The son of a California real estate tycoon has been found guilty of the gruesome and brutal murder of his Ukrainian fiancee, who had given birth to his daughter just weeks before.
Blake Leibel, a millionaire property heir, tortured and mutilated Iana Kasian inside his West Hollywood apartment before she died. He drained all the blood from her body and removed her scalp, ABC reported.
Kasian’s autopsy report says parts of the right side of the 30-year-old’s face – including her ear – were torn off in the brutal slaying, before she died.
Leibel, who is the son of prominent Toronto developer Lorne Leibel, has been found guilty of murdering his fiancee Iana Kasian (pictured)
Leibel (pictured with ex-wife Amanda Braun) murdered the woman in his West Hollywood apartment. Flesh, an ear and her scalp were found scattered around his bedroom and in the bin at the bottom of a garbage chute at his home
Confronting images from the crime scene show blood stains on Leibel’s mattress and on a rug beneath his bed
When officers finally broke into Leibel’s apartment in May 2016, looking for Kasian, her naked body was found – mutilated, drained of blood, and covered with a red Mickey Mouse blanket, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Investigators found bits of flesh inside the bedroom, and part of Kasian’s scalp and her ear were found in a trash bin at the bottom of the garbage chute outside the home, NBC reported.
The Los Angeles Department of the Medical Examiner ruled that the woman’s cause of death was exsanguination, the act of draining a person of blood.
Leibel, 37, had tried to keep police out of the apartment by barricading the door.
During Leibel’s trial, pathologists testified the horrific murder set a precedent in terms of the brutality and grisliness of Kasian’s injuries.
When Kasian’s body was found, she was naked, washed clean and covered by a red Mickey Mouse blanket
Kasian (pictured) was tortured and mutilated before she was killed and her blood was drained from her body, prosecutors said
Blood stains are seen on the carpet of Leibel’s bedroom in some of the less graphic images taken at the crime scene
Police found the woman’s body inside her West Hollywood apartment (above) after forcing their way in. Leibel had barricaded the front door with furniture and was inside at the time. Kasian was found naked and covered with a red Mickey Mouse blanket
Graphic images of the scene and of Kasian were shown to the jury, as were images from a graphic novel called Syndrome, which Leibel helped to create in 2010.
In the novel, a scientist tries to find a way to cure people of evil. One page displays a woman, lying naked on a bed with no head.
The novel begins with the foreword: ‘If you loved hurting things, what would you do?’ and ends with an image of a hand dripping blood and the caption: ‘In the end, we all become monsters’.
Prosecutors District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef and her co-counsel, Deputy DA Beth Silverman argued the 37-year-old had mirrored elements of the novel in Kasian’s murder, and that the book was the man’s ‘blueprint’.
Prosecutors showed the jury pictures of Kasian’s body as it was found in the bedroom (bedroom pictured) and compared it to images from a graphic novel Leibel helped create in 2010
Sick: Leibel had published a graphic novel that contained cartoons of decapitated and bloodied women, which prosecutors say he used as the blueprint for Kasian’s murder
Inside Leibel’s novel is a hand dripping with blood, alongside the caption: ‘In the end we ALL become monsters’
Silverman told the court there were no words to describe the depravity of Leibel’s actions and the extremity of the violence.
‘This was depravity. Ms. Kasian died a slow and painful death,’ she said.
‘He threw away pieces of his fiancée like she was trash. The mother of his newborn baby.
‘Her daughter will never know her, and that’s because of the unconscionable acts you heard about during this trial.’
Leibel had pleaded not guilty to murder, mayhem, aggravated mayhem and torture.
When the jury read out their sentence on Wednesday, Kasian’s mother, a Ukrainian health care worker named Olga, broke down in tears.
Leibel’s reaction was one of an unmoved man. He stared straight ahead and did not move.
He will be sentenced on June 26, and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Though he was earlier facing the death penalty, the LA County District Attorney’s Office had earlier opted not to seek it against him.
Leibel’s father, Lorne, made a fortune in the home building boom of the 1980s and 90s as the president of Canada Homes, once described as the nation’s largest home builder.
Lorne Leibel also sailed for Team Canada in the 1976 Olympics and has since raced both boats and vintage cars, according to the Toronto Star.
And his mother, Eleanor Leibel, was the daughter of Paul and Leona Chitel. The Chitel family founded Alros Products Ltd, a plastics company based in Toronto that does business as Polytarp, the National Post reported.