Man sentenced to life in prison for brutal torture murder of young mother who was drained of blood
06/26/2018 1:50 pm PDT
via LA Times/KTLA
LOS ANGELES -- (LA Times/KTLA) -- A graphic novelist who once had a fledgling Hollywood career was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for the brutal torture killing of his fiancee — a murder prosecutors say took cues from a gory book he worked on years earlier.
Blake Leibel, 37, was convicted last week of the 2016 slaying of Iana Kasian, 30, the mother of his newborn daughter. At a hearing Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham sentenced Leibel to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“The case is unusual only its savagery,” Windham said, adding that the defendant had shown “inconceivable cruelty.”
In the days after the grisly slaying, news media across the continent highlighted details that sounded as if they'd been lifted from a Hollywood horror script — a Canadian trust fund kid and a beautiful Ukrainian emigre, the birth of their newborn and then, weeks later, a bloodletting.
