Odd handprint highlighted at murder trial

Part of pinky finger missing in photo of accused

Warning: Disturbing content

LOS ANGELES • The garbage chute in the hall outside Blake Leibel’s thirdfloor condo led down to a dumpster. Inside, investigators found bloodied towels, some bedding, a few T-shirts. But prosecutors in Leibel’s murder trial on Wednesday seemed most interested in what looked like a white bedsheet marked by three red handprints. There was something different about them, said Tom Bevel, a blood spatter expert called by the prosecution.

“If you look at the right hand,” he told the jury. “The little finger is shorter than what is to be expected.”

At that point, Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef showed a photo of Blake Leibel’s right hand. His pinky finger was missing from the knuckle up, matching the bloody handprint on the sheet.

From Bevel’s assessment, the sheet told a story. There was a large splotch of blood above the handprints. That, he said, showed where the victim, 30-year-old Iana Kasian, had lain her head, sometime after her scalp had been sliced and torn away. And the handprints showed that her attacker lurched over top, with arms on either side of her — though, as Leibel’s lawyer pointed out, the handprints and the head impression could have been made at different times.

It was part of an onslaught of little scenes and fragments the prosecution has methodically presented to the jury throughout this trial — glimpses of the horror Kasian endured in the hours before her death. Witnesses have testified in disturbing detail about what Kasian would have felt and seen as she bled to death through deep wounds on her head. But what the prosecution has yet to answer, as it nears the conclusion of its case, is why anyone would do this, especially to the mother of a baby girl born weeks earlier.

Leibel, a Canadian graphic novelist and son of a prominent Toronto real estate developer, has pleaded not guilty to mayhem, torture and murder charges.

Prosecution witness Michael Habib, an assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California, testified that it was extraordinary for a person to die of blood loss through a scalping wound, suggesting her legs must have been elevated above her head to allow for gravity to assist the heart in pushing the blood out. He agreed with the prosecution’s theory that she was transported to a bathtub, with her head beneath the tap.

The running water would have stopped her blood from clotting.

The trial continues Thursday.