Graphic Novelist Who Scalped Fiancée Alive, To Pay Her Family $42 Million

A graphic novelist from Canada was ordered to pay $41.6 million to the family of his fiancée, whom he tortured and killed in 2016.

A Los Angeles judge handed out the verdict Friday against Blake Leibel in the wrongful-death suit of Iana Kasian, who was killed using the gruesome technique that Leibel spent years perfecting and detailed in one of his graphic novels, “Syndrome.” He was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated mayhem and torture of the victim in June and currently serves life imprisonment in Tehachapi, California, without any possibility of parole.

The cause of Kasian's death was severe blood loss, but before that, she was skinned alive – an ordeal that lasted for at least six hours. According to authorities, Leibel barricaded himself inside a room with his fiancée’s body and used either a paring knife or a razor as well as his bare hands to peel pieces of skin from the latter’s skull. During the “prolonged attack”, Kasian’s body was dragged to various parts of the house, and also held under water for certain periods of time.

During the trial, graphic images of the victim’s corpse were displayed, showing parts of her facial bones and muscles exposed and her eyebrows removed. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman argued that Kasian died “a very slow, excruciating, painful death.”

Leibel moved from Canada to California in 2004, where he briefly worked on the show “Spaceballs.” Kasian, on the other hand, worked for a number of years in Ukraine as a tax attorney and immigrated to the U.S. in 2014. It was unclear when the pair started dating, but she became pregnant with his child soon after Leibel filed for divorce from his then-wife in July 2015. Just weeks after their daughter, Diana, was born, Kasian was found dead in Leibel’s apartment. According to the prosecutors, the novelist killed his fiancée because he was jealous of the attention she was paying to their newborn child.

“This murder didn’t just kill one person, it really did kill the family; it shattered the family. And the family has had a hard time crawling back from this,” Jake Finkel, Kasian’s family’s attorney said, Los Angeles Times reported. “The most precious thing to take away from a little girl, from a woman, is her mother. [Diana’s] mother was taken away from her before she even got a real chance to learn about her, get to know her. At one point, she’s going to learn about the reality of her mother, and what happened to her, and her biological father and what he did to her mother.”

The cover photo of Leibel’s 2010 novel, “Syndrome,” showed a baby doll with a partially removed scalp. The plot of the novel revolved around a doctor trying to figure out the root of evil in the brain. "If you loved hurting things, what would you do?" the beginning passage of the book read. It concluded with the caption, "In the end, we all become monsters," alongside an image of a hand dripping with blood.