird Falls.
Following her death, McIntosh and Brehmer pushed Hoffman's body into a river.
The tragic story was the focus of Court TV’s Interview With a Killer, which sees Brehmer explain why she murdered Hoffman.
Speaking of the moment McIntosh pulled the trigger, she said: "I just went along with it... because problem solved, right?
"I was just planning on intimidating her but when she started freaking out saying she was going to go to the cops and everything else that's when he shot her and I was like, well problem solved."
Tragically, Hoffman's dad, Timothy Hoffman, passed away in a motorcycle accident at his daughter's memorial ride before he was able to witness those involved with her murder be served justice.
"One thing I know is that my daughter trusted these people my daughter just wanted friends. Now I have to bury her," he told journalists at the beginning of the trial.
Brehmer was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of her friend, as was Schilmiller - with the pair receiving 30 years for child pornography.
Kayden McIntosh and Caleb Leyland were also sent down for second-degree murder.
"The fact they all believed this guy was going to give them 9 million dollars shows their absolute stupidity," wrote one person on YouTube.