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The Murder of Iana Kasian · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to picture a really sleek condo
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in West Hollywood, California, like meticulously designed.
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Speaker 2: Right, the kind of place that just screams glamour and safety.
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Speaker 1: Exactly when you think of West Hollywood, you think of
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a highly curated environment. You know, it's where people come
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from all over the world to live out these massive dreams.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they're completely insulated by wealth and sunshine.
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Speaker 1: But we need to like completely shatter that pristine image.
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Right now. We are going to look at the reality
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of what Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies actually discovered on
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the afternoon of May twenty six, twenty sixteen.
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Speaker 2: Right inside this specific apartment on Holloway Drive.
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Speaker 1: And it is a scene that fundamentally defies everything about
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that environment.
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Speaker 2: It really does. I mean, when you have a high
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end building like that, the architecture itself is designed to
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project peace, exclusivity.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. But when deputies finally force their way into that
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upscale apartment, they encountered a master bedroom that had been
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transformed into an absolute nightmare.
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Speaker 2: A total nightmare.
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Speaker 1: Lying on the bed, positioned on clean sheets and tucked
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under a Mickey Mouse blanket was the deceased body of
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thirty year old ion Acacian.
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Speaker 2: And the state of her body. We have to be
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direct about this because the forensics are the absolute core
1:14
of understanding this event.
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Speaker 1: Right, It's intense.
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Speaker 2: She had been scalped down to the bone, The entire
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right side of her face and her right ear were missing,
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Oh my god, and she had been methodically drained of
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roughly half of her entire body's blood volume.
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Speaker 1: And while all of this is right there in the room,
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there was a man barricaded in that very same bedroom
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with her, thirty five year old Blake Libel.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he had been in that apartment, just lying next
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to her cleaned corpse for some time before the police
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finally breached the door.
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Speaker 1: It's just the juxtaposition of that horrifying, grotesque violence was
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something as profoundly innocent as a mickey mouse blanket right.
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Speaker 2: In the middle of one of the most affluent neighborhoods
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in the country.
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Speaker 1: It's deeply unsettling to the human brain. I mean, it's
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no wonder One of the sergeants are the scene later
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stated on the record that he had never been involved
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in a more heinous crime.
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Speaker 2: And this is a veteran of law enforcement exactly so
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to lay out the roadmap for you, the listener, this
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deep dive isn't just going to be a recitation of
2:12
a crime scene. No, we are here to explore a
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staggering collision of two completely different worlds.
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Speaker 1: Right, We're going to unpack how unchecked privilege, severe financial entitlement,
2:23
and incredibly dark creative fantasies blurred into reality.
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Speaker 2: We'll be analyzing the psychological unraveling, the actual forensic biology,
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and the complex legal strategy.
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Speaker 1: It really defined one of the most infamous crimes in
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Los Angeles history. So let's unpack this collision of worlds
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because you literally cannot understand the mechanics of this tragedy
2:44
without understanding who Ayana and Blake were before they met.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, the context of their backgrounds is essentially the foundation
2:51
for understanding the extreme power dynamics at play.
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Speaker 1: Later on, let's start with thea because in she was
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born on January twenty seven, nineteen eighty six, in Kiv, Ukraine.
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Speaker 2: Right. She grew up in a very close knit, supportive family,
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primarily raised by her mother, Olga, along with her father
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and her sister.
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Speaker 1: And she wasn't just getting by in Ukraine. She was
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incredibly driven, She actually studied law and built a formidable
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career working as a prosecutor in Ukraine's tax service.
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Speaker 2: We really need to pause and look at what that
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actually means.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no joke.
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Speaker 2: Being a tax prosecutor in Ukraine, especially during the period
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she was practicing, requires a high degree of intellect, immense discipline, and.
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Speaker 1: A remarkably strong moral compass.
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Speaker 2: I would imagine exactly, you are dealing with complex financial laws,
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navigating a challenging post Soviet legal system, and requiring a
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level of meticulousness that most people simply do not possess.
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Speaker 1: It's a demanding, rigorous profession. It requires you to show up,
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do the hard work, and face significant daily friction.
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Speaker 2: And she was fluent in English, and she had massive aspirations.
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Speaker 1: Right, So, in twenty fourteen, at the age of twenty eight,
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she made this huge leap to immigrate to the United
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States on a student visa. She settled in Los.
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Speaker 2: Angeles and she transitioned into modeling while still working as
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an interpreter to support herself.
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Speaker 1: Her loved ones described her as warm, ambitious, and just
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incredibly optimistic about her new life. She enthusiastically called it
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a huge, strong country.
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Speaker 2: She was actively building something real.
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Speaker 1: Now contrast that with Blake Libel. He was born May eighth,
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nineteen eighty one, in Toronto, Canada, but he wasn't born
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into a typical family, not at all.
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Speaker 2: He was born into immense, almost unfathomable wealth.
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Speaker 1: His father, Lauren Libel, was a highly prominent real estate
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developer and actually an inductee into the Canadian Motorsport Hall
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of Fame, and.
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Speaker 2: His mother, Eleanor Chateel Libel, was the heiress to a
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massive plastics fortune called Alrost Products.
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Speaker 1: So Blake and his brother grew up with absolutely every
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conceivable advantage money could buy.
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Speaker 2: He relocated to California in two thousand and four, and
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we really need to linger on a staggering detail.
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Speaker 1: From the source material of the allowance.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he was receiving an eighteen thous thousand dollars monthly
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allowance from his family.
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Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand dollars a month just to exist exactly.
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Speaker 2: He had no independent income, even after inheriting part of
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his mother's estate when she passed away in twenty eleven.
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He lived entirely off family money, all.
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Speaker 1: While supporting his first wife, Amanda Braun, whom he married
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in two thousand and four and had children with Right right.
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Speaker 2: Before abruptly leaving her for Ayana in twenty fifteen.
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Speaker 1: If we connect this to the broader psychological picture, we
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are looking at a profound imbalance in life experience.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, you have Ayana, who intimately understands struggle, discipline, and
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the value of hard work.
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Speaker 1: She knows that actions have reactions.
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Speaker 2: And then you have Blake, whose financial reality completely insulated
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him from the consequences that govern the rest of society.
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Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a way to frame
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this for you, the listener, and it's like, compare Ayana's
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life to building a house brick by brick.
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Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
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Speaker 1: Every brick is a late night studying a difficult case
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prosecuted in a bold move across the world. It takes effort,
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it takes sweat, it takes callouses.
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Speaker 2: And Blake's life, on the other hand, was like living
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in a house with absolutely no gravity, a frictionless existence.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he never bumped up against the normal resistance of
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the real world. If he dropped something, it didn't shatter,
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it just floated.
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Speaker 2: He could just buy another one.
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Speaker 1: Right, And when you live your entire life without friction,
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without boundaries, without ever having to repair something you broke.
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What does that actually do to the neurological development of
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a person's mind.
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Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is how forensic psychology looks at
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that exact dynamic.
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Speaker 1: What do they say?
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Speaker 2: The forensic psychologist who consulted extensively on this case, Chris Mohandi,
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provided a really sharp clinical assessment. He noted that Blake
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had always gotten everything he wants when he wants.
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Speaker 1: It, which sounds like a spoiled kid. But it's deeper
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than that.
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Speaker 2: Much deeper. When an individual is raised in an environment
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of extreme wealth, where every whim is catered to, they
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often fail to develop what psychologists call distress tolerance. Is
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stress tolerance, okay, explain that it's a person's ability to
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manage actual or perceived emotional distress. It's the mental muscle
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you build when you are told no, when you fail
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a test, when you get fired.
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Speaker 1: Or when someone breaks up with you.
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Speaker 2: Exactly if you're never told no, that muscle just atrophies
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or it never develops in the first place.
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Speaker 1: And that profound lack of boundaries creates a highly dangerous
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sense of entitlement.
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Speaker 2: They begin to view the world and the people in
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it not as autonomous human beings, but as extensions of themselves,
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objects that exist solely to serve.
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Speaker 1: Their needs and reflect their desires.
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Speaker 2: Right, so, when that entitlement is challenged, the reaction isn't
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just standard disappointment. It's often an explosive, destructive rage because.
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Speaker 1: Their fundamental reality, the illusion that they control the universe,
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is being threatened. Precisely, so we have to look at
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what happens when this completely imbalanced dynamic meets the ultimate
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real world stressor the baby, Because as fast moves and
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seemingly glamorous as their romance might have been on the surface,
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it all hit a concrete wall with the introduction of
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a new life that demands total, uncompromising sacrifice.
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Speaker 2: This brings us to May three, twenty sixteen. Iana gives
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birth to their daughter, Diana via sea section, and.
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Speaker 1: IANA's mother Olga flies all the way from Ukraine to
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Los Angeles to help.
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Speaker 2: Biologically and psychologically, this should be a period of bonding
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and recovery, but the postpartum period instantly becomes a nightmare.
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Speaker 1: Ayana is completely devoted to her new daughter. She is
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spending a lot of time near her mother Olga's apartment,
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just to get the fundamental physical support she needs.
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Speaker 2: Right, recovering from major abdominal surgery is no joke. A
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sea section involves cutting through multiple layers of tissue and muscle.
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The recovery is intense.
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Speaker 1: But Blake's reaction isn't to support his recovering fiance or
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bond with his child. Instead, he grows intensely resentful of
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this newborn baby.
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Speaker 2: He demands constant attention from Mayana. He demands sex despite
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the fact that she is physically healing from that major surgery.
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Speaker 1: He repeatedly threatens to leave her for another woman. Family
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accounts say he monitored her movements like a hawk.
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Speaker 2: And we really want to stop and look at the
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timeline here because I was reading through the source material
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and this detail completely stopped me in my tracks.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, this part is wild.
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Speaker 2: Around this exact same time, May twenty sixteen, right after
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the birth, Blake is accused of sexual assault by another woman.
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Speaker 1: A woman named Constance Buckafury, who lived in a separate
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property that Blake owned.
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Speaker 2: He has actually arrested for this.
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Speaker 1: In Ayana, who is recovering from surgery, dealing with a
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newborn and dealing with the fiance throwing tantrums, she is
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the one who bails him out for one hundred thousand dollars.
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Speaker 2: It's hard to wrap your head around.
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Speaker 1: I have to push back here on behalf of anyone
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listening to this. I just do not understand the mechanics
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of this decision. She just had a C section, she's
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taking care of a newborn, her fiance is arrested for
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sexually assaulting another woman, and she is the one who
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coordinates this one hundred thousand dollars bail.
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Speaker 2: It is a shocking detail and it's completely understandable to
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react with confusion. Olga herself was actively begging Ayana to
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leave Blake at this point.
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Speaker 1: How does she not just walk away this exact moment.
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Speaker 2: To understand why she stayed and bailed him out, we
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have to look deeply at the insidious mechanics of control, isolation,
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and her specific vulnerabilities.
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Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us.
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Speaker 2: First, consider her physical state. Her hormones are fluctuating wildly postpartum,
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and she is physically compromised.
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Speaker 1: Second, consider her geographical state. She is an immigrant in
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a foreign country. Her support system is entirely localized to
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her mother, who is only visiting.
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Speaker 2: So the ground beneath her feet is already unstable. Now
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introduce the element of extreme wealth. If she leaves him,
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what happens next.
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Speaker 1: She is facing single motherhood in Los Angeles, entangled with
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a man who has virtually limitless financial resources.
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Speaker 2: Exactly in family court. A man with his wealth could
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drag out custody battles for decades, outspend her legally, and
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potentially weaponize the legal system to.
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Speaker 1: Take her child away or force her to remain in California,
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away from her home country. The prospect of fighting that
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battle while recovering from surgery is paralyzing.
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Speaker 2: The fear of that legal and financial instability likely outweighed
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the nightmare she was currently living in.
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Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that she is oblivious to the danger,
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but rather that she is choosing the devil she knows
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over the terrifying machinery of a billionaire's family court revenge.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, and if we look at Blake's behavior clinically during
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this period, this is a textbook example of a narcissistic collapse.
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Speaker 1: A narcissistic collapse think.
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Speaker 2: Of a narcissist's need for attention their supply like a
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high pressure steam valve. They require a constant, steady stream
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of adoration and focus to keep their fragile ego regulated.
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Speaker 1: When that supply drastically shifts away from them, in this case,
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shifting entirely to the newborn baby, the pressure builds to
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a catastrophic level.
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Speaker 2: They feel a profound loss of dominance, monitoring her like
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a hawk, threatening to leave her, demanding physical intimacy when
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she's wounded. These are just tantrums, No, These are desperate,
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aggressive attempts to force her attention back to him, to
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re establish absolute control over his environment.
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Speaker 1: And when Blake felt that control slipping in the real world,
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when the reality of a crying baby and a recovering,
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independent minded partner didn't match his zero gravity existence, he retreated.
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Speaker 2: He retreated into his own mind.
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Speaker 1: And unfortunately, his mind was a place that had been
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incubating a very specific, very violent fantasy for years. Let's
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look at the creative blueprint he built.
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Speaker 2: Blake had long harbored aspirations in Hollywood. He had a
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few minor credits. He was listed as a creative consultant
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on the animated series Spaceballs, and.
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Speaker 1: He directed a two thousand and nine comedy film called Bald,
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which was critically and commercially poorly received.
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Speaker 2: Much of his career appeared to be funded by his
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own wealth rather than organic industry demand. But his most
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notable and now infamous project was a twenty ten graphic It.
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Speaker 1: Was called Syndrome. It was published by Archaea in a
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joint venture with his own company, which was ominously named
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Fantasy Prone.
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Speaker 2: He co created it with a writer, and we need
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to dissect the plot of this graph air novel because
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the parallels to reality are staggering.
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Speaker 1: The story of Syndrome follows a neuropathologist who is attempting
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to isolate what he calls the root of all evil
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in the human brain.
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Speaker 2: To study this, the doctor partners with an actress, a director,
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and a condemned serial killer. He places them all in
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an elaborate, isolated simulated environment to observe their interactions.
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Speaker 1: And within the pages of this graphic novel there's a
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highly detailed scene depicting a serial killer slitting a victim's
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throat and hanging them upside down so they completely bleed out.
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Speaker 2: On top of that, the actual cover of the book
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features a baby doll with the top half of its
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scalp partially removed, exposing the inside.
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Speaker 1: Of the head. It's so disturbing. Blake himself explicitly described
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the book in promotional interviews as a story about obsession.
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Speaker 2: It's chilling irony. Blake goes around pitching this graphic novel,
14:01
claiming to be exploring the root of all evil in
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his fiction, while he is literally incubating the root of
14:07
all evil in his own apartment.
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Speaker 1: I have to ask, from a psychological perspective, is it
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common for killers to essentially storyboard their crimes years in
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advance like this?
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Speaker 2: This raises a fascinating and deeply disturbing question about the
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concept of a violent fantasy life. What we are seeing
14:25
here is absolutely not a spontaneous crime of passion.
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Speaker 1: Doctor Morhandi pointed out that Blake had been mentally rehearsing
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these violent fantasies for years. Right.
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Speaker 2: Yes, for many individuals with sadistic tendencies, creating dark art,
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writing about it, or consuming it obsessively serves as a
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psychological rehearsal space.
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Speaker 1: They're mapping out the logistics, the visuals, and the emotional
14:47
payoff of the act in a safe fictional sandbox.
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Speaker 2: It's like they are building the neural pathways for the violence.
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Before they ever lift a finger, they are greasing the tracks.
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Speaker 1: That's a perfect way to describe it. It blurs the
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line between creative expression and a behavioral blueprint.
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Speaker 2: For years, the graphic novel was just a dormant fantasy.
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The fictional sandbox kept the urges contained on the page.
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Speaker 1: But when the extreme real world stresser hit the loss
15:12
of control the newborn baby shifting the center of gravity,
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that fictional rehearsal space became his default operational mode.
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Speaker 2: The boundaries dissolved, and the fantasy bled seamlessly into reality.
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Speaker 1: The rehearsal ended, and in late May twenty sixteen, his
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horrifying production began. Let's walk through the timeline of this nightmare,
15:32
because watching the escalation over these four days is suffocating.
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Speaker 2: The timeline really accelerates. On May twenty three, Yanna and
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her mother Olga go out to shop for a baby stroller.
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Speaker 1: A perfectly normal, mundane activity for a new mother and grandmother.
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Speaker 2: But Blake Bombard's Eyana with an endless stream of text
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messages aggressively demanding her attention, until she's forced to abandon
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the shopping trip and return to the apartment.
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Speaker 1: The next day, May twenty four, we have actual surveillance
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footage from the building. At nine thirty pm, the cameras
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capture Iyana entering the condominium building on Holloway Drive.
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Speaker 2: She walks through those sleek glass doors, and she never
16:07
leaves alive.
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Speaker 1: By May twenty five, the isolation phase is complete. Olga
16:11
tries calling Ayana repeatedly, but every single call goes straight
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to voicemail.
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Speaker 2: The panic sets in quickly because this is completely out
16:19
of character for a mother who just had a baby.
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Olga physically goes to the apartment complex.
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Speaker 1: She sees Blake's car parked in the garage, so she
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knows they're there. She goes to the unit and she
16:30
actually spots Blake through a window.
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Speaker 2: She starts yelling for him to open the door. He
16:34
looks right at her, closes the window and completely hides.
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Speaker 1: Olga is frantic. She calls the police. The deputies arrive.
16:42
They knock on the door, but they get no answer.
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Speaker 2: And we should clarify the law here because they don't
16:47
have probable cause of a crime in progress at that
16:51
exact second. They just have a mother saying her daughter
16:54
won't answer the phone. They can't just kick the.
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Speaker 1: Door down right. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search
16:59
and seizure. The police leave Blake sits in there.
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Speaker 2: Cell phone data shase he briefly left the apartment around
17:05
midnight and then went right back. And then at one
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point four to eight am, we get a detail that
17:10
just messes with your head.
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Speaker 1: At one point four eight in the morning, someone uses
17:15
Iona's cell phone to place an order for food delivery
17:18
on Postmates.
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Speaker 2: They instruct the driver to leave the food at the door,
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and this exact same thing happens with similar food orders
17:25
the next day.
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Speaker 1: I really want you to think about what is happening
17:28
inside that apartment. At one point four to eight am,
17:31
he is in the middle of committing an atrocity.
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Speaker 2: And he pauses, takes his victim's phone and scrolls through
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an app to order Postmates.
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Speaker 1: It's like he's putting a digital mask over a tragedy.
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He's using her digital footprint to project this completely false
17:46
signal of normal domestic life to the outside world.
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Speaker 2: To the postmaate system, to the delivery driver dropping off
17:52
a bag of food in the hallway. It's just another
17:54
late night order in West Hollywood.
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Speaker 1: But inside a literal horror movie is playing out.
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Speaker 2: It demonstrates a profound level of compartmentalization. He is actively
18:02
managing the perception of the outside world while committing unspeakable
18:06
x inside.
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Speaker 1: It speaks to a cold, highly calculated state of mind.
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Speaker 2: He wasn't in a blind, out of control frenzy where
18:13
he forgot the world existed. He was aware enough to
18:16
know he needed to buy time, feed himself, and create
18:19
a smoke screen using her phone to make it look
18:21
like she was still.
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Speaker 1: Active, which leads to the climax. On May twenty six,
18:25
Olga's desperation reaches its absolute peak. She calls nine to
18:29
one one again.
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Speaker 2: And this time she emphasizes that she is terrified for
18:33
her daughter's safety, specifically noting her highly vulnerable medical state
18:38
recovering from a recent C section.
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Speaker 1: And this is the legal key, right, This gives the
18:41
deputies the exigen circumstances they need. Yes.
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Speaker 2: Exigence circumstances is a legal exception to the warrant requirement
18:48
of the Fourth Amendment. It occurs when law enforcement believes
18:51
there is an immediate threat to life or safety, or
18:54
that evidence is about to be destroyed.
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Speaker 1: Because Olga articulated a specific urgent medical vulnerabil the recent surgery,
19:01
and the sudden total lack of communication. The police had
19:05
the legal threshold required to force entry, so they kick
19:08
the door in, but the confrontation isn't over. When they
19:11
get inside, they realize Blake has barricaded himself in the
19:14
master bedroom. He has physically pushed mattresses in heavy furniture
19:19
against the door.
19:20
Speaker 2: The deputies are trying to communicate with him, and he
19:22
blatantly lies to them. He shouts to the door that
19:25
Ayana isn't even in the apartment. He claims she is
19:28
at Cedar Sinai Hospital.
19:29
Speaker 1: The psychology of the barricade is incredibly telling. He has
19:33
built a literal physical wall to match the psychological wall
19:37
of wealth and privilege he's been hiding behind his whole life.
19:40
Speaker 2: But the lie about the hospital that is crucial. It
19:44
shows that he understands the criminality and the horror of
19:46
his actions.
19:47
Speaker 1: He knows he has to hide her to distance himself
19:50
from the scene he created.
19:51
Speaker 2: But reality, the friction of the real world he had
19:54
avoided for thirty five years, is finally catching up to him.
19:56
Speaker 1: At that door, he actually stalls long enough to call
19:59
a friend mentor of his Stephen Green, who arrives at
20:03
the scene to help coax him out.
20:04
Speaker 2: Even if the police are literally at his bedroom door,
20:07
his entitlement convinces him he can just talk his way
20:09
out of it through a friend.
20:11
Speaker 1: Eventually, Stephen Green manages to talk Blake into surrendering. The
20:15
deputies move in, They pull back the mattresses, they breach
20:18
the master bedroom.
20:19
Speaker 2: And they are brought face to face with a scene
20:22
that veteran homicide investigators will never be able to unsee.
20:26
Speaker 1: I want to warn you the listener, the forensic reality
20:29
of what happened over those days is incredibly intense, but
20:33
it is absolutely necessary to understand the deaths of this
20:36
crime and the trial that followed.
20:38
Speaker 2: The physical scene was a landscape of prolonged, deliberate violence.
20:43
There were bloodstains all over the headboard of the bed,
20:45
Clumps of hair were scattered around the room.
20:47
Speaker 1: A bloody razor was found in the trash. But the
20:50
horror extended far beyond the bedroom.
20:52
Speaker 2: Investigators found blood and human tissue throughout the apartment's entire
20:56
plumbing system, in the drains, in the kitchen, garbage disposal,
21:00
in the bathtubs.
21:01
Speaker 1: And outside the apartment. Down in the building's dumpsters, they
21:04
found trash bags and inside those bags was a bloodstained
21:07
T shirt, tissue bearing ion as DNA, and her right ear.
21:11
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Blake is taken into custody with very minor injuries.
21:15
He has some scratches, some bruises, a human bitemark on him,
21:19
and he's missing a fingertip.
21:21
Speaker 1: He clearly engaged in his struggle, but he is fundamentally fine.
21:25
Speaker 2: The autopsy, conducted by Los Angeles County Coroner doctor James
21:28
Reeb detailed the true clinical horror of what Iona endured.
21:33
Speaker 1: Her entire scalp was traumatically absent. It had been stripped
21:37
down to the bone, starting from her eyebrows all the
21:40
way over to the back of her head.
21:41
Speaker 2: A massive portion of the skin on the right side
21:44
of her face was simply gone, torn away down to
21:47
the jawline.
21:47
Speaker 1: The coroner noted that some of this cutting was done
21:50
with a bladed instrument, but some of the tissue was
21:52
actually torn away manually.
21:53
Speaker 2: She fought back. She had defensive wounds on her arms
21:56
and her hands. There was a human bitemark on her
21:58
left jaw and fingernail marks. She was fighting for her life, but.
22:02
Speaker 1: Here is the piece of forensic evidence that changes everything
22:05
about how we view this crime.
22:07
Speaker 2: The pathological evidence, specifically the inflammation in the tissue and
22:11
the hemorrhaging where the scalp and facial tissue were removed,
22:15
proved conclusively that Iana was alive and conscious when those
22:18
injuries were inflicted.
22:20
Speaker 1: She survived suffering these unimaginable wounds for at least six
22:24
to eight hours.
22:25
Speaker 2: Let's stop right here and unpack the biology of this,
22:28
because I want to make sure you understand exactly how
22:30
a coroner can definitively prove she was alive for that long.
22:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do they know the injuries didn't happen after
22:36
she passed away.
22:37
Speaker 2: It comes down to the body's biological response to trauma.
22:41
When you are alive and you sustain an injury, your
22:44
heart is pumping. Your immune system reacts immediately.
22:48
Speaker 1: White blood cells and fluids rushed to the side of
22:50
the injury to try and heal it or fight infection,
22:53
which causes inflammation and swelling.
22:55
Speaker 2: Additionally, because the heart is actively pumping blood through the
22:59
vascular system and injury will cause active hemorrhaging, bruising, and
23:02
bleeding into the surrounding tissue.
23:04
Speaker 1: If a person is deceased, their heart is stopped, there
23:08
is no blood pressure.
23:09
Speaker 2: Therefore, injuries inflicted post mortem do not swell, they do
23:13
not inflame, and they do not hemorrhage in the same
23:15
way because there is no biological engine driving that response.
23:20
Speaker 1: Doctor rid looked at the tissue under a microscope and
23:22
saw massive, prolonged inflammatory responses. Her body was trying to
23:27
heal wounds for six to eight hours while he was
23:30
inflicting them.
23:31
Speaker 2: Okay, that is staggering. We constantly hear about crimes of passion.
23:34
Right someone loses their temper, a gun goes off, a knifeiswung.
23:37
It happens in a split second of rage.
23:39
Speaker 1: But six to eight hours. How does a human being
23:42
sustain that level of acute intimate savagery for the length
23:46
of a full work day without snapping out of.
23:49
Speaker 2: It, without the adrenaline wearing off and the horror of
23:51
what they're doing waking them up.
23:53
Speaker 1: That is the exact clinical difference between a spontaneous, impulsive
23:57
active rage and sustained sadistic torture. A crime of passion
24:01
is characterized by a momentary, explosive loss of control.
24:05
Speaker 2: What blake Lebel did required immense terrifying control. He had
24:08
to manage his own exertion, manage her resistance, and systematically
24:12
continue the iOS.
24:13
Speaker 1: The cause of death tells us everything we need to
24:15
know about the methodical nature of his state of mind.
24:18
It was exanguination and head trauma.
24:21
Speaker 2: Yes, exanguination means she bled to death, but it wasn't
24:25
just a wound left to bleed. This is where the
24:27
forensics get deeply disturbing.
24:29
Speaker 1: Blood pattern analysis and reconstruction by expert Tom Bevel indicated
24:33
that the attacks started on the bed, but then Blake
24:36
moved Iona to the bathroom.
24:38
Speaker 2: The physical evidence showed she was submersed in a bathtub
24:41
with running water for at least thirty minutes.
24:44
Speaker 1: We know this because of wrinkled fingerpads, foam in her nostrils,
24:48
indicating she was breathing in an environment with water and
24:51
clear fluid in her system.
24:52
Speaker 2: I was reading the corner's notes about the running water,
24:55
and I admit I was confused at first. My immediate
24:58
thought was that he was trying to clean up the scene,
25:00
to wash the blood away, to hide evidence.
25:02
Speaker 1: But that's not what the forensics tell us. Is it?
25:04
Why running water?
25:05
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't for cleanup. It was an active part
25:07
of the murder weapon. He used running water to purposefully
25:11
prevent her blood from clotting.
25:13
Speaker 1: Biologically, when you were cut, platelets in your blood clumped
25:17
together to form a clot and stop the bleeding.
25:20
Speaker 2: If you place a severely bleeding wound in constantly running water,
25:24
the water continuously washes away the coagulants before they can
25:28
form a seal.
25:29
Speaker 1: Furthermore, the reconstruction showed he utilized an inversion technique in
25:32
the tub, positioning her so gravity would facilitate maximum drainage
25:37
while her heart was still pumping.
25:39
Speaker 2: He methodically drained half her body's entire blood volume.
25:43
Speaker 1: And this links directly, undeniably back to the bleeding upside
25:47
down scene in his graphic novel Syndrome Exactly.
25:50
Speaker 2: This wasn't chaos, This wasn't a frenzy. It was choreography.
25:53
It was the precise execution of a premeditated blueprint he
25:56
had drawn up years prior.
25:57
Speaker 1: After she finally passed from the blood loss and head trauma,
26:00
he washed her body, moved her back to the bed,
26:03
placed her on clean sheets, and covered her with that
26:05
Mickey Mouse blanket.
26:07
Speaker 2: The coroner, doctor Reeb, who has decades of experience examining
26:11
the absolute worst of humanity, stated on the record that
26:14
he doubted hardly any forensic pathologists have seen something like
26:17
this outside of a wartime scenario.
26:20
Speaker 1: It was a level of systematic destruction of a human
26:22
being that defies standard criminal psychology. So with the physical
26:27
biological reality of the crime documented, the narrative has to shift.
26:31
Speaker 2: Blake is arrested, the overwhelming evidence has gathered, and now
26:34
we move into the courtroom. The prosecutors have to explain
26:38
the why and the how to a jury.
26:41
Speaker 1: And the defense attorney has to attempt the absolute impossible.
26:44
Speaker 2: The trial took place in twenty eighteen. The prosecution was
26:48
armed with an insurmountable mountain of forensic evidence. Ayana's DNA
26:52
was on the knife, deeply embedded in the apartment strains,
26:55
and on Blake's hands.
26:56
Speaker 1: Blake's DNA was under Ayana's fingernails from where she fought him.
27:00
But the prosecutors, led by Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman,
27:04
faced a very unique challenge.
27:05
Speaker 2: The crime scene was so chaotic and the photographs were
27:08
so brutal and abstract because of the amount of tissue damage,
27:11
that it could almost be incomprehensible to a lay jury.
27:14
Speaker 1: If you just show a jury those photos, they might
27:16
shut down. So they used technology. They brought in an
27:19
expert name Brady Held to create an interactive three D animation.
27:23
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the difficulty and the impact of this.
27:25
It was a brilliant, necessary legal strategy. When a jury
27:29
is faced with extreme real world gore, the brain's natural
27:34
defense mechanism is often to dissociate.
27:37
Speaker 1: They can shut down emotionally or get confused by the
27:39
sheer chaotic volume of blood spatter in two D photographs.
27:43
Speaker 2: Brady Held's job was technologically immense. He had to take
27:47
hundreds of two D photos, blood spatter analysis, and autopsy
27:50
reports and translate them into a sterile spatial three D model.
27:54
Speaker 1: The animation map the timeline, visualize the specific flow of
27:58
blood and track the movement of the body from the
28:00
bed to the bathroom and back.
28:02
Speaker 2: It essentially removes the visceral shock and replaces it with cold,
28:05
undeniable logic. It provided a clinical structure to the payoffs
28:09
so the jury could understand the methodical nature of the timeline.
28:12
Speaker 1: It moves the jury from emotional shock to logical conviction,
28:16
and once the mechanics were established. Silverman's argument for the
28:19
motive was incredibly poignant.
28:21
Speaker 2: She argued it wasn't just about simple jealousy over a
28:24
newborn baby. It was about ultimate power and control.
28:27
Speaker 1: She told the jury, what is the ultimate act of
28:30
power and control? It's taking somebody's life, taking away everything
28:35
they dreamed they were going to be, a mother, a parent,
28:38
a daughter, a wife.
28:40
Speaker 2: And to legally solidify the premeditation, the prosecution also brought
28:44
in the co author of Syndrome, a writer named Ryan,
28:47
who testified under oath that Blake explicitly commissioned those specific
28:51
gory concepts.
28:52
Speaker 1: Blake asked for the blood draining scenes, the scalping, and
28:56
approved the disturbing cover art. It cemented that the blueprint
28:59
was his.
29:00
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about the charges. He was convicted of
29:03
first degree murder, torture, and aggravated mayhem with special circumstances
29:07
found true.
29:08
Speaker 1: What exactly do those legal terms mean in California?
29:11
Speaker 2: The definitions are important here. Aggravated mayhem in California law
29:15
is distinct from a standard assault. It requires the prosecution
29:18
to prove that the defendant acted with the specific intent
29:21
to cause permanent disability or disfigurement, or to deprive the
29:25
victim of a limb, organ, or member.
29:27
Speaker 1: The methodical scalping perfectly fits this legal threshold. It was
29:30
an intentional act of extreme disfigurement.
29:33
Speaker 2: Special circumstances refers to specific conditions that elevate a first
29:37
degree murder to a capital offense or to life without
29:40
the possibility of parole. In this case, the special circumstance
29:44
was the presence of torture.
29:46
Speaker 1: The six to eight hours of conscious suffering prove the
29:48
torture enhancement beyond any doubt. So knowing all of this,
29:53
what does the defense do?
29:54
Speaker 2: Defense attorney Hated Takasugi essentially had to grasp its straws.
29:58
They argued reasonable by pointing out that there was some
30:01
unknown male DNA found on the trash bags and the dumpsters.
30:05
Speaker 1: And they argued that Blake didn't physically draw the illustrations
30:08
in the book, He just came up with the ideas.
30:10
Speaker 2: The unknown DNA argument is a very standard defense tactic.
30:14
When you have a defendant dead to rights on forensic
30:16
evidence in a closed environment, the only play a defense
30:19
attorney really has is to introduce a phantom suspect.
30:21
Speaker 1: To say, look at this one microscopic anomaly, therefore you
30:25
must doubt everything else.
30:27
Speaker 2: It's like having a crystal clear four K photograph of
30:30
a crime and the defense attorney points to a single
30:33
blurry pixel in the background and says, because we don't
30:36
know what this pixel is, you have to throw out
30:38
the entire photograph.
30:40
Speaker 1: That is a phenomenal analogy, and juries are generally smart
30:43
enough to see through it.
30:44
Speaker 2: In a case with such overwhelming close environment forensics where
30:47
the defendant is literally barricaded in the room with the
30:50
victim pointing to a stray piece of DNA on a
30:54
dumpster in a public alleyway, is almost always a feudal tactic.
30:58
Speaker 1: And the jury absolutely saw right through it. It took them
31:00
less than four hours to deliberate. They convicted Blake libel
31:03
on all counts.
31:05
Speaker 2: On June twenty six, twenty eighteen, Superior Court Judge Mark E.
31:08
Wyndham handed down the sentence life in prison without the
31:11
possibility of parole, plus one year for the deadly weapon enhancement.
31:15
Speaker 1: Jud Wyndham specifically cited Blake's inconceivable cruelty and noted that
31:19
the crime was unusual only in his profound savagery.
31:23
Speaker 2: There was also a measure of civil justice that we
31:25
should cover. In twenty nineteen, Judge Bobby Tillman awarded a
31:28
forty one point six million dollar wrongful death judgment to
31:31
Olga Kaysian.
31:32
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting here that Blake's family wealth, all
31:35
those millions of dollars that insulated him his entire life,
31:38
didn't protect him in the civil or criminal courts.
31:41
Speaker 2: He actually had no assets left to pay the judgment.
31:44
They were all entangled or drained by legal proceedings.
31:47
Speaker 1: But the most resonant, powerful moment in that entire legal
31:50
process was Olga Kazian's victim impact statement. Speaking through an interpreter,
31:56
Physically trembling, she looked at the man who destroyed her
31:59
family and called him exactly what his actions proved him
32:02
to be a monster.
32:04
Speaker 2: She noted a heartbreaking truth that will echo for decades
32:07
that her granddaughter Diana's life began with her father massacring
32:10
her mother.
32:11
Speaker 1: Blake Libel was handed his sentence. He filed appeals in
32:14
twenty twenty two, which were completely denied by the California
32:17
Court of Appeal. He remains in prison at Sentinella, where
32:21
he will spend the rest of his.
32:22
Speaker 2: Life, but the ripples of his actions extend so far
32:25
beyond that prison cell. Let's look at the legacy of
32:28
this tragedy.
32:29
Speaker 1: The resilience of Acasian family is truly remarkable. Little Diana,
32:33
whose life started amidst such unimaginable orchestrated horror, was taken
32:37
in and raised by her grandmother Olga.
32:39
Speaker 2: She's being raised safe, loved, and entirely removed from the
32:43
shadow and the pathology of the man who caused this.
32:46
Speaker 1: But the warning embedded in this story is stark. It
32:49
forces us to look critically at the hidden dangers of
32:52
domestic violence.
32:53
Speaker 2: We have this pervasive societal misconception that domestic violence only
32:57
happens in certain economic brackets or in certain types of
32:59
stressed neighborhoods.
33:00
Speaker 1: But extreme wealth, the glossy doors of a West Hollywood condominium,
33:05
they don't prevent violence. In fact, they can provide a
33:08
thicker soundproofing for it.
33:09
Speaker 2: They can insulate an abuser, giving them the limitless resources
33:13
to isolate their victim completely, to threaten them with endless litigation,
33:16
and to hide their actions behind a veneer of respectability.
33:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely, wealth can be a weapon of profound isolation, and
33:24
it brings us back to that core psychological profile we
33:26
discussed at the very beginning, the severe insulation of extreme privilege.
33:31
Speaker 2: Which leaves me with a thought, I really want you
33:33
the listener to mull over as we end this deep dive.
33:36
We talked about how Blake lived in a zero gravity world,
33:39
shielded from every consequence, every minor friction of daily life.
33:43
Speaker 1: When a person lives like that and they consume or
33:47
create dark, intensely violent media, does it stop being just
33:51
entertainment to them?
33:53
Speaker 2: When you have never had to struggle for power in
33:55
the real world because your money etfortlessly bought it all
33:58
for you, do the these sadistic fantasies become the only
34:02
way you know how to feel truly dominant.
34:05
Speaker 1: When you've never felt the satisfaction of earning something, is
34:08
the only thrill left found in destroying something.
34:11
Speaker 2: It's a profound question about the intersection of unlimited resources
34:14
and violent ideation. Society often turns a blind eye to
34:18
the toxic, controlling behaviors of the ultra wealthy, writing off
34:22
their eccentricities or their aggressive demands as just how rich
34:25
people are.
34:26
Speaker 1: But when we fail to monitor that intersection, when we
34:29
allow entitlement to metastasize without ever introducing the word no.
34:33
We are sometimes allowing a blueprint for horror to be
34:35
written in plain sight.
34:37
Speaker 2: We started this deep dive looking at a Mickey Mass
34:39
blanket in a West Hollywood condo, a symbol of childhood
34:42
innocence used to cover up the ultimate manifestation of adult evil.
34:46
Speaker 1: Leonic Causian crossed an ocean to build a beautiful life
34:49
brick by brick, and it was torn down by a
34:52
man who never had to build a single thing in
34:54
his life. Keep that in mind the next time you
34:57
hear about someone who has always gotten everything they want.
35:00
Thanks for exploring this with us.