Canadian tycoon's son Blake Leibel convicted of brutal murder
- Published
Iana Kasian was killed just weeks after giving birth
The son of a Canadian property tycoon has been found guilty by a Los Angeles jury of murdering his girlfriend.
Blake Leibel, 37, was convicted of torturing and murdering Iana Kasian, mother of his three-week old daughter.
Police found Leibel barricaded inside his blood-spattered West Hollywood apartment with the body of Ms Kasian, 30, in May 2016.
She is believed to have been alive for some eight hours while the killer attacked her, the jury heard.
Warning: this story contains graphic content.
A coroner called the murder "unprecedented outside of wartime", according to the Toronto Sun.
It was determined that she had been scalped and her blood had been drained.
Leibel grew up in Toronto, the son of wealthy real estate developer and one-time Olympian Lorne Leibel.
The property heir moved to California and was involved in various projects on the fringes of the entertainment industry.
He published a violent graphic novel that included scenes of men being drained of blood and illustrations of a female body on a bloody mattress.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that the novel had served as the "blueprint" for Ms Kasian's killing, the Associated Press reports.
Blake Leibel, R, pictured in Los Angeles in 2008 with his former wife, Amanda Braun
The victim's mother, Olga Kasian, was present throughout the trial. She had originally contacted police multiple times in 2016 to report her daughter missing.
Leibel is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday.