When Kasian’s body was found she was naked. Her blood had been drained, she’d been scalped, washed clean, then covered with a red Mickey Mouse blanket

Iana Kasian [photo] who had just given birth to a daughter three weeks earlier was found on May 26, 2016. She had been was tortured and mutilated before she was killed and her blood was drained from her body, prosecutors said

The trial strived to showcase the extremities of cruelty and depravity involved in the gruesome crime. The imagery was both horrific and macabre. – Pathologists testified that Kasian’s murder has already set a precedent in terms of the sheer barbarity on display, and the extent and brutality of her injuries.
Throughout the weeklong trial, prosecutor District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef and her co-counsel, Deputy DA Beth Silverman, displayed unusually graphic and disturbing crime-scene photographs to illustrate that Kasian’s murder, which included scalping and blood-draining on a victim who remained alive for much of the ordeal, was exceptionally, and even uniquely, horrific.
The prosecutors also highlighted the idea that Leibel had orchestrated the murder to mirror certain elements from the plot of Syndrome, a 2010 graphic novel he helped create that told the story of a scientist who experiments on a psychopathic killer to find a cure for evil. Success is elusive in this fictional world, however, and the book’s narrator concludes “in the end we all become monsters.” 

Prosecutors said the crime pathology mirrored a scene inside Leibel’s novel where a hand is dripping with blood, alongside the caption: ‘In the end we ALL become monsters’

Silverman, toward the end of the trial, reminded jurors of the similarities between the fictional crime and the real one, and asserted that the novel was Leibel’s “blueprint.” The resulting real-world violence was so severe and extreme, Silverman said, that words “failed” to adequately describe what had occurred. 
“This was depravity,” Silverman said, bluntly. “Ms. Kasian died a slow and painful death,” he said. “Her daughter will never know her, and that’s because of the unconscionable acts you heard about during this trial.”
The trial began with first-hand testimony from Olga Kasian, who speaks no English and used several court-appointed Russian language interpreters during testimony. 

Compelling evidence: Blood stains are seen on the carpet of Leibel’s bedroom, one of the disturbing and damning graphic images taken at the crime scene and presented during the trial

The trial began with first-hand testimony from Olga Kasian, with the aid of court-appointed Russian language interpreters describing that she was distressed having not heard from her daughter for two days.
Olga went in search of Iana on May 24, 2016, after dozens of calls, texts and emails went unanswered. The day before, Iana had gone shopping for baby strollers. It was the last time Olga would see her daughter alive.
On another occasion, Olga went to the apartment by herself and stood across the street, screaming for Leibel to open the door. She testified that she saw him come to the window, only to close it and disappear inside.
When persistent non-English speaking Olga did finally manage to get the police interested, two officers tried to perform a welfare check on Iana at the apartment she had been sharing with Leibel on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, but were denied entry.

Police found Iana’s body inside her West Hollywood apartment [photo], after forcing their way in. The suspect had barricaded the front door with furniture and was inside at the time.

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 forward: ‘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’.
Much of the prosecution’s case rested on what police and forensic experts ultimately pieced together from the apartment.
The testimony was largely composed of a wealth of forensic and physical evidence, all of which pointed to the suspect as the killer. A forensic pathologist explained how blood found throughout the apartment matched the victim, and how DNA found at the crime scene belonged to both Iana Kasian and Leibel. Blood evidence was collected from all over the apartment, and was even found in the kitchen drain pipe. Police found pieces of flesh from Kasian’s mutilated body in the bed, behind the mattress and on the floor. A bed sheet bore distinct handprints that matched Leibel’s hand exactly, and was easily discernible by the jury because Leibel happens to be missing a portion of his right pinky finger. In the basement, police found 11 discarded trash bags, many of which contained bloody sheets and clothes, body parts belonging to Kasian, and huge chunks of her hair and scalp. Finally, inside the apartment itself, police found Kasian’s corpse splayed out on the bed in the master bedroom, with Blake at her side. Prosecutors said there was some indication that he had been lying next to her body, which had been cleaned, for some time before police arrived. Police found a knife and a bloody razor blade that prosecutors said may have been used during the scalping.

Prosecutors provided text messages showing that Leibel had ordered food from PostMates on several occasions during the time when Kasian was dying, instructing the delivery service not to knock on the door, but to leave the food outside. “All the effort over the last two days, and he’s really worked up an appetite,” said Silverman. “He doesn’t want the delivery people to ring the bell, he doesn’t want to be interrupted.”  In the hours before police broke down the door, Blake had called his accountant, Stephen Green, who rushed over to help. Video footage showed him racing through the lobby and entering the elevator. Green testified that when he arrived, he helped police try to coax Leibel out of the bedroom. At one point, Leibel asked Green to pass him some clothes from the living room. Green did so, but not before police had a chance to search them, whereupon they found a passport and $4,000 in cash, which Silverman later surmised might have been Leibel’s ready escape plan. 

Life imitating art: Prosecutors showed the jury pictures of Kasian’s body as it was found in the bedroom [bedroom photo], and compared it to images from a graphic novel Leibel helped create in 2010

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.
“I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the question of why?” she said. “Why would a human being do anything close to this to a human being, and why do that to someone he supposedly loves, someone he just had a baby with?”
She conceded that motive was often difficult to discern, but offered clues as to what may have driven Leibel to such extremes. Power, jealousy and anger were likely at play, she said, suggesting that Leibel may have been jealous that Kasian’s attention had been diverted away from him and toward the newborn.
‘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.’ “What happened here is beyond anybody’s worst nightmare,” she said.
“This is the world where the defendant lives, where people’s lives have no value. Maybe he did think that no one would care that a young woman from the Ukraine went missing here in the U.S. She was butchered and thrown away like pieces of trash.”
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.