Blake Leibel brutally tormented his fiancée Iana Kasian for up to eight hours before killing her in his West Hollywood apartment.
Police PhotoBlake Leibel was a real estate heir and graphic novelist, now infamous for the brutal 2016 murder of his fiancée.
Blake Leibel could have been known for his graphic novels. The son of a prominent Toronto real estate developer, Leibel had what other artists only dream of: the time and money to freely pursue his creative endeavors.
But his 2010 graphic novel Syndrome, which tells the story of a scientist and the serial killer he is experimenting on, feels more like an ominous warning than a work of fiction. Leibel described Syndrome as a story of “obsession” — and his own deadly obsession is what propelled him to infamy.
In 2015, after he suddenly left his wife Amanda Braun, Blake Leibel took up with a Ukrainian-born model named Iana Kasian. Leibel and Kasian soon moved in together in West Hollywood and became engaged. By May 2016, Kasian had given birth to their daughter Diana. Her attention was, naturally, all on their newborn child. Leibel, on the other hand, reportedly couldn’t handle not being the center of Kasian’s attention.
Rather than work things out or split up, however, Leibel’s mind led him down a darker path. He tortured and mutilated Kasian for eight hours before killing her, eventually draining her body of blood. When police found her body in the couple’s apartment on May 26, 2016, Leibel was barricaded inside with her.
Chillingly, Kasian’s death scene was similar to gory scenes in Syndrome, including a brutal murder that involved draining a victim of their blood.
As more information about the police investigation came to light, the truth about who Blake Leibel was, and the horrors he was capable of, became clear. Some media reports even called the killing “the most gruesome murder in the history of West Hollywood if not Los Angeles.”
Blake Leibel’s Life Before The Gruesome Murder
BILLY FARRELL/Patrick McMullan via Getty ImagesBlake Leibel (center) was once known for being the son of a wealthy Canadian real estate developer.
Blake Leibel was born on May 8, 1981, into wealth. His father Lorne Leibel is one of Canada’s wealthiest real estate developers, and his mother Eleanor Chitel Leibel was the heiress to the plastics company Alros Products.
Both Blake and his brother Cody benefitted from their parents’ prominence, based on a Los Angeles Times report that Blake had been receiving an $18,000 allowance each month after moving to California in 2004. Then, he inherited some of his mother’s estate after she died. Not having to worry about money allowed Blake Leibel to focus on pursuing his dream of working in Hollywood without the baggage of struggling to earn a paycheck.
In fact, legal documents filed after his mother’s death in 2011 officially stated that Blake had no income, meaning he was living — and supporting, at the time, a wife and child — solely on the money he received from his parents.
He didn’t just laze about, though. Leibel earned credits as a creative consultant on Spaceballs: The Animated Series, and he directed a 2009 comedy film titled Bald, which was poorly rated. But around that time, Leibel also caught what would ultimately be his biggest break.
In 2010, Archaia, a prominent publishing company, published Syndrome, the story of a neuropathologist who believes he has identified “the root of all evil in the recesses of the human brain” and partners with a Hollywood actress, a tortured director, and a condemned serial killer to launch a risky experiment. In the novel, the serial killer notably murdered a man by slitting his throat and then hung him by the ankles so he would bleed out.
In hindsight, many have viewed Syndrome as a sort of “blueprint” for the eventual real-life murder that Leibel would commit.
Blake Leibel’s Turbulent Love Life
Olga KasianBlake Leibel with Iana Kasian, his fiancée whom he murdered.
Fast-forward five years, and Blake Leibel had suddenly left his wife Amanda Braun. The two had met back in 2006 and already had one child together, with a second on the way. But Leibel didn’t want to stick around.
While the timeline is murky, what is clear is that Leibel soon took up with Iana Kasian, a Ukrainian-born woman who had moved to Los Angeles to work as a model. Just months after the new couple moved in together in West Hollywood, Kasian was pregnant with Leibel’s child.
“I think for a lot of women, Blake was a good catch,” Scott Johnson, a Hollywood Reporter writer and 48 Hours consultant, told CBS News.
Still, the Leibel family had their troubles. Cody, Blake’s brother, was a gambler playing high-stakes poker, and Blake seemed to live in Cody’s shadow. Their father reportedly preferred Cody over Blake, and Cody had followed more closely in their father’s footsteps, also developing real estate. Blake, on the other hand, had spent more time with their mother growing up (their parents were separated), and he wanted to be a Hollywood director.
A desire for attention was apparently a recurring theme for Blake Leibel. When he and Iana Kasian first started seeing each other, it seemed like he was finally receiving the love he had always wanted, and according to those who knew them, they seemed happy together. In the back of his mind, though, he was always afraid of losing everything — and he feared that his brother was somehow racking up massive gambling debts.
And Kasian wasn’t the only woman Leibel was seeing at the time. Leibel’s divorce with Braun wasn’t yet finalized, he was living with Kasian, and at the same time, he was also seeing a woman named Constance Buccafurri, who was living in another home that Leibel owned.
Then, in May 2016, Buccafurri accused Leibel of sexually assaulting her in that same home. Leibel was arrested shortly thereafter, and to make matters worse, it was Kasian who had to bail him out.
Olga KasianIana Kasian with Blake Leibel, the couple’s newborn daughter Diana, and Kasian’s mother Olga Kasian.
By then, Kasian had just recently given birth to Diana. She had been spending more time at her mother’s apartment trying to care for Diana, and the news that Diana’s father had just been arrested for sexual assault naturally caused tension between Kasian and Leibel. And, according to Kasian’s mother, Leibel didn’t seem to care about the baby anymore.
“[Blake] constantly demanded sex, and that he could leave her for another woman,” Olga Kasian said in an interview, via a translator. At that point, Iana Kasian was still recovering from her C-section.
“He was controlling her like a hawk,” Olga Kasian added. Though Olga begged Iana to leave Leibel, Iana tragically refused.
The Gruesome Murder Of Iana Kasian
Olga and Iana Kasian went shopping on May 23, 2016, when Blake Leibel suddenly sent Iana a barrage of texts. She quickly rushed off to see him. The next day, Olga became worried when she could not reach her daughter.
FacebookIana Kasian was just 30 years old when she was murdered.
“I did try to call her and — the calls went to the voice message,” Olga recalled. “All of a sudden, I had this feeling that I had to go there.”
After multiple calls to the police and no new information about her daughter, Olga eventually took a taxi to Leibel’s apartment the next morning. She saw him through a window and began shouting at him, but he refused to acknowledge her or let her inside. Eventually, police arrived to help her. With no obvious signs of foul play at the time, though, they did not enter the home, and several hours passed with Leibel refusing to open the door.
The next day, Olga called the police again and begged for help. She believed that something bad must have happened to Iana — and police finally agreed to force their way into the apartment on May 26, 2016, fearing that Iana might be in medical distress due to how recently she had given birth.
Once they broke into the apartment, though, they initially found no sign of Leibel or Kasian. The living room was a mess, and as they moved through the unit, they found that Leibel had barricaded himself in a bedroom with a mattress. Leibel refused to come out, telling police that Kasian wasn’t home. Eventually, Leibel called a friend, who convinced him to come out.
Nothing could prepare the officers for the scene they would find inside.
L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept.The headboard of one of Leibel’s beds, stained with Kasian’s blood.
“Been to a lot of crime scenes over the years. But… walking into that one… was just different,” recalled Sgt. William Cotter, one of the officers who was at the scene. “Stepping into the hallway that led to the bedrooms, then things started to appear. You started to see blood.”
Leibel had tried to clean things up, but he clearly hadn’t done a good job. And as detectives entered the master bedroom where Leibel had been hiding, they saw Kasian, bloody and dead. The damage to her body could only be described, as Sgt. Rob Martindale put it, as “sadistic.” She had been tortured, scalped, partly dismembered, and drained of her blood.
Disturbingly, it was initially reported that Kasian’s body was lying next to her unharmed baby, but it was later revealed that the baby had been in the care of Olga Kasian during the torture and murder, and then in the care of one of Olga’s trusted friends as Olga tried to save her daughter.
Somehow, Blake Leibel tried to deny any involvement in Kasian’s killing. All he told investigators was this: “Science is gonna tell you who did this.”
He was right, in the end, but the evidence only pointed directly to him.
Blake Leibel’s Conviction And Life Sentence
During Blake Leibel’s trial, the full extent of his brutality was revealed. It had not been a quick murder. Kasian was believed to have been alive for eight hours after receiving her scalp injury. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman described Kasian’s death as “very slow, excruciating, painful.”
Officially, Iana Kasian died of blunt force trauma to the head.
But, of course, Leibel had also scalped the 30-year-old postpartum mother. Additionally, portions of Kasian’s face were torn off, and pieces of her flesh were found scattered throughout the apartment.
Her right ear and part of her scalp were later found in garbage bags that Leibel had recently thrown in the apartment’s nearby trash chute.
Olga KasianLeibel’s motive was seemingly a desire for power, control, and attention.
Prosecutors made the case that Leibel had been jealous of how much time Kasian had been spending with their daughter. He was desperate for the attention their new child was receiving, and when Kasian could not provide that for him, he snapped. His motive, they argued, was power and control.
“What is the ultimate act of power and control?” Silverman asked. “It’s taking somebody’s life, right? Taking away their future. Taking away everything they dreamed they were going to be: A mother, a parent, a daughter, a wife.”
Forensic psychologist Kris Mohandie added: “He’s always gotten everything he wants when he wants it, but he also has an underlying violent fantasy life that he’s been mentally rehearsing for years. And so when the rage comes out, it takes the form of those fantasies.”
It’s little wonder why many believe that Leibel had outlined those dark fantasies years earlier in his graphic novel Syndrome.
In the end, Blake Leibel was found guilty of torturing and murdering his fiancée. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He was also ordered to pay $41.6 million to Iana Kasian’s family members.
Next, read up on the torturous murders perpetrated by Robert Berdella. Then, learn about the horrific murder of Junko Furuta.
