Man who was tricked into participating in Alaska murder sentenced

An Alaska judge sentenced a 24-year-old man to 40 years in prison, with 10 years suspended, for his involvement in the killing of a woman by a hitman who lived in his grandmother's basement.

Caleb Allen Russell Leyland pleaded guilty in November to the premeditated murder of Cynthia Hoffman. The woman was bound with duct tape and shot to death near a waterfall north of Anchorage in 2019. Leyland was one of six people charged in the plot, most of them teenagers at the time. However, two of the defendants were tried in juvenile court. Daren Schilmiller, 26, posed online as a man named “Tyler” and offered Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer $9 million if she kidnapped and killed her friend Hoffman and sent evidence.

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In reality, however, “Tyler” was a penniless, unemployed Indiana resident living in his grandparents' basement. He pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of first-degree murder and also to a federal charge of conspiracy to produce child pornography for soliciting child sexual abuse material from Brehmer. A judge had previously sentenced him to 99 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 45 years.

Brehmer pleaded guilty to premeditated murder. The judge sentenced her in February to the maximum sentence of 99 years without parole.

Prosecutors said Leyland was lured by the lure of the $500,000 and gave Brehmer and then-16-year-old Kayden McIntosh the car they used to lure Hoffman into a trip to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Chugiak and a subsequent hike through Thunderbird Falls on June 2, 2019. There, Brehmer tied Hoffman up with duct tape – while simultaneously taking photographs as evidence for her alleged benefactor.