Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

This is the story of Denali Brehmer and the murder of her friend Cynthia Hoffman for $9,000,000

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. So this girl, her name's Denali, and all Danali wants to do is impress her boyfriend. So Danali's 18, she lives in Alaska, and she spends a lot of time chatting with her online boyfriend.

This guy, Tyler. Tyler's 21, he's from Kansas. But most importantly, Tyler is a multi-millionaire. And Denali thinks he is foin. But since he lives so many states away, their relationship is long distance. So they'll often send adult selfies and Snapchat's to each other. But then one day. Tyler's like, you know what would be fun?

If you could film yourself doing some adult stuff with someone else, someone younger. Now, I won't go into detail about what they did, but Denali ends up making a P3-Diotape of herself and someone else, and she sends it to Tyler. And I guess he's happy with the result, because these disgusting exchanges go on for a while. But then Tyler makes Denali a crazy offer in exchange for a new kind of video. He's basically like, I'll give you 9 million if you essay and unalive someone and then you film it and send me the footage. And Danali's like, holy shit, that's a lot of money. So then they work through the details of this plan for about three weeks.

But by the end of it, Denali has chosen who her victim is going to be. The victim is going to be Danali's friend. This girl, Cece. Cece's 19, she's also developmentally disabled, and apparently she's the mental age of about 12 years old. But Denali has always been nice to her and included her in things. So from CeC's perspective, Denali is her best friend. Now, Denali knows she can't pull this off alone, so she recruits one of her other friends to help her.

This guy, Caden. And Caden is 16. And she tells Caden that she'll give him a 10% cut of the $9 million if he helps her unalive Cici. That's 900 grand. Now, there are some other friends involved in this scheme too, but I don't want to make this story too complicated. So let's just focus on Denali and Caden. So Denali and Caden get their plan already.

So they invite Cici to this popular hiking spot around Thunderbird Falls. So they pick her up and they drive to the trailhead and they start making their way through the trees. And at one point they veer off the path and head into the woods. And I guess they tell Cecee that they're going to play some kind of game where they take photos of each other tied up. And of course, CeC's got to go first. So they duct tape and tie her up. And this whole time, Denali's been recording on her phone and sending the Snapchats to Tyler. Then, when the moment is right, Denali pulls out a pew-pew. And Caden takes it from her. And then he aims it at Cici's head and he pulls the trigger.

And then they take CeC's body and they push it into a nearby creep. And then they hike back to their car. And then they drive to another nearby park and they burn Cece's purse and her ID and the Poo-Pew because they're trying to get rid of all the evidence. But then that same day, I guess Denali starts to feel bad, maybe even a little guilty. Because she posts a couple of videos on Snapchat. And in those videos, she's cryptically confessing, saying like, I know I f***ed up and I'm really sorry. And then two days later, the police find Cece's body.

in the creek and someone alerts them to the existence of Cece's Snapchat confession so police get a warrant to look at Denali's phone and there they find all of her messages to Tyler including the P3DO videos she made for him so then they get the FBI to track Tyler's number and that number leads them to a guy not in Kansas where Tyler's from but to a guy in Indiana so then police have to sit Denali down and tell her what they found Tyler isn't Tyler he's not from Kansas, he doesn't look like this, his name's Darren and he actually looks like this. So he's not even fine and worst of all he's not even a millionaire. Not even close. In real

life he actually lives in his grandmother's basement and I'm not making that up. Her online millionaire boyfriend is just some loser who catfished her. She was never going to get nine million dollars. So when Denali finds this out she gets mad and throws him under the bus and confess about the whole murder plot, about how he talked her into making the P3Dio videos. So then boom, they arrest Donali. And Alaska doesn't release mug shots, so I don't have a mug shot, but here's how she looks in real life. And they also arrest Caden, here's how he looks in real life.

And of course, they also arrest Tyler slash Darren. Here's what he looks like in real life. Buh. And both Donali and Tyler get convicted and they each get 99 years in prison while Caden is still waiting on his sentence. Shout out to Alaska.