Drinking The Cool Aid

Blake Leibel // Iana Kasian // 198 // Part 1

• Megan and Hanna Hawkins • Season 1 • Episode 198

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Shortly after Iana Kasian and Blake Leibel became engaged, and 3 weeks after Iana gave birth to their daughter, Iana stopped answering her phone.  On May 26th, 2016, the police arrived at the couple's apartment in West Hollywood, California.  They found Iana's mutilated body lying on the bed in the master bedroom, and she had been drained of blood.  During the trial, prosecutors said that Blake was jealous of the baby, and he wanted to control his fiancé.  On June 20th, 2018, he was convicted of first-degree murder, torture and aggravated mayhem.  He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

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When Blake Leibel was young, his parents got a divorce. He ended up living with his mother, Eleanor Leibel, while his brother Cody, Stayed with their father, Lorne Leibel. Eleanor’s father, so Blake’s grandfather, Paul Chitel (Chi-tell), founded a plastic sheeting company in 1957, that he grew into a multi-million-dollar company, known as Polytarp Products Ltd. Paul Chitel was known as a controlling and erratic man, according to those who worked with him. In a lawsuit filed by a supplier in the 1990s, Paul was described by an employee as having a “dominating personality” and he was someone who made “arbitrary decisions” and tried to control every aspect of his operation. The judge in that case wrote, “Unfortunately, he was a bully. He intimidated his employees and his suppliers.” 

 

Paul Chitel and his wife Leona separated, and she also had a complicated legal history, along with severe mental illness. According to a lawsuit filed against the Bank of Montreal in 2001, Leona Chitel suffered from acute bipolar disorder during the 1980s. In her trial, the judge wrote, “she appeared vague and emotionally fragile. It appeared to be torture for her to focus on the question and demonstrate any independent recall.” 

 

In the 1990’s, Blake’s grandfather, Paul Chitel, suffered a massive stroke and died two years later. In his will, he laid out his extremely detailed wishes. His live-in girlfriend would get two Mercedes and a Cadillac, and he detailed the bonuses that would go to certain long-time employees. Here’s where things got super strange though. He gave his trustees the right to withhold cash and property from any beneficiary that had HIV. His trustees were forced to get all the beneficiaries tested for HIV, as well as drugs and alcohol, before they could pay out the money. 

 

 

Paul Chitel set up trusts for his two daughters and his grandchildren while he was alive. According to the National Post, we don’t know the exact amount Blake’s mother, Eleanor inherited, but she was worth over $12 million at the time of her death in 2011, so either way, she had plenty. Paul cut one of his grandchildren out of the will. Blake’s brother, Cody Leibel didn’t get anything and according to the will, it said, “I make this direction not due to lack of love or affection, but only due to my belief that he will be more than adequately provided for by his father.” 

 

It is true that his father did have a lot of money, but it’s still strange. Cody didn’t get any money because he lived with his rich father. Blake got money because he lived with his mother and was estranged from his father, they didn’t have a good relationship. After the divorce, Blake felt like his father, Lorne wasn’t providing enough money for him. His father, Lorne Leibel, was in the luxury worlds of car racing and Olympic sailing, but he made his money developing homes. He dated a lot of younger women and took them out in his fancy Ferrari’s. For a time, his company, Canada Homes, was described as the largest home builder in the country. There seems to be a theme in this story where the members of the family are getting into some legal trouble and Lorne also fell into this. 

 

Lorne Leibel was the first Canadian to ever fail an Olympic drug test, in 1976. His sample showed traces of a banned stimulant. He also sued an ex in 2011 because she was planning on releasing a tell-all memoir. The book, The Secret Life of Lorne Leibel was never released, but excerpts were leaked online, and Lorne said it was all false information. 

 

Blake’s other grandfather, Stanley Liebel, was a well-known sailor who competed in the 1968 summer Olympics and later developed 100s of homes across Toronto. Blake’s aunt, Terry Leibel, was a Canadian journalist who served as a host for CBCs Olympic coverage during the 1996, 2002, 2004 and 2006 games. There was a lot of money and a lot of success in the family. 

 

When Blake’s brother, Cody moved to California, he sold his home for almost $18 million in 2017 and the buyer was reportedly Katy Perry. Later in the same year, Cody purchased Reba McIntire’s home for $25 million and he became the youngest homeowner in Beverly Park History. He was the world’s youngest owner of a Ferrari Enzo, he owned a record label, and he made a name for himself in underground gambling called Molly’s Game. 

 

Blake moved to California in 2004, got into writing, directing, and bringing ideas to life in graphic novels. He was still getting an allowance from his mother that totaled close to $2 million over the span of 8 years. He wrote and directed a comedy film in 2009 called Bald. He also directed a 2013 film called Soulmates and he was listed as a directive consultant and director on a few episodes of Spaceballs, the animated series. He released a comic book series called United Free Worlds.  

 

He published Syndrome in 2010, which was about Dr. Chitel, who recruits a whole town full of actors to set up a fake scenario, so this is very Truman Show esque. If you haven’t seen the Truman Show, this is a movie starring Jim Carrey. A studio builds a fake town, and everyone living there, is an actor, except for Truman. They orchestrate different scenarios for him to go through, so the show stays interesting, but they try to make sure Truman never finds out that his whole life is fake. Syndrome follows a similar story line when it comes to the fake town, but in the book, Dr. Wolfe Chitel, a neuropathologist, studies a serial killer to find a cure to the disease that makes “men like him do terrible things.”  

 

He fakes the execution of a serial killer before wiping his mind and allowing him to run free in the fake town so the doctor can monitor his actions. The doctor’s goal is to cure serial killers. The book graphically showed a lot of women being brutally killed.  He is quoted as saying, evil is not some mysterious force, evil is a syndrome. Blake was credited as a creator of the book and he wrote one of the opening lines, “If you loved hurting things, what would you do?”  He desperately wanted to be a respected comic book artist and he used all his money to try to buy that image, but Syndrome was also a flop and he had to give away copies for free at Comicon.  

 

Blake had big dreams of being a writer and director. He certainly wasn’t “making it big” in the terms of Hollywood, but he was enjoying the level of attention he was receiving from women, and he already had the money to make it LOOK like he was making it big. He wanted to turn his graphic novel, Syndrome, into a TV show, but it didn’t happen, and the comic would later be scrutinized as there are extreme parallels to the murder of Iana Kasian. 

 

Blake met former model, Amanda Braun in 2006, they dated for 5 years and in March of 2011, they got married, one month before she gave birth to their first son. They lived together in a Beverly Hills mansion, and Blake became a regular at the Soho House, which is a private club on Sunset Boulevard. 

 

In 2011, friends that that Blake’s life really began to unravel after his mom died from brain cancer. That’s the person he was closest to, they had a tight bond. He received most of her estate, including her $5.5 million dollar home in Toronto. He did not attend her funeral, but two years after her death, he sued to have her will be overturned. He wanted to remove his father as the trustee and deny his brother, Cody, his inheritance. He said he had almost no income of his own and he told the court that he had to rely on his father to pay his bills.  His father said that he and Blake’s mother had been supporting his LA lifestyle for a long time. He had been receiving installments that totaled $1.8 million over a seven to eight-year period.  Even though Blake had received a shit ton of money after his mother’s death, he was already out and had high credit card debt. He lost the suit and the law firm that represented him in the case sued him, because he owed $400k in unpaid fees. 

 

Blake ended up leaving his wife, Amanda Braun. They already had one kid, and another was on the way, she was 8 months pregnant with their second child when he filed for a divorce. Blake’s friends say he was becoming increasingly paranoid around this time. He stopped communicating with a bunch of his friends and they believed he was embarrassed about the divorce. They also noticed he was becoming more fascinated by brutal violence, and he stopped talking to his family too. He refused to take calls from his brother Cody because he believed he was in deep debt with Russian gang members. There was never any evidence of this, but Blake was scared that Cody owed big money from gambling, and someone might retaliate by harming his family members. Close friends of both Blake and Cody said that on at least one occasion, Cody was taken for a large amount of money by more experienced poker players, and he lost over a million dollars. He had a ton of money. I’m sure he was pissed, but I don’t see anything that said he owed money that he couldn’t pay. 

 

After the split with Amanda Braun, Blake began pitching another script called Psychochomp. According to Law & Crime, it was about a caped vigilante who cuts off the heads of villains and uploads his antics to YouTube. Reviewers of the script said it was terrible in every way possible. Pretty soon after his split from Amanda, Blake started seeing Iana Kasian and a lot of people thought they were a good match. 

 

Iana Kasian had worked as a tax lawyer in her 20’s and worked for several years prosecuting tax crimes in her home country, but she was able to successfully transition into a career as a model. She spoke fluent English, loved traveling, and wanted to work as an interpreter. She was very excited to leave Kiev, Ukraine to join Blake in Hollywood.  After Blake’s ex-wife, Amanda had their second child, his girlfriend, Iana was pregnant a few months later. She was ecstatic when she found out. She had always dreamed of being a mother and her first thought was to call her mom and tell her the news. So, Amanda had her baby in August and Iana had hers in May. Amanda only found out that Blake had a girlfriend when she accidentally bumped into them on the street. 

 

Blake and Iana’s baby, Diana, was born on May 3rd, and at first, Blake seemed very happy, but he was also texting a friend saying he was extremely anxious and concerned because he was afraid of losing everything. It’s hard to know exactly what he’s referencing here, but I have to imagine he was stressed about the tangled web he was weaving. He was in the process of divorcing his wife, Amanda Braun, while living in West Hollywood with his fiancé, Iana Kasian. He now had three children, and he was dating a third woman, Constance Buccafurri (byook-a-fur-ee). 

 

During this time, Iana was recovering from a C-section, they got engaged, and Blake threatened to leave her if she didn’t have sex with him. He constantly demanded it and asked if he could just leave her for another woman. Iana’s mother, Olga, travelled from Ukraine to be there when the baby was born, and Iana got her mother an apartment near her. Blake was having such a meltdown after baby Diana was born, so Iana agreed to let her newborn baby stay with her mother so she could focus on her relationship with Blake. Her mother, Olga Kasian said that Blake was controlling her daughter like a hawk and wanted her to do everything he wanted. Olga had witnessed some very alarming behaviors during their time together. 

 

On May 20th, 2016, Blake was arrested for sexual assault on his 3rd girlfriend, Constance Buccafurri (byook-a-fur-ee), who was living in a house he owned, a few miles from the apartment he lived in with Iana. He was in custody for 5 hours and Iana was extremely upset when she found out he was cheating on her. She did pay the money to bail him out, and she said she was going to stay at her mother’s place. 

 

On May 23rd, Iana and Olga went out shopping, they were looking for a baby stroller. They were having a great time, but Iana’s mood suddenly changed when she started getting some texts from Blake. She asked her mother to babysit Diana and said she needed to go talk to him. Iana and Olga had been in constant communication, especially since the baby was born, so she found it very strange when Iana stopped answering her texts and calls and she got a terrible feeling. Olga contacted the police in West Hollywood. The police did show up to the apartment and they were there for about two hours, but no one answered the door and Blake and Iana weren’t answering their phones either. Since they didn’t have reason to go in, there wasn’t anything they could do yet. 

 

Olga and a friend of hers went back to the apartment and stood outside the gate. They were yelling for Blake to open it up and let them in, but nothing happened. Olga called the police again and told them that her daughter had just given birth and had a C-section, so she was concerned for her well-being. This seemed to work, now the police had a reason to go into that apartment. They obtained a key and entered into one of the most horrifying scenes anyone could imagine. Los Angeles Couty Sherrif’s Department Seargent William Cotter said, “In my almost 30 years, I’ve never been involved in a more heinous crime than this.” 

 

The door was locked from the inside, but the police broke the door down on May 26th, 2016, and the hallway leading to the bedrooms was locked and barricaded. The police took the door off its hinges, and that’s when they saw some blood. They moved towards the master bedroom, and this was also locked. Blake Leibel was inside, and he yelled that he was not coming out and he also said Iana wasn’t home. He was on the phone with a friend and this friend was trying to convince Blake to surrender. 

 

When he finally appeared, he was wearing his boxer shorts.  Detective Martindale said Blake’s reaction was very disturbing when he was confronted. Martindale said, “He just held firm that he wasn’t....he wasn’t even aware that she was dead. And very callous when I told him, I think very striking. Well, I pointedly said, ‘She’s dead in that bed.’ And he like looks at us and goes, ‘Well, I guess you’ll find out who did it then.” 

Blake was arrested and he had a big smile on his face as he was led out of the apartment. He was tested for drugs and was only positive for a small amount of marijuana. 

 

After Iana’s murder, Blake instructed Stephen Green to sell the house his girlfriend, Constance was living in and give the proceeds to his ex-wife, Amanda Braun. 

Constance was pissed and she wrote an email saying she wanted to put a bullet in Stephen Green’s head. She sent multiple emails saying things like that all through December 2017. In one, she said, I am going to pull the trigger on Stephen Green, report me to the FBI. Do you want to find Stephen’s body dead on your doorstep? She sent about 200 threatening emails to Amanda Braun. Constance was sentenced to 3 years and 8 months in prison. She was later diagnosed with unspecified schizophrenia, psychotic disorder, a sleep disorder, and an alcohol problem. She was reverted to a mental health program. 

 

When the police had entered the apartment, they found Iana’s body lying on the bed in the master bedroom and Blake was at her side. Prosecutors said there were indications that he had been lying next to her body, which had been cleaned. Iana had been mutilated, drained of blood and lying in their bed. Blake was charged with murder, torture, mayhem and aggravated mayhem. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Due to the vicious circumstances of this case, Blake was eligible for the death penalty. His lawyers attempted to argue that he was mentally unfit for trial, but that didn’t work.   

 

An autopsy was released on September 20th, 2017, which listed Iana Kasian’s causes of death as exsanguination and head trauma.  Exsanguination is the process of draining blood. A civil lawsuit filed by Olga Kasian, included transcripts from the Los Angeles County Coroner Dr. James Ribe’s deposition, which said: “Kasian’s entire scalp was traumatically absent and was not found, was not present with the body. Her skull had been stripped down to the surface of the bone...There was no scalp present except for little bits in the back of the neck...portions of the right side of her face were torn away including the right ear and part of the posterior face on the right side, all the way down to the jawline...there were quite a number of bruises and abrasions on the face, primarily on the left side, the left cheek, and the left jaw area, a number of bruises and abrasions, including one which turned out to be a human bit mark....she had lived for at least eight hours approximately after receiving the scalp injury and the bruise to the collarbone....I have never seen this before. And I doubt if hardly any forensic pathologists in this country or abroad have even seen this outside of, perhaps, wartime....So, it’s extremely rare.” 

 

During the trial, gruesome details of the crime scene were brought up, such as the deep red stains on the white furniture, and clumps of dark hair stuck to a razor. They also showed pictures of Iana’s removed eyebrow, and another where her facial bones and muscles were exposed. 

It was extremely difficult for everyone to listen to the details of the trial. An elderly juror was just shaking their head and woman in the audience said she felt faint, and she had to leave the room. 

 

DNA at the crime scene belonged to both Iana and Blake. Blood evidence was collected from all over the apartment and was even found in the kitchen drainpipe. Police found pieces of flesh from Iana’s mutilated body in the bed, behind the mattress and on the floor. A bed sheet had handprints that matched Blake’s hands exactly and the jury was able to tell that it was definitely his print because he happened to be missing a portion of his right pinky finger. 

In the basement, police found 11 trash bags. Many contained bloody sheets and clothes, Iana’s body parts and huge chunks of her hair and scalp. In the apartment, they found a knife and bloody razor blade that prosecutors said may have been used during the scalping. 

Prosecutors provided text messages showing that Blake had ordered food from PostMates on several occasions during the time Iana was dying or being tortured. He instructed the delivery service not to knock on the door, but to leave the food outside. He didn’t even want them to ring the bell because he didn’t want to be interrupted. 

In the hours before the police broke the door down, Blake had called his accountant, Stephen Green, who rushed over to help. Video footage showed him racing through the lobby and entering the elevator. Stephen Green testified that when he arrived, he helped the police try to coax Blake out of the bedroom. At one point, Blake asked Stephen Green to pass him some clothes from the living room. He complied after the police searched them first and they found a passport and $4,000 in cash, which is believed to have been his escape plan. 

 

Prosecutors stated that Iana’s murder “stemmed from Leibel’s jealousy and anger over the baby as well as his need for power and control over his fiancé.” 

In 2010, Archaia published Blake’s graphic novel Syndrome, which was a joint venture with his company Fantasy prone. The story was about a sadistic doctor and a serial killer he was studying. A serial killer murders a man “by slitting his throat and hanging him by his ankles so he bled out.” Here’s Blake’s description of the novel: “Syndrome is a story about obsession, on a number of levels, as experienced by four characters who all come from different worlds and yet find themselves embroiled in this giant, impeccably simulated environment....It’s the ultimate ‘backstage’ story, in that sense.” 

 

Olga Kasian spoke about Blake and Iana’s daughter, Diana.  She told a Russian interpreter in court, “The life of this little angel began with the fact that her father massacred her mother.” 

 

Blake’s father did not attend the trial. In fact, there was only one family member there the entire time, and that was his brother, Cody. At the time of the murder, Blake was 37 and Iana was only 30. Her nude body had been found covered up by a Mickey Mouse blanket that had been used in their newborn daughter’s nursery. Her body appeared to have been thoroughly washed and part of her scalp was turned inside-out. The prosecutor said that Blake hadn’t factored in the persistence of Iana’s mother, who notified the police about her disappearance. 

 

Olga told the judge that since her daughter’s murder, her life had been turned into a hell of endless suffering and her mind is filled with thoughts of Iana’s dying hours and the slow torture she endured. She said she lives in the agonizing reality that the man who murdered Iana is the father of her beloved granddaughter. After her statement, she pleaded with everyone to go home and hug their children.  

 

The prosecution’s anatomy expert testified that Iana died of blood loss through the wounds in her head. She would have needed to be lying down with her head lower than her knees, likely in a bathtub with rushing water to stop the wounds from closing. With the blood rushing to her head, she would have been alive to watch, but unable to move her blood drained extremities. 

 

 

The police found Iana’s right ear in a dumpster outside of the residence. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said, “He threw away pieces of his fiancé....like she was trash. He continued to mutilate her bit by bit” She said the fictional book Syndromw was basically a blueprint for his torture. Towards the end of her closing arguments, Silverman asked jurors to recall some quotes from the book: 

“Before we think we are deciding to act.” 

“In the end, we all become monsters.” 

Blake’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Haydeh Takasugi, acknowledged the sadness and anger she’d witness in the juror’s eyes, but she told the jurors that she hoped they could look at the evidence critically. If they did that, they should be able to acquit her client. She stressed that Blake did not write or illustrate Syndrome, and she added that the cover image for the scalped baby was someone else’s idea. She said, “We’re reaching for something that is not there.” 

She didn’t offer any other potential suspects, but she asked the jurors to think about the trash bags found in the condo’s dumpster, which contained some of Iana Kasian’s body parts, as well as a T-shirt that belonged to Blake. DNA samples from the drawstrings of three of the bags, didn’t match Blake, but belonged to an unknown male. Blake did not testify during the trial. 

 

An entertainment lawyer and friend of Blakes, Tenser, caused a big circus during the trial. From the start, prosecutors objected to him being there. Halfway through the trial, a juror asked to be dismissed and claimed that Tenser followed her in his car. Judge Windham found Tenser in contempt of court, but he said the allegations were absurd and accused the judge of not listening to his side of the story. He said, “I had no idea a juror was in front of me. That’s absurd. This is absurd. Your honor, please listen....You’re nodding at me, but you’re not listening to me.” The juror had a private meeting with the judge and was dismissed due to this incident and an alternate juror was selected. 

 

Judge Windham ordered Tenser to stay away from all jurors, witnesses and attorneys in the case. This happened after Tenser had a conversation with a witness who had collaborated with Blake on the graphic novel. The writer, Robert Ryan, testified on the creative process that went into making the book, Syndrome. Robert was outside court after testifying and Tensner approached to discuss reprinting the book since it would now have such a heightened profile. 

 

Tensner had already received a warning, so Judge Windham cited him for contempt of court and scheduled a hearing, but he argued that he should be added to Blake’s defense team and said, “I believe my client is an innocent man who was framed for murder.” Judge Windham said he would not allow him to substitute as counsel. 

 

After all the evidence was presented, it took the jury 3 hours to deliver a guilty verdict. He was convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated mayhem, and torture on June 20th, 2018. On June 26th, Superior Court Judge Marke E. Windham sentenced Blake Leibel to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He said, “The case is unusual inly in its savagery.” He said Blake exhibited inconceivable cruelty. Blake was ordered to pay $43 million to Iana Kasian’s family and her mother, Olga, is raising Diana. 

 

In Part 2, we’re going through some of the court transcripts and really breaking down the details of this case.  It’s very graphic content, but it will be information from the coroner, an expert in human cadaveric anatomy, and a certified crime scene reconstruction expert. 

 

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