By Suzanne Downing 
An Anchorage man involved in one of Alaska’s most disturbing murder-for-hire plots was sentenced Friday to serve 70 years in prison for the 2019 killing of 19-year-old Cynthia “CeeCee” Hoffman near Thunderbird Falls in Chugiak.
Kayden McIntosh, now 22, received an 85-year sentence with 15 suspended, along with 10 years of felony probation. The court accepted McIntosh’s 2024 plea to a single count of second-degree murder, with all remaining charges dismissed.
The killing, a case that drew national attention, stemmed from an online “catfishing” scheme orchestrated by an Indiana man who pretended to be a millionaire offering millions in exchange for murder.
According to the State of Alaska, McIntosh shot Hoffman on June 2, 2019, on the banks of the Eklutna River near Thunderbird Falls after being recruited by then-18-year-old Denali Brehmer. Brehmer and McIntosh had been manipulated by 21-year-old Darin Schilmiller of Indiana, who pretended online to be a wealthy man named “Tyler.”
Prosecutors said Schilmiller promised Brehmer at least $9 million if she carried out a murder and sent him videos and photos of the killing. Brehmer in turn recruited McIntosh and another teen, Caleb Leyland, to help her carry it out.
Hoffman, a trusted friend of Brehmer’s, was lured to the trail under the guise of an evening hangout. She was bound with duct tape and shot in the back of the head. Her body was pushed into the Eklutna River.
McIntosh is the latest of the co-defendants to be sentenced:
• Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer, now 23, was sentenced in 2024 to 99 years with none suspended after pleading guilty to first-degree murder. During her three-day sentencing hearing, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Andrew Peterson called the crime “tragic and senseless,” describing the killing as “cold, calculated, and carried out to a ‘T.’” Evidence showed Brehmer displayed no remorse and continued committing other crimes after the murder. Peterson classified her as a “worst offender.”
• Darin Schilmiller, the Indiana man who orchestrated the crime, was sentenced in January. He also faced federal charges for soliciting child pornography from Brehmer.
• Caleb Leyland, who supplied the vehicle and participated in planning, was sentenced June 10, 2024, also before Judge Peterson.
Judge Peterson noted that while Brehmer was young, “youth matters,” her actions were not a youthful mistake but a deliberate contract killing that would not have occurred without her involvement.
The investigation brought together the Anchorage Police Department’s homicide unit, the FBI in both Alaska and Indiana, and the Indiana State Police. Their work uncovered a web of online deception, exploitation of juveniles, and a murder carried out solely to satisfy the demands of a manipulator who never paid a dime.
Brehmer remains in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections.
Hoffman’s family has long described CeeCee as a vulnerable young woman with developmental disabilities who trusted her friends and paid for that trust with her life. The case has remained one of the most unsettling examples of how online predators can manipulate young offenders into acts of extreme violence.
With McIntosh’s sentence, all major defendants in the 2019 catfishing murder have now been held accountable, although the shock of the crime continues to reverberate five years later.
Not only online predators can easily manipulate youth and young adults but also when a youth or young adult had a poor education both at home and school
Now the poor families of the murderers also will be carrying that grief for being related to them like Hitler’s family changing their names, taking a pact not to reproduce, and living low key lives
Alaska Public Schools need reforming to teach children how to think and process ideas. You can’t expect a generation of parents who too received a shotty public school education during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s to know any better how to educate their next generation better. So that means Alaskas schools need teacher accountability and education reforms
Did you I know that hitler talked his mother into letting him drop out of school at 13? Before that he rebelled against his father who was abusive and disapprovingly disapproved Hitler’s art ambitions that Hitler was intentionally a poor student before turning 13. Likely he had a third grade education and that’s why he couldn’t get into Vienna’s Fine Art Academy he likely failed his entrance exams because of poor schooling. Then as a teenager he was manipulated by political ideas and was influenced by the anti semitism in Austria fueling why he later persecuted the Jews
Poor education develops young adults easily manipulated for the lack of critical thinking
Hard to call it justice — truly. However, we know that God’s judgement weighs on us all on the last day.🔥🔥🔥
Too bad they can’t all be executed.