Inset: Cynthia Hoffman (Anchorage Police Department). Background: Kayden McIntosh at his sentencing hearing (KTUU).
An Alaska man will spend most — if not all — of the rest of his days behind bars after he and others were lured into murdering a woman by a man offering $9 million who was actually catfishing them and lived in his grandparents' basement.
Kayden McIntosh, now 22, was sentenced Friday to 85 years in prison with 15 suspended, meaning he'll spend 70 years behind bars. He was the last of the six defendants to be sentenced for bringing 19-year-old Cynthia Hoffman to a waterfall just north of Anchorage in 2019. Once there, she was bound with duct tape and McIntosh shot her once in the head. Her body was dumped in a river.
"Mr. McIntosh, while not the ringleader or orchestrator, was an active participant in the planning and selection of Cynthia Hoffman to be murdered and he was fully aware of the plan," Anchorage Superior Court Judge Andrew Peterson said at the sentencing, according to a courtroom report from the Anchorage Daily News. "There was no rash or spontaneous decision or action in this case by Mr. McIntosh, but rather a cold, calculated murder."
McIntosh pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder. The plea agreement called for between 30 years and 85 years. While Hoffman's family was hoping for the maximum punishment, the sentence he received was sufficient.
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"He's going to be an old man when he gets out," Hoffman's uncle Don Hoffman told the Daily News.
McIntosh's lawyers reportedly asked for a 30-year prison sentence, saying he was a "lost kid" who surrounded himself with the wrong people. He apologized to Hoffman's family.
"I know that doesn't cut it," he said, per the Daily News. "I don't expect you to forgive me. I'm trying to take accountability for this."
The man behind the plot is Darin Schilmiller, now 27. Ahead of Hoffman's June 2019 death, Schilmiller had posed online as a man named "Tyler" and offered Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer — then 18 years old and purportedly Hoffman's "best friend" — $9 million if she kidnapped and killed Hoffman and send him photographic proof. Schilmiller pretended to be a rich man with fantasies of seeing a woman murdered.
Darin Mitchell Schilmiller (Alaska Dept. of Law) and Cynthia Hoffman (Anchorage PD)
In actuality, however, "Tyler," aka Schilmiller, 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 2024 to the maximum term of 99 years with no time suspended.
Another defendant, Caleb Allen Russell Leyland, now 26, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison with 10 years suspended. Two other defendants were processed through the juvenile courts.
Prosecutors said Leyland, enticed by the allure of $500,000, gave Brehmer and the then-16-year-old 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 while taking photographic proof for her perceived benefactor.
Denali Brehmer enters a plea for the murder of Cynthia Hoffman in an Anchorage court on Feb. 15, 2023. The victim considered the defendant her "best friend."
As previously reported by Law&Crime, authorities first arrested McIntosh in connection with Hoffman's death. Police said he quickly confessed to being one of Brehmer's accomplices in the murder — but insisted Brehmer brought the gun.
"[T]he three of them agreed to duct tape each other and take photographs," Anchorage Police wrote in a probable cause affidavit following their interview with McIntosh. "[Hoffman] was bound by her ankles and wrists with duct tape. She also had grey duct tape placed over her mouth. However, [Hoffman] started to panic. They removed the duct tape from [Hoffman's] mouth and hands. [Hoffman] began to tell them she was going to call the police and tell them they had kidnapped her and sexually assaulted her."
McIntosh said he "blacked out," but remembered shooting Hoffman and tossing her in the river.
Prosecutors had asked for a maximum term of imprisonment of 75 years with 25 years suspended for Leyland while his attorneys asked for 35 years with 10 suspended. At sentencing, prosecutors said Leyland was just as culpable as his co-defendants.
"He gave that assistance, and he gave that assistance knowing what's going to happen," Assistant District Attorney Patrick McKay said, according to NBC affiliate KTUU. "The court has already found this was a premeditated contract killing."
In cruel irony, Hoffman's father died in a motorcycle accident on June 2, 2024, five years to the day since his daughter's death. The family lamented both deaths.
"My niece's life's been taken, her father followed five years later, on the same day, laid his bike down," her uncle Robert Hoffman said, according to KTUU. "Now he's with her but he died of a broken heart. We're here to see this through. This is a tragedy. No matter what part you play in a crime, you're just as responsible as the one that committed it the most."
Leyland apologized to the Hoffman family, reportedly saying "I cannot go back in time and I cannot change things in the past. But I really wish I did, none of this would have happened."
Jerry Lambe and Alberto Luperon contributed to this report