$54.5m for victim’s kin
California judge orders wealthy Toronto scion to pay family of woman he tortured
Rich kid killer Blake Leibel’s descent into hell just got more expensive.
A California judge has ordered the 37-year-old Toronto real estate scion to pay the family of the woman he was convicted of torturing and murdering $54.5 million Canadian.
The comic book and horror enthusiast — who grew up in the plummy Forest Hill neighbourhood of Toronto — was convicted on June 26, 2018, for the grisly May 2016 torture murder of his fiancée, Iana Kasian, 30.
Veteran L.A. homicide detectives and the coroner called Kasian’s murder among the most brutal they had ever seen.
And now it’s going to cost the twisted trustafarian.
Tom Conroy represented Kasian’s mother Olga and the young daughter the ill-starred couple shared.
“It was uncontested by him,” Conroy told Postmedia News.
According to the California legal eagle, Leibel’s civil attorney removed himself from the matter in January before this month’s scheduled trial.
The graphic novel dilettante currently resides in Wasco State Prison — about two hours and a world away from Hollywood — before he is assigned to harder hellholes like San Quentin or Folsom.
“When Leibel didn’t respond after his lawyer quit, he didn’t make any arrangements or take advantage of an opportunity to appear and was left to his own devices and we proceeded,” Conroy said.
One of the remaining questions for Conroy and Kasian’s family is whether they will ever see any money.
No one from Leibel’s family bothered to show up to the proceedings, Conroy noted.
“We’re going to have to see where it takes us,” he said. “I don’t really know where the family is in all of this, we didn’t see or hear anything from them.”
Leibel grew up in Toronto a child of staggering wealth and privilege.
As the son of billionaire mega-developer and former Olympian Lorne Leibel, his life had all the accoutrements of the rich.
His late mother, Eleanor, had her own fortune and was an heiress to a plastics dynasty.
But the University of Western Ontario graduate was spoiled and flighty.
Both he and his brother bought mansions in Hollywood after high school and were given eye-popping monthly allowances.
Any semblance of normalcy unravelled after Leibel left his wife and children for the leggy Kasian.
However, after she gave birth to their daughter Diana in 2016, the petulant Liebel became enraged that the three-week old baby was now the centre of his fiancée’s attention.
And then he snapped.
For hours on that terrible day in May, Leibel pummeled the Ukrainian model, bit her face, cut off her eyebrows and one of her ears. Then he drained her body of blood.
Judge Mark Windham cited the pop culture dilettante’s “profound brutality” in the life-ending sentence.
At his trial, prosecutors theorized the killer used his
Syndrome graphic novel as his template of horror.
Conroy added that Kasian’s devastated family are slowly picking up the pieces and now live back in Ukraine.
“They’re strong people and the little girl who’s almost three now ... she’s the spitting image of her mom at that age.”