The Catfish Killer: How a Fake Millionaire Turned Best Friends Into Murderers

When Online Love Becomes Deadly Obsession

You know how people always say "don't believe everything you see on the internet"? Well, nineteen-year-old Denali Brehmer probably should have listened to that advice. Because the handsome millionaire she fell for on Snapchat turned out to be neither handsome nor a millionaire. And by the time she figured that out, her best friend was dead.

This is one of those stories that makes you wonder how we got here as a society. Like, at what point did we decide that anonymous strangers online were more trustworthy than the people actually sitting next to us? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Growing Up in Chaos

Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer was born in 2001 in Anchorage, Alaska. Right off the bat, her life was complicated. She was the third of five daughters in a household that was basically a masterclass in dysfunction. Her mother cycled through boyfriends like most people cycle through Netflix shows, and none of these relationships were what you'd call healthy.

All of the children were in and out of foster care throughout their young lives, which is already heartbreaking enough. But then something happened that would change everything permanently. One of her mother's boyfriends was charged with killing Denali's two-month-old baby sister.

Think about that for a second. A baby. Two months old.

After that tragedy, all the surviving Brehmer children were adopted into different families. The system was trying to give them better lives, and in many ways it worked. But some kinds of damage run deep, and they don't heal easily.

The Perfect Online Boyfriend

Fast forward to 2019. Denali was eighteen, trying to figure out her life like most teenagers do. That's when she met Tyler on Snapchat. And Tyler seemed too good to be true, which should have been the first red flag.

He was twenty-one, supposedly gorgeous, and had won millions in the lottery. Because that's definitely how lottery winners spend their time - trolling Snapchat for teenage girlfriends. But when you're young and you've been through what Denali had been through, sometimes you want to believe in fairy tales.

Tyler lived in Kansas, so their entire relationship existed in the digital world. They'd spend hours messaging back and forth, and slowly, Tyler started revealing his true interests. He liked dominance. He liked control. And eventually, he admitted something much darker.

Tyler wanted to watch someone die.

Now, most people would have blocked him and maybe reported him to authorities. But Denali didn't run. Instead, she seemed intrigued by the idea of giving Tyler what he wanted. Which brings us to the question that would change everything: if Tyler paid her nine million dollars, would she make a real snuff film for him?

Nine million dollars. To someone who'd grown up in foster care, bouncing between homes, that kind of money represented everything she'd never had. Security. Freedom. A completely different life.

When Best Friends Become Targets

Enter Cynthia Hoffman, who went by CeeCee. She was nineteen, the same age as Denali, and they'd been best friends since high school. CeeCee had been there for Denali through all the foster care transitions and family drama. She was exactly the kind of friend everyone needs - loyal, supportive, and genuinely caring.

CeeCee had her own challenges. She was born with a learning disability and high-functioning autism, which meant she needed extra support in school and took longer to learn new things. But she was determined to be independent. She worked at local restaurants and helped her father with his handyman business. She was building a life for herself, one small step at a time.

But teenage friendships are complicated, and there had been some drama over a boy named Zack. Denali felt betrayed by something CeeCee had done, and when she told Tyler about it, he saw an opportunity.

"If CeeCee's actions hurt you so much," Tyler suggested, "why don't you get her back?"

And that's when the plan crystallized. Denali would have her nine million dollars, and she'd have her revenge.

The Recruitment Phase

Here's where the story gets even more disturbing. Denali didn't plan to do this alone. She recruited four other teenagers to help her, two of whom were under fifteen years old. Let that sink in - children barely old enough for high school were being pulled into a murder plot.

The older accomplices were sixteen-year-old Kayden McIntosh and Caleb Leyland, who would drive them to and from the scene. Denali promised them all a share of the nine million dollars Tyler was supposedly going to pay. Because apparently, nobody stopped to think about why some random guy in Kansas would pay teenagers in Alaska nine million dollars for a murder video.

The Hiking Trip That Wasn't

On June 2, 2019, Denali asked CeeCee if she wanted to go on a "hike" to Thunderbird Falls. In their friend group, "hike" was code for going somewhere remote to get high, so the invitation didn't seem suspicious. It was something they'd done before.

CeeCee was shot and killed on the banks of the Eklutna River near Thunderbird Falls, but the path to that moment was calculated and cruel. The group suggested they "duct tape each other and take photographs" as part of what they presented as harmless fun.

CeeCee agreed to go first. She let them bind her wrists and feet with duct tape, then cover her mouth. It was only when she was completely helpless that she realized something was terribly wrong.

While Denali and the others documented everything through Snapchat, sending pictures and videos to Tyler back in Kansas, Kayden McIntosh took the gun from Denali and shot CeeCee in the back of the head. Afterward, Hoffman's body was placed into the Eklutna River.

Covering Their Tracks

The group drove back to Anchorage thinking they were criminal masterminds. They burned CeeCee's clothes, her purse, her phone, and the murder weapon. Then they sent a message to CeeCee's sister saying they'd dropped her off at a local park.

But here's the thing about murder - it's not actually that easy to get away with. CeeCee's family realized she was missing almost immediately. The police tracked her movements to Thunderbird Falls and found her body the next day. Within hours, all five teenagers were arrested.

The Man Behind the Curtain

So what about Tyler and his millions? When police tracked him down and brought him to Alaska, the truth was almost laughably pathetic. Tyler was actually Darin Schilmiller, a shy, awkward young man from a small town in Indiana. He wasn't handsome, he wasn't rich, and he definitely wasn't a lottery winner.

Darin was the kind of person who made others uncomfortable. He'd harassed classmates in school, asking them to send him pictures of themselves in bikinis. When that didn't work, he'd approach their mothers and ask for photos of their children. His online relationships consistently fell apart when he started making similar requests.

In Denali, he'd found someone who didn't run away from his darker impulses. And in him, she'd found someone she thought could lift her out of the life she'd been born into. They were both chasing fantasies, and CeeCee Hoffman paid the price.

Justice and Consequences

Denali Brehmer, now 24, pleaded guilty to murder in 2023 and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. The prosecution argued she deserved the maximum sentence because she had engaged in "one of the most serious crimes that we have in Alaska" and had executed CeeCee in a murder-for-hire plot.

Darin Schilmiller also received 99 years for his role in the conspiracy. Caleb Leyland, who drove the group to and from the scene, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received thirty years. McIntosh's trial in the case is pending.

The two juveniles who were under fifteen at the time have had their cases handled privately, as is typical for minors.

The Broader Questions

This case raises uncomfortable questions about how we live now. About social media, about online relationships, about the desperation that can drive people to believe in impossible promises.

CeeCee Hoffman was working hard to build an independent life despite her challenges. She was loyal to her friends and close to her family. She deserved to grow up, to achieve her goals, to experience all the ordinary joys of life. Instead, she became the victim of a plot that existed primarily in the digital world until it suddenly, violently, didn't.

The tragedy is that none of this had to happen. If Denali had talked to literally any adult about Tyler's promises, if she'd stopped to think about why a millionaire would pay teenagers millions for murder videos, if she'd chosen to work through her feelings about CeeCee like normal friends do, everyone involved might have had different lives.

But that's not how this story ends. Instead, it ends with a young woman dead, several teenagers behind bars, and families destroyed by choices that started with a lie on social media.

Sometimes the internet connects us to wonderful things. Sometimes it connects us to people who destroy lives. The difference is learning to tell which is which.