WEST HOLLYWOOD—The California Supreme Court announced Thursday, July 9 that it would be declining the request to review the murder conviction of Blake Leibel, 39, that was decided in 2018.
Leibel was born in Canada before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting and comic book creations. He was engaged to Iana Kasian, the 30-year-old Ukranian prosecutor and aspiring model that was found dead in their West Hollywood home on May 26, 2016.
Kasian and Leibel recently had a daughter at the time of her murder. Dr. James Ribe, the coroner who did her autopsy, wrote a report and shared it during Leibel’s trial.
“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,” he said alongside other gruesome details.
Kasian’s body was drained of all blood. In May 2017, Leibel was charged with first-degree murder, torture and aggravated mayhem where he was sentenced to a prison sentence without parole.
On April 29, a panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected Leibel’s defense that the court abused his discretion by using evidence built from the novel “Syndrome” that he had written with several other people. The novel outlined the same circumstances police found Kasian’s body in.
Prosecutors found that Leibel followed the exact scenes and denied requests to review the conviction.
