Author charged with the horrific murder of his girlfriend

Author charged with the horrific murder of his girlfriend

WARNING: Extremely graphic content

BEFORE Iana Kasian died, the 30-year-old model from Ukraine was subject to one of the most brutal crimes in the history of Los Angeles.

The autopsy report, released yesterday, has revealed tragic details of the torture and subsequent murder Kasian suffered, allegedly at the hand of her boyfriend, Blake Leibel.

Back in May, 2016, Kasian had gone to visit 35-year-old Leibel at their Hollywood apartment, reportedly in the hopes of reconciling.

The two had welcomed a baby girl called Diana less than two months before but Kasian had left their shared place to live with her mother.

After the murder, friends of Leibel, a real estate heir and aspiring Hollywood director, would tell stories of how they noticed him spiralling into a dark space of mind.

On May 26 last year, Kasian’s mother called the police and begged them to check on her daughter at the couple’s apartment.

Police arrived to find Leibel hiding in the bedroom with Kasian’s body. He had barricaded the door with their furniture and bedding. Their two-month-old daughter was lying next to Kasian’s body unharmed.

The public knew little about the graphic crime until now, with Dr James Ribe of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office now revealing the horrific abuse Kasian endured before her death.

“[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,” Dr Ribe said.

Her scalp still hasn’t been found.

“Also 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 the jawline,” he added.

Kasian was also covered in bruises and had been bitten.

According to the report, she had been alive for at least eight hours after she was cut on her scalp and bruised on her body.

The coroner concluded her cause of death had been from exsanguination, otherwise known as completely draining a person of blood. The secondary cause of death was repeated blunt force trauma to the head.

Dr Ribe, who has worked in medicine for more than 20 years, said he had never seen anything like it.

“I have never seen this before. And I doubt hardly any forensic pathologists in this country or abroad have even seen this, outside of, perhaps, wartime ... it’s extremely rare,” he said.

Leibel has since been charged with one count of murder, mayhem, aggravated mayhem and torture.

Currently being held in LA County Jail, the sickening nature of Leibel’s alleged crimes means he could be facing the death penalty.

Leibel is pleading not guilty.

Since Leibel being charged with the murder, some of his Hollywood friends have addressed peculiar things he did.

In 2015, Leibel left his heavily pregnant wife and small child to move in with Kasian, a Ukrainian woman who had studied law before moving to the US.

A few weeks after he left his wife and had filed for divorce she gave birth to their second child.

Nine months later, Kasian gave birth to their daughter Diana.

Kasian’s graphic murder also had a number of eerie similarities to Leibel’s dark career in Hollywood.

As the Washington Post found, not long before the murder, Leibel had co-written a graphic novel called Syndrome.

The novel started with a corpse being drained of its blood — the same thing that happened to Kasian.

The plot of the book followed a mad doctor and his attempt to isolate the root of evil and cure it in a remorseless serial killer.

On May 20, Leibel was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a third, unnamed woman.

He was released on $125,000 (US$100,000) bail.

Six days later, Kasian was murdered.