Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Hollywood Horror Writer Turned Killer: The Blake Leibel Story

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Hollywood Horror Writer Turned Killer: The Blake Leibel Story · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine you're a horror writer.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You know, you spend your days dreaming up just the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: most macabre, twisted, deeply unsettling scenarios possible.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Right. Because it years your job.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You literally get paid to scare people. So you
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: sit at your desk, you visualize the anatomy of terror,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and you just put it on a page. Yeah. But
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: what if one day a horrendous crime occurs in your
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: own neighborhood, maybe even in your own home? and it
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: perfectly mirrors the gruesome scenes you've been putting down on paper. Oh, wow. Right.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Could your own works of fiction, like the grisly literary
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: scenes you imagined and depicted with your words, be used
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to draw suspicion of your involvement in a true crime case?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: That is, I mean, that is a terrifying thought experiment.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Could you actually be framed by your own imagination?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Because if you write about a very specific, highly unusual
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: method of murder, and then someone uses that exact blueprint
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to commit a crime... The whole world is going to.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Look at you. Oh, 100%. The court of public opinion
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: would just instantly decide you were guilty.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Right. They'd say, you know, look, the Crown happened exactly
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the way they wrote it. They must be involved. Yeah.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: It plays on that primal fear of our darkest, most
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: private thoughts being dragged into the light and used against us.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You'd be this innocent fiction writer just caught in
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: a trap made out of your own words.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting and why we're
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: exploring this today. Mm-hmm. This isn't just a hypothetical scenario.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: This dynamic actually happened. Except the story we're looking at
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: is different in one terrifying, absolute way.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And that is?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: The author we're going to discuss wasn't some innocent guy
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: being framed by a copycat. He was actually using his
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: own fiction as a blueprint for reality.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Wow. We are taking an incredibly dark journey today.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we are.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Because this isn't just about a crime. I mean, it's
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: about the collapse of a mind. that was entirely insulated
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: from the real world.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We've got a mountain of source
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: materials detailing the chilling story of a man named Blake Leibel.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And our mission for this deep dive is to understand
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the psychology, the immense, almost incomprehensible wealth, and the terrifying
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: descent into madness of this Hollywood heir.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a guy whose attempts to be an edgy comic
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: book creator culminated in one of the most gruesome crimes
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in Los Angeles history.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So for you listening right now, if you've ever ignored
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a bad gut feeling about someone because they seem successful
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: or well-connected or, you know, they just wore a nice suit,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: this is going to make you fundamentally rethink how you
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: evaluate the people around you.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: It really will. Because when we talk about warning signs,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: we're culturally conditioned to expect them to look a certain way.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Right. Like a stranger in a dark alley.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We expect danger to come from the shadows, not
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: from a multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion. Right. But to understand
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: how this specific tragedy unfolded, we have to start at
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: the foundation. We really have to look at the bizarre,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: heavily controlled environment that forged Blake Leibel.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. So Blake Leibel was born in Toronto,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Canada in May 1981. And I really need to emphasize this.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: When we say he was born into wealth, we aren't
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: talking about a nice upper middle class house in the suburbs.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: We are talking about astronomical, dynastic, generational wealth.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: His father, Lorne Leibel, was a prominent real estate tycoon.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wasn't just a guy in a boardroom either. No.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Lorne was actually a Canadian Motorsport Hall of Famer.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Which is wild. It is.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: He was the kind of guy who drove flashy Ferraris,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: dated beautiful young women, and just lived this highly visible,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: high-octane lifestyle.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: And that's just his father's side. Right. On his mother's side,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Eleanor Chattel had inherited a company called All Rose Products
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: from her father, Paul Chattel.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And this was a company that manufactured plastic polytarp materials.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I have to pause you there because tarps.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, tarps.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Like we're talking about the blue plastic sheets you throw
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: over a leaky roof.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: How does that create a dynasty?
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: That sounds totally mundane, right?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: But industrial manufacturing is where quiet, massive fortunes are built.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: You aren't selling one TARC to a guy at a
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: hardware store. You're securing massive industrial, agricultural, and commercial contracts.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Right. Volume.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. All Rose Products was reportedly generating over $ 28 million
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: in sales annually.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: It's an empire built on absolute boring utility. But the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: way that empire was managed internally was anything but boring.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the family dynamic here is intense and, frankly, completely suffocating.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: The grandfather, Paul Chattel, the guy who built the Tarp Empire,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: was known to be an absolute control freak. Right. Like
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: he was a bully. And when he passed away, his
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: will didn't just distribute his assets.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: No, he essentially weaponized his money from beyond the grave.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It's insane. The will legally stipulated that the family's inheritance
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: payouts were withheld pending mandatory alcohol screening, drug screening, and
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: an HIV test.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Let's just break down the mechanics of that for a
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: second because it's a profound exertion of dominance.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: An inheritance is usually a transfer of legacy. It's meant
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: to provide security for your family. But when you set
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: up a trust that demands bodily fluids before releasing a check,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: you are enforcing a dynamic of extreme submission.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: It's so invasive.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It really is. Think about how a trust works legally.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: You have a trustee. A lawyer or financial manager whose
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: sole job is to enforce the rules of the dead person. Right.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: They have no leeway.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They legally cannot give you the money unless you comply.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: So the grandfather is telling his heirs, I do not
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: trust you. You have no autonomy. My love and my
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: resources are entirely conditional on you jumping through my humiliating hoops.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly manipulative. You're submitting to a medical exam just
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to get what your family left you. Yeah. And the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: grandfather took it a step further. He completely, explicitly cut
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Blake's brother, Cody Leibel, out of the will.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Just completely erased him from it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Literally put in writing that it wasn't out of a
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: lack of love, but because he knew Cody's dad, Lorne,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: had enough money to provide for him.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Which is such a weird justification. Right.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the grandfather's girlfriend got two Mercedes-Benz cars, a Cadillac,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of other gifts.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: And Blake's mom, Eleanor, got a payout of $ 12 million.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: $ 12 million.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Just casual.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Right. And you also have to factor in the grandmother
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Paul Chattel's wife.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about her?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: She reportedly suffered from a severe, though unspecified, mental illness.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: So, look at the ecosystem Blake and Cody are raised in.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: It's a lot. It is.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: It's defined by extreme, almost limitless wealth, but paired with
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: intense psychological control, conditional love that requires legal and bodily compliance,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: and underlying mental health struggles.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So the parents, Lauren and Eleanor, eventually split up.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: And the brothers get divided. Blake stays with his mom, Eleanor,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: while Cody goes to live with his dad, Lauren.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And this is where Blake and his father become totally estranged.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Which becomes a huge factor later on.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Blake apparently felt his father wasn't providing enough for
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: him financially.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Which is wild, considering the resources he still had access to.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Right. It's a completely warped baseline. The Liable family overall
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: was incredibly successful.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Very much so.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Blake's grandfather, on the other side, Stanley Leibel, was an
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Olympic sailor who developed hundreds of homes in Toronto.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: His aunt, Terry Leibel, was a famous Canadian sports journalist
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: who hosted Olympic coverage.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: So success is everywhere.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Everywhere Blake looked, his family members were high achievers. And
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: you see that drive manifest in his brother, Cody.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Cody's trajectory is like night and day compared
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to Blake.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Cody moves to California and just... He achieves this massive,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: undeniable Hollywood success.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Like how massive?
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Just to give you an idea of the scale. In 2017,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Cody sold a 5,500 square foot home in Beverly Crest
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: to Katy Perry for almost $ 18 million.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Wait, he sold a house to Katy Perry?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, and later that same year, he buys Reba McEntire's
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: house for a reported $ 25 million.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: That is unreal.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: He becomes the youngest homeowner in Beverly Park history. He's
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: living next door to Sylvester Stallone and Denzel Washington.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he's truly in the inner circle.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Completely. He owned a record label. He was the world's
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: youngest owner of a Ferrari Enzo.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Wow. He was a regular at that famous to high
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: stakes poker game, the one from the movie Molly's Game
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Playing Cards with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: That is just insane. Cody wasn't just wealthy. I mean,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: he was relevant. He was a player.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And then you have Blake.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Blake also moves to California in 2004, but his reality
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: is entirely different.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: What's he doing?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Well, instead of building his own empire or working his
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: way up in any industry, he remains entirely dependent.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: On who?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: His mom. He's living in Los Angeles, but he's subsisting
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: on an allowance from his mother. An allowance. Yeah. And
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: that allowance reportedly totaled close to $ 2 million over an
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: eight-year period.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: $ 2 million in allowance.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: He's getting a quarter of a million dollars a year
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: just to breathe.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Basically.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: It sounds like Blake was playing life with cheat codes.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: He should be on top of the world. Why did
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: he become so utterly resentful?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Did this absolute lack of financial friction prevent him from
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: developing normal coping mechanisms? That's exactly the mechanism at play.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Friction is necessary for growth. Right. When you never face
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: the natural consequences of failure, when you never have to
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: scramble to make rent because you made a bad decision or,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: you know, take a humbling job just to survive, you
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: never develop resilience.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: You're just living in a bubble.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Money insulated Blake from reality. It acted as an advocate.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: absolute buffer against the world.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: But here's the catch. Money can buy you a Beverly
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Hills mansion, but it cannot buy you genuine respect.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: That's so true.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: It cannot buy you talent. Blake saw his brother Cody
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: achieving real tangible status. being respected by A-list celebrities, while
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Blake knew, deep down, he was essentially a middle-aged teenager
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: living on his mother's payroll.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And he desperately wanted that respect.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Desperate.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: He wanted to buy his way into having an edge.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So he starts funding these Hollywood vanity projects.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Because if you have the money, you can just hire
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a crew and make a movie, regardless of whether you
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: have any actual cinematic vision.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It happens all the time.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: So in 2009, he wrote and directed this low-budget comedy
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: called Bald.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: And it was a spectacular failure. It holds a 2.6
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: rating on IMDb.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: That is incredibly low.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It's so bad. The dialogue is just staggeringly bad. There's
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a line where a character says, I had my first
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: heart attack while playing with myself. My mom and her
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: bridge club found me.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, it reveals a lot about his artistic sensibilities.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It's juvenile, it's crass, but more importantly, it's completely hollow.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: It's a facsimile of comedy created by someone who doesn't
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: understand human connection.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And he follows that up with a 2013 film
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: called Soulmates, which goes nowhere.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: He manages to buy his way into a creative consultant
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and director credit on a few episodes of an animated
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Spaceballs series.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Which is something, I guess.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: But none of this gets him the prestige he's chasing.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Hollywood is happy to take his money, but they aren't
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: inviting him to the inner circle.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So when film rejects him, because film requires a massive crew, collaboration,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and at least some level of cohesive vision, he pivots.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Where does he go?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: He turns to the comic book industry.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And comic books offer something very specific to a mind
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: like Blake's.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: They require far less collaboration.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, true.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: You can exert absolute unchecked control over your dark visions
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: if you're the one funding the illustrator. You don't have
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: to convince an actor to perform a scene. You just
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: draw it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So he releases a series called United Free Worlds.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to a deeply bizarre interview he
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: did at the 2008 New York Comic Con.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I've heard about this.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: If you want a window into how his mind was operating,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: this is the footage. The interviewer asks him to describe
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the storyline of his comic.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And Blake just launches into this completely deadpan, unhinged ramble.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: He says Earth is attacked by 12 to 18 foot
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: aliens who ride around on dinosaurs like they're dogs.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, a bit out there, but it is a comic book.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Sure, but notice his posture in that interview. Mm-hmm. He
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: isn't speaking with the joyful, geeky enthusiasm you usually see
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: in Comic-Con. He emphasizes the extreme detail they put into
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the artwork, claiming his team is above everyone else because
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: they take it so incredibly seriously. He's projecting an aggressive intensity.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not fun for him.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Not at all. And he gives this one example in
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the interview that is so oddly specific, it stops being
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a story pitch and starts feeling like an obsession.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: What did he say?
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: He tells the interviewer to imagine 50 pterodactyls holding a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: giant net.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: They fly down, swallow up 400 helicopters into this net,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: carry them into the sky, cut the net, and let
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: this massive bag of helicopters fall to the earth.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: A bag of helicopters.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Yes. And then he leans in and asks the interviewer,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: now imagine for a moment being inside of that bag
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of helicopters. What would that look like? How would you feel? Wow. Right.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Think about the psychology of that specific imagery. It's not
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: a narrative arc.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: No.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It's an exercise in conceptualizing mass helplessness and destruction.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: When behavioral analysts look at that footage, they point out
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: the erratic, unstable energy beneath his words. He was using
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: the setting of Comic-Con, a place where eccentric, fantastical ideas
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: are celebrated, to camouflage himself. Right.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Because in that environment, you can just hide behind the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: label of being a quirky creative. Mm-hmm. If you say
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: weird things, people just assume you're doing world building.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But it was a facade. He was using the
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: mask of the edgy creator to hide what was fundamentally
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: a sinister lack of empathy and a deteriorating mental state.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: But I have to push back here for a second. Sure.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Hollywood is practically built on wealthy kids funding terrible vanity projects. Yeah.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: There's a whole cottage industry dedicated to separating heirs from
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: their trust funds.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: That's very true.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: At what point does a bad script... Like this other
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: project he had called Psycho Pump, which is described as
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a sadistic Batman ripoff full of torture porn across the line.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: When does it start being just a lack of talent
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and become a giant flashing red warning sign of actual danger?
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question in threat assessment.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: A lack of talent is totally benign. Pushing boundaries in
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: art can be provocative and valuable, but the threshold is
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: crossed when you look at the function of the art.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: The function. Okay.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Right. Is there an underlying narrative purpose? Yes. Is there
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: a character arc? Or is the content obsessively, exclusively focused
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: on extreme, sadistic violence for its own sake?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: When the art is just a delivery system for cruelty,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and it's coupled with the creator's escalating real-world isolation and paranoia,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: it ceases to be a bad vanity project.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: It becomes a warning.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It becomes a diagnostic tool. It's a reflection of
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: a decaying internal state. And we see the ultimate expression
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: of this in his most notable project, A 2010 graphic
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: novel called Syndrome.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Syndrome. This is where the fiction and reality start bleeding
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: into each other.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: The plot of this graphic novel revolves around a character
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: named Dr. Chattel.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge red flag right there. Right.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Now, Chattel is Blake's mother's maiden name, the name of
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the Tarp Empire. Yeah. He's naming this character after his
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: own bloodline.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: It's so narcissistic.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It really is. This Dr. Chattel sets up a fake
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Truman Show style town. He fakes a serial killer's execution,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: wipes the killer's mind, and releases him into this controlled
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: environment just to monitor his actions.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And Dr. Chattel's stated goal in the book is to
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: cure serial killers. Right. The underlying thesis of the comic
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: is that evil is not some mysterious force. Evil is
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: a syndrome.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: A medical condition that can be observed and manipulated.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: And Blake is credited as the creator. He wrote the
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: introduction to the book. And it starts with this deeply
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: unsettling question. If you loved hurting things, what would you do?
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And it gets worse.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: The co-author of the book, a guy named Ryan Roberts,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: recalled Blake bragging extensively about how much research he had
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: done on serial killers. Okay. Roberts specifically remembered a moment
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: where Blake physically demonstrated how a victim could be flipped
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: upside down.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: He acted it out.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Yes. He jerked his hands upward, miming the exact mechanics
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: of hanging someone by their feet in order to drain
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: them of fluid.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Robert said that physical mime burned into his memory.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: That physical demonstration is massive.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: It shows he wasn't just conceptualizing violence in the abstract.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: He wasn't just thinking about themes of good and evil.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: He was visualizing the physical mechanics of torture in real
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: three-dimensional space. He was working out the logistics of atrocity.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: That is chilling.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Yet, despite all this dark research, Syndrome completely bombed.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to read it. No.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: A producer who knew him noted that Blake was desperate
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: to be seen as a respected, edgy artist, but he
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: just didn't have the goods.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: He was literally standing at a San Diego Comic-Con giving
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: away stacks of these heavy, expensive graphic novels for free.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Practically forcing people to take them just to create the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: illusion of an audience.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: He's trying to buy an identity that he couldn't earn.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So his entire professional life is this hollow shell, completely
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: subsidized by his mother's allowance.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But then the single foundational pillar holding his life up cracks.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: What happens?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: In 2011, his mother, Eleanor, dies of brain cancer. Oh.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And Blake's reaction. He reportedly doesn't even bother to attend
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: her funeral.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: That is the catalyst right there.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: The tether snaps. The death of his mother meant the
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: loss of his primary financial enabler, but on a deeper level,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: it represented the loss of his only connection to familial
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: loyalty or structure.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Now, she left behind a massive inheritance, but it seems
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: it was structured in a way that restricted his direct access,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: perhaps put into a trust managed by his father.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Because by 2013, despite this immense family wealth, Blake is
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: effectively broke.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: He's so broke. And so angry about not having correct
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: access to the cash that he goes to war with
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: his own family.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, he sued them.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he legally challenges his mother's will. He tries to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: get the courts to remove his father as the trustee,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and he actively tries to deny his brother Cody any
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: share of the inheritance.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: And you have to understand how difficult it is to
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: remove a trustee.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Isn't hard.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Very. You have to prove egregious mismanagement or breach of
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: fiduciary duty. You can't just say, I want my money now.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The courts look at his case and give him zero sympathy.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: He loses the challenge completely.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And the fallout is disastrous. He is then sued by
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: his own legal team because he can't pay his lawyer fees.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It's all falling apart.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: The financial armor that had protected him from consequence his
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: entire life is shattering.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: He is actually forced to swallow his pride and And
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: turned to his estranged father to help pay off mounting
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: credit card debts.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And while his financial reality is imploding, his personal life
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: turns into an absolute labyrinth.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about that.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Back in 2011, right around the time his mom died,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: he married a California model named Amanda Braun. Okay. They
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: have a son. They're living in a Beverly Hills. mansion.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But Blake's mental state is in free fall. How so?
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: His weed consumption goes absolutely off the charts. He becomes deeply,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: delusionally paranoid.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: About what?
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: He starts telling people that his brother Cody owes massive
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: debts to Russian mobsters. and that these mobsters are going
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: to come after Blake by association.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: There was absolutely zero evidence that Cody owed any money
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: to any mobsters. Zero. It was pure paranoid projection. Blake
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: was the one whose life was collapsing, so he projected
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: that chaos onto his successful brother.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: He starts isolating himself. His friends notice he's developing a dark,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: consuming obsession with brutal violence. People who knew him said
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: it was like watching him morph into an entirely different entity.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Then, in the summer of 2015... He just walks out
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: on Amanda. Wow. And she is pregnant with their second
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: child at the time.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: That's awful.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: He just abandons his family. But he doesn't just leave
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and live the single life. He starts constructing this incredibly tangled,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: high-wire act of relationships. Oh, boy. He starts dating a
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: woman named Iana Kasian. She's a 30-year-old Ukrainian former attorney
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: who had immigrated from Kiev.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: She's described as absolutely stunning, intelligent, and Blake quickly pulls
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: her into his orbit.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: One commentator described it as pulling her into his fantasy
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: world of Hollywood hot pink bullshit.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: That's a vivid way to put it.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: It is. He showers her with attention and he gets
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: her pregnant.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: But the manipulation doesn't stop there, does it?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: While he's legally married to his estranged pregnant wife and
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: living with his new pregnant girlfriend, Ayanna, he initiates a
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: third relationship.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: This time with a woman named Constance Bufacari. And she's
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: not naive. She's a highly successful storyboard artist. who had
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: worked on major studio films like Aquaman and Snow White
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: and The Huntsman.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: So he's juggling three different women. How do you even
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: manage that?
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: He uses the only tool he has left, real estate.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: He moves Ayanna into his condo in West Hollywood, and
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: then he moves Constance into another house that he owns
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: just a few miles away.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: It's like he's managing a portfolio of human assets.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Think about the psychology here. Blake had just lost
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: his massive lawsuit. He lost his bid to control his
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: inheritance and his father is holding the purse strings.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: When a severe narcissist loses control in one vital area
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: of their life, they don't just accept it.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: What do they do?
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: They ruthlessly seek to establish absolute dominance in another area
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: to compensate.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes so much sense.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: He is using his remaining properties to physically compartmentalize these women.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: He is dictating where they sleep, where they live, keeping
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: them in separate physical silos so they don't cross-contaminate his lies.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: He's playing puppet master.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But you can only spin those plates for so long
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: before gravity kicks in. Yeah. In May of 2016, reality arrives.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Ayane gives birth to their baby girl, Diana.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And Blache's reaction to becoming a father again is not joy.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It's not love. It is extreme, volatile, toxic jealousy.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook extreme narcissistic injury.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Can you explain that?
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Sure. To a normal person, a newborn baby is a
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: source of joy that requires constant attention. But to someone
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: with Blake's pathology, attention is a zero-sum game. Suddenly, Blake
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: is no longer the center of Ayanna's universe. This tiny,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: helpless infant is. Let's ground this. We've all seen someone
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: get slightly annoyed when they aren't the center of attention
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: at a party.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Take that mundane insecurity, multiply it by a thousand, strip
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: away all empathy, and mix it with paranoia. That's Blake's mind.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: The shift in Ayanna's focus isn't just an annoyance. His
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: fractured ego processes the baby as a profound, literal threat
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to his dominance. He becomes enraged.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: He would constantly demand sex from Ayanna right after she
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: gave birth, threatening to leave her and go to another
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: woman if she didn't comply.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: That is just sick.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Ayanna is so desperate to keep the peace, to salvage
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: this relationship for the sake of her family, that she
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: actually sends her newborn baby, Diana... to live with her mother, Olga,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: who is staying in another apartment nearby.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: She sends her baby away just so she can give
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Blake her undivided attention.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: She's trying to appease an unappeasable monster.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: She's making these unimaginable sacrifices to stabilize a man who
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: is structurally incapable of stability. And all of those plates
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: he's been spinning finally crash down over the course of
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: one terrifying week in May 2016. Yeah. The ticking clock
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: really starts on May 20th.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: May 20th. Blake is arrested.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: But it has nothing to do with Ayanna. He is
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: arrested for sexually assaulting his third girlfriend, Constance, at the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: house he had moved her into.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: He's taken into custody and held for about 15 hours.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: And who is the one who bails him out?
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Let me guess.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Ayanna. She posts a $ 100, 000 bail to secure his release.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: But the arrest blows his entire compartmentalized world wide open.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Ayanna discovers the truth about his affair with Constance. And
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that's it. That is the final straw.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Good for her.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: She packs up. She leaves him and she moves out
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: of the West Hollywood condo to stay with her mother, Olga,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and the baby. She leaves Blake alone in that apartment.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Which, for a man obsessed with control, is the ultimate trigger.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: He's lost it all.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: He's been exposed as a fraud. He's been rejected by
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: the woman he forced to choose him over her own child. Right.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Four days pass. On May 24th, while Ayanna and her
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: mother are out shopping for a baby stroller, Blake starts
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: blowing up her phone. relentless texting.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Ayana senses something's escalating. She leaves the baby with Olga
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and on the afternoon of May 24th, she drives back
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to the West Hollywood apartment to talk to Blake. Olga
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: spoke to her daughter on the phone for about seven
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: minutes that day. And that was the last time anyone
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: in the outside world ever heard from Ayana Kazian.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: She never comes back.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: The next day, May 25th, Olga is in a full panic.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: She is calling Ayana over and over. No answer.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: At around 1.44 p.m., Olga and a friend drive over
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: to the condo complex. They find Ayanna's car parked in
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the garage.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, so she's there.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: So Olga walks around to the front of the building
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and looks up at Blake's balcony.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And what does she see?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: She looks up and she sees the sliding glass door
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to the balcony is open. She starts screaming up at
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the apartment, pleading for Blake to open the security gate
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and let her in.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is so tense.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And what does she get? The only response is the
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: sight of Blake's silhouette stepping up to the glass, his
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: hand reaching out and silently sliding the door shut.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: It's a haunting image, the silent shutting of the door.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: It's out of a movie.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: In that moment, Olga's intuition screams that her daughter is
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: in mortal danger. She immediately calls the police.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, good.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Two officers are dispatched to the condo. They stay outside
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: the door for two hours. The blinds are totally drawn.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: They knock. They announce themselves. Nothing.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: They call Blake's phone and leave a voicemail. No return call.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And this is where the legal system just hits a
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: bureaucratic brick wall.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The police turn to Olga and tell her their hands
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: are tied. They have no justifiable cause, no probable cause
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to break the door down.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Which is so frustrating to hear.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: They just have a worried mother and a quiet apartment.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: So they pack up and leave.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Let's explain the mechanics of that because it's incredibly frustrating
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: for people to understand.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Please do.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: It's a foundational right.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: For police to kick down a door without a warrant,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: they need exigent circumstances.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: They need to hear a scream, they need to see blood,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: or they need concrete evidence of an immediate threat to life.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Olga's maternal panic, while completely valid and ultimately correct, didn't
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: legally cross that threshold for the officers on the scene.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: They couldn't breach a door just because a boyfriend wasn't
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: answering his phone.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: But put yourself in Olga's shoes for a second.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I just can't even imagine.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: You're standing outside that door. Yeah. You know the man
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: inside is unstable. You just saw him shut the glass.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Your daughter's car is downstairs and the police tell you
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: they can't help you.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: It's a nightmare.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So another agonizing night passes. May 26th, Olga is texting
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Ayanna frantically between 1.45 a.m. and 11.00 a.m. Yeah. She
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: sends a message that reads, Ayanna, answer me. Are you alive,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: my dear daughter? I called the police because he is
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: holding you there. Answer me. Complete silence.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: God.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: So Olga goes back to the condo. She calls 911 again.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: But this time, she changes her approach.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: What does she say?
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: She emphasizes to the dispatcher that Ayanna had just given
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: birth via a C-section, creating an urgent medical welfare concern.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: That specific medical detail changes the entire legal calculus.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: It does. Yes.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It provides the exigent circumstance. A deputy arrives. speaks to
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: a neighbor who confirms they haven't seen anyone leave the
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: apartment in days, and they try Blake's phone again at 8.45 a.m.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: No answer.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're going in.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: The property manager finally gives them a key. They unlock
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the front door, but it only opens an inch. The
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: secondary safety latch is engaged from the inside.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Which means someone is definitively in there.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: The officers agree this constitutes exceptional reasons to enter. They
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: kick the door in.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: They step into the condo. And it's completely dark. The
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: blinds are drawn shut. They clear the living room. Empty.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: The dining room. Empty. The kitchen. The balcony. Nothing.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Just one room left.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: There's only one room left to check. The master bedroom.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: And the door is locked.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: The officers try to force the handle, but it won't budge.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: It's heavily barricaded from the inside with a mattress and furniture.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: The police draw their weapons and start shouting, ordering whoever
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: is in there to surrender and come out.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Suddenly, Blake's voice calls out from behind the barricade. He
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: absolutely refuses to come out.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: What's his excuse?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: He claims he's terrified the cops are going to beat
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: him up.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Always playing the victim. Right.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: The officers switch tactics. They try to de-escalate. They tell
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: him they don't want to hurt him. They just need
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: to check on Ayanna's welfare.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: And what does he say?
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: He lies through his teeth. He says she's fine. He
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: tells them she left and went to the hospital. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: he even gives the cops a fake hospital room number.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Just making things up on the fly.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Totally. Then he makes a bizarre demand. He says he
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: isn't coming out until his father arrives, but he's actually
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: referring to his accountant and mentor, a man named Stephen Green.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Green was the one person still trying to manage Blake's
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: chaotic life. Right. Green had actually been calling Blake for
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: a month, leaving these desperate voicemails telling Blake he loved
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: him and wanted to help him through this crisis.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: When the police bring Green to the apartment, he stands
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: in the hallway and speaks to Blake through the crack
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: in the barricaded door. Eventually, a detective arrives. Green gets
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Blake on a cell phone, and he manages to talk
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: him down. He convinces Blake to surrender.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Blake finally pushes the mattress aside and steps out of
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: the bedroom.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: He is wearing absolutely nothing but apparel boxer shorts.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Stephen Green hands him some clothing to put on, but
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the police, following protocol, search the clothing before they hand
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: it over.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: And what do they find?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Inside the pockets, they find Blake's passport and about $ 4, 000
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: in cash.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: That detail is staggering when you consider his mental state. Yeah.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: You have a man who has been financially cut off,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: dumped by his girlfriend, arrested for sexual assault less than
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: a week prior, and has been barricaded in the dark
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: while police kick his door in.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: The fact that he packed a passport and cash indicates
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: he was genuinely planning an escape.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, did he really think four grand and a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: passport were going to get him on a plane? Probably.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Was he totally detached from reality, or did he still
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: believe that his status, his wealth, was this magical exit
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: hatch that would just open for him?
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate delusion of privilege. He had lived his
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: entire life insulated from consequences. He likely believed that the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: rules simply did not apply to him, that he could
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: commit an atrocity, pack a go-bag, and just slip away
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: into a new life, completely untouched by the devastation he caused.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: But that delusion shattered the exact moment the police pushed
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: past him and stepped into that master bedroom.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: OK, I think we really need to pause here and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: just give a warning to you listening right now.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: The details of what the police found inside that room
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and the forensic evidence of what occurred are extremely severe,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: highly unsettling and deeply disturbing.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: It is very graphic.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: If you are sensitive to descriptions of anatomical violence or torture,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Please take care while listening to this next section or
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: just skip ahead about five minutes.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: We don't discuss these details for shock value.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: No.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: It is absolutely essential to understand the sheer methodical brutality
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: of the crime, to comprehend the true depth of his pathology,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: and to understand how his fiction became reality.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: When the officers breached the bedroom, one of them immediately
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: yelled out, She's on the bed! The lead detective instantly
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: ordered everyone out of the room to preserve the scene
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and called for paramedics. But it was far too late.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Ayanna Kaysing was pronounced dead at 1.02 p.m.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Tragic.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: The police found her naked body lying on a freshly
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: laid clean bed sheet. She was covered by two blankets,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: a red Mickey Mouse blanket and a blue polka dot blanket.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Her head was resting carefully on a pillow.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: The visual juxtaposition there is incredibly jarring.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: It's sickening.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: He used innocent childlike blankets, Mickey Mouse, polka dots, to
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: cover the scene of an unimaginable atrocity. It highlights the
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: absolute perversion of what should have been a safe environment
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: for a mother and her newborn baby.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: The injuries she sustained are almost beyond human comprehension.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: There were extensive abrasions and bruising across her body, consistent
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: with severe blunt force trauma. There were deep human bite
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: marks on her jawline and on her bicep. Awful. But
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the most horrifying aspect of the scene was what he
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: did with a bladed instrument. Her scalp had been entirely removed.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: The tissue was cut away from around her eyebrows. all
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: the way back to the hairline on the back of
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: her head. A massive portion of the skin on the
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: right side of her face had been removed down to
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: the visible skull bone. Her right ear was entirely missing.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner determined that while a blade was used
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: to initiate the cuts, some of the tissue had literally
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: been torn away by hand.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: The physical effort, the time, and the extreme localized focus
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: required to inflict those specific injuries is staggering. This wasn't
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: a quick, impulsive act of violence.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: No.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: But the most horrifying forensic finding from the autopsy was
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: that the severed tissue samples showed signs of acute inflammation
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: and hemorrhaging.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Which scientifically means her heart was still beating. Yeah. She
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: was alive when he did this.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: She was alive while she was slowly, methodically dismantled.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: That is just incredible.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: The Los Angeles County coroner concluded that she was kept
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: alive and tortured for roughly eight hours.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Eight hours.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: The coroner stated on the record that he had never
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: seen injuries of this nature outside of a military wartime environment.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: And the cruelty of the methodology doesn't stop there. When
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: the examiner conducted the autopsy, he found that there was
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: virtually no blood left in Ayanna's heart, her veins, or
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: her arteries.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Half of her body's entire blood supply was completely gone. Now,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: gravity alone doesn't do that, even with severe injuries.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It tools and claws.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly. In order to evacuate that much fluid from a
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: human body, you need a pump. And the only pump
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: available was her own beating heart. Her heart had to
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: keep pumping to push that blood out.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: And the medical examiner reconstructed exactly how Bleak achieved this.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: He essentially submerged her in the bathtub. Investigators found warm
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: water still running in the master bathroom tub with massive
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: blood stains and hair coating the porcelain. Wow. By placing
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: her in warm water with her head angled lower than
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: her feet and running that warm water over her open wounds,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: he artificially dilated her blood vessels.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: So he knew exactly what he was doing.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. The warmth prevented the blood from clotting, allowing her
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: heart to continuously pump her blood out into the drain.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: The presence of water and foam in her nasal passages
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: indicated she had been submerged in that state for at
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: least 30 minutes.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He exsanguinated her. He literally drained her alive.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: The commentators in the documentary liken the mechanical process to
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: how a butcher would slaughter an animal to drain the meat.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was like.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And he didn't do this in a frantic, psychotic frenzy.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: He was entirely deliberate. Afterward, he cleaned the body, placed
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: her on a fresh sheet, and tucked her in with
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: those blankets.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: The entire condo was a house of horrors. Forensics found
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: bloodstains and chunks of human flesh hidden behind the bed frame.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: They found part of her eyebrow lying on the floor.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: There was clear evidence he tried to sanitize the scene.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: He attempted to wipe down areas in the dining room
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: and hallways, but chemical luminol testing revealed the presence of
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: blood tracked everywhere.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: It was everywhere.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: They found blood residue inside the kitchen garbage disposal. And
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: when investigators checked the communal trash chute in the hallway,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: they found garbage bags filled with bloodstained bedding, a bed
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: skirt covered in bloody handprints, and human tissue, including the
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: pieces of her scalp and her missing right ear.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: He put pieces of the mother of his child down
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: a kitchen sink disposal and threw her remains down a
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: hallway trash chute like she was household garbage.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: It's unfathomable.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: And if you want to understand the supreme, terrifying, cognitive
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: dissonance of Blake Leibel, investigators pulled the digital records.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: During the days that Ayanna was missing in that apartment,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: while he was actively torturing her, while he was managing
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the water temperature to keep her blood flowing, it was
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: discovered that he picked up her cell phone, And used
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: it to order Postmates delivery.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: You ordered food twice.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: That single detail is perhaps the most chilling aspect of
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: the entire timeline.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I think so too.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates a complete and utter detachment from human empathy.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: To be engaged in hours of calculated, intimate, horrific torture,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: and then to calmly pause, pick up the victim's phone,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: browse a menu, and order a meal to be delivered
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: to your front door.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: It requires a level of psychopathy that a normal human
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: mind simply cannot grasp. He was hungry, so he ordered food,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: completely unbothered by the atrocity occurring in his own bathroom.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: He brought his dark fiction into reality.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: He really did.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: The source material draws a direct, undeniable line between this
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: murder and his graphic novel syndrome.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about that connection.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Think about it. The cover of that graphic novel featured
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: an illustration of a baby doll with its scalp removed,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: exposing the brain. The prosecution later explicitly suggested he killed
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Ayanna in a methodical attempt to recreate scenes from his
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: own comic book. He acted out the exact grisly mechanics
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: he had physically mimed to his co-author all those years ago.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an impulse. It was a performance. A sadistic,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: entirely self-serving performance designed to make himself feel powerful.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: The commentators in the documentary brought up a really famous
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: book by a security specialist named Gavin DeBecker called The
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Gift of Fear.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: That's a great book.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: They talked about how almost everyone who had interacted with
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Blake over the years had this lingering, unspoken, bad gut
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: feeling about him.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Right, like the co-author who remembered the creepy mime.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. People felt he was erratic, that his energy was sinister.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: How often do we suppress those primal instincts about people
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: just because they wear an expensive watch or they fund
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: a movie or they live in a luxury condo?
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: We do it constantly. The Gift of Fear is entirely
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: about this phenomenon. Society trains us to prioritize politeness and
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: social status over our own survival intuition.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't want to be rude.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: We rationalize alarming behavior as mere eccentricity if the person
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: displaying it has money or power. We tell ourselves, oh,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: he's just an eccentric artist or he's just an intense guy. Right.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: But DeBecker teaches that our intuition is a highly evolved
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: survival mechanism. It's our brain making rapid subconscious calculations of
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: microexpressions and behaviors that signal a predator.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: That's so fascinating.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: When people looked at Blake, their primitive lizard brains recognized
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: a threat, but their logical, socially conditioned brains looked at
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: his Beverly Hills zip code and excused it.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And the aftermath of the discovery proved exactly what kind
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: of predator he was. Yeah. When Blake was finally arrested
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and taken to the station, his demeanor was described by
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: detectives as ice cold.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's surprising.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: He sat in the interrogation room and acted as if
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: he had absolutely no idea Ayanna was dead. When an
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: officer finally looked at him and explicitly told him she
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: was deceased, Blake didn't cry. He didn't act shocked.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: What did he do?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: He just smirked. He smiled this evil little grin and said, well,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I guess you'll find out who did it then.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: That is a textbook response for a malignant narcissist.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Even covered in the victim's blood, he is still playing
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: a game. He is still trying to construct a narrative
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: where he is the smartest person in the room. He
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: is openly challenging the police to catch him, convinced he
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: can outsmart them.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Which, of course, they did. The forensic evidence was overwhelming.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: DNA samples taken from Blake's hands and underneath his fingernails
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: perfectly matched Ayanna.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Furthermore, Ayanna's hands showed massive signs of defensive injuries, and
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the scratches and bruises covering Blake's face and arms were
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: inflicted by Ayanna fighting desperately for her life.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: She fought back.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: She did. The case went to trial in 2018, and
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: despite the absolute mountain of evidence, Blake pleaded not guilty.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And we should clarify a legal point here.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: The defense tested his system for drugs immediately after the arrest.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: There was only a small trace amount of marijuana present.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he wasn't high. No.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: No. This was not a narcotic-induced psychotic break. Furthermore, court-appointed
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: doctors evaluated him and deemed him mentally fit to stand trial.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Ah, so he knew what he was doing.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: He did not meet the legal definition of criminal insanity.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: He knew the nature of his actions and he knew
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: they were wrong. He simply didn't care.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: The jury saw right through his facade. It took them
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: a mere three hours of deliberation to return a guilty
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: verdict for first-degree murder, aggravated mayhem, and torture.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Only three hours?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Now, he was technically eligible for the death penalty in California,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: given the special circumstances of torture and the heinous nature
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of the crime. But the district attorney's office elected not
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to pursue it.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: On June 26, 2018, Blake Leibel was sentenced to life
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: in prison without the possibility of parole. He was also
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: ordered by a civil court to pay a $ 43 million
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: judgment to Iana's family. Wow. And it's worth noting that
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: during the criminal trial, the broken Leibel family dynamics were
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: on full display.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his brother Cody, the brother Blake, had tried to
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: legally cut out of their inheritance-attended court every single day
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: to witness the proceedings. His father, Lorne, never showed up once.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: That says so much. The psychological collapse of Blake's ego
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: in that courtroom must have been absolute.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: This was a man who spent his entire life thriving
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: on unearned status. He desperately wanted to be seen as
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: a mastermind, a visionary creator who controlled the people around him.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Now, as the documentary host aptly pointed out, he is
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: stripped of all of it. He is confined to a
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: cell where he will rot in total obscurity.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Just forgotten.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: For his specific pathology narcissism, combined with a desperate need
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: for relevance, being forgotten, being rendered entirely powerless and irrelevant,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: is the ultimate punishment.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: He has no real estate to manipulate, no wealth to
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: hide behind, and no audience for his edgy fiction.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: But let me ask you about that $ 43 million civil judgment.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: In a case where the guy is going to prison
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life, is that massive dollar
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: amount purely symbolic? Or is it the ultimate crushing irony?
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: The immense wealth that shielded him from reality his entire life,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the allowance that let him play God with people's living situations,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: is now being legally stripped away from his estate to
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: financially support the infant daughter that he orphaned.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: It is deeply ironic, and from a legal standpoint, it's
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: about restitution. Right. The civil court is attempting to quantify
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: the unquantifiable loss of a mother's life and her future
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: earnings and redirect whatever assets Blake has left to provide
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: material security for baby Diana.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Because she's going to need it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Diana has to grow up grappling with the horrific legacy
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: of her biological father. That money can pay for therapy,
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: for education, for security. Yeah. But it is ultimately a
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: hollow victory. It doesn't bring Ayanna back. It doesn't erase
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: the suffering of an innocent woman who came to California
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: just trying to build a family.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: And the collateral damage of Blake's actions, the shockwaves of
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: his cruelty, extended even further.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, with Constance.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. There is an incredibly bizarre, tragic coda to this
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: story involving Constance, the third girlfriend, the storyboard artist. He
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: had moved into one of his other houses.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: What happened to her?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: After the murder, while Blake was in custody... He instructed
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: his accountant, Stephen Green, to sell the house Constance was
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: living in and to funnel the proceeds to his estranged wife, Amanda.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Which completely pulled the rug out from under Constance.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: She felt entirely betrayed and manipulated. And her psychological response
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: was extreme.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: What did she do?
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: She began sending incredibly violent, graphic, threatening emails to Stephen Green.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: In December 2017, she explicitly wrote, I am ready to
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: put a bullet through Stephen Green's head. Whoa. She sent
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: messages detailing how she was going to pull the trigger,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: daring the accountant to report her to the FBI, asking
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: if his family wanted to find him dead on their doorstep.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: She also stalked Amanda, sending her roughly 200 threatening messages.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: So she was arrested. She was arrested and initially sentenced
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: to prison time for criminal threats. But as the legal
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: process played out, it was discovered that she wasn't just
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: acting out of anger.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: She was suffering from a severe acute mental health collapse.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: She was diagnosed with unspecified schizophrenia, a psychotic disorder, a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: severe sleep disorder, and an alcohol problem.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Wow, so she really needed help.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: The court eventually recognized that she was deeply unwell, vacated
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: her criminal conviction, and sent her to a pretrial mental
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: health diversion program.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good. The documentary notes she successfully completed the treatment, recovered,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: and had absolutely zero involvement in Ayanna's murder. But it
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: just shows the absolute blast radius of Blake Leibel.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: He was like a radioactive core. He drew people in
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: with the promise of a glamorous Hollywood life. He compartmentalized them.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: And then his pathology destroyed the psychological stability of almost
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: everyone who got too close.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So to summarize this incredibly dark journey for you, we
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: followed a path that started at the absolute heights of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Canadian dynastic wealth, fueled by plastic tarps and real estate.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: We watched as a man who had zero financial friction
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: used millions of dollars to fund hollow creative ambitions, trying
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: to buy an edge he didn't possess. Right. We analyzed
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: how a fragile ego fractured under the weight of lost control,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: leading him to use luxury real estate to manipulate multiple women.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: It's just a tragic spiral.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: And we saw how it all ended in a dark,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: barricaded apartment where an innocent mother, Ianna Kazian, lost her
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: life in a manner so horrific it defies comprehension.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: It serves as a stark, tragic reminder of how immense
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: wealth can camouflage deep, dangerous pathology. Right. It reinforces how
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: vital it is to trust our instincts when we recognize
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the warning signs of a predator, regardless of the socioeconomic
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: status or the zip code of the person displaying them.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Which brings us right back to the thought experiment we
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: started with. We opened this deep dive by asking if
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: a writer's dark fiction could be used to frame them
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: for a crime they didn't commit.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: We did.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: But think about this. When someone constantly surrounds themselves with dark,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: violently misogynistic media, when they obsessively insist on creating art
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: that glorifies laityism, and when they physically act out the
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: mechanics of literal torture, at what point do we stop
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: giving them the benefit of the doubt?
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: That's a powerful question.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: At what point do we stop calling it edgy fiction
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: and start recognizing it as a confession hiding in plain sight?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: That is something to mull over the next time you
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: are consuming true crime or horror and or looking at
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: a piece of extremely violent art? Is it just a story,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: or are you looking at a blueprint? Thank you so
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: much for joining us for this deep dive. We know
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: this was an incredibly heavy one, but we appreciate your
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: time and your curiosity as we unpack the psychology behind
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: these difficult, true stories. Stay safe, trust your gut, and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: we will catch you on the next deep dive.