Blake Leibel, 35 year old Hollywood rich kid and graphic novelist, arrested for murdering his wife

This ought to be interesting. The guy's father is really rich so he's going to get the best defense money can buy. The victim immigrated from Ukraine just a couple of years ago.

WaPo

"Blake Leibel was fascinated by evil.

His graphic novel centered on the search for the bad seed lurking in the brains of serial killers. He wrote a screenplay about a madman on a murder spree. His work, he wrote online, “grappled with the questions surrounding what provokes a person to commit evil acts.”

Now Leibel stands accused of taking that fascination too far by reenacting his bloody imagination in real life.

On Tuesday, the 35-year-old appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom to face charges of torturing, mutilating and killing his girlfriend.

Leibel was arrested in West Hollywood on Thursday when authorities discovered his girlfriend’s body inside their barricaded apartment, according to the Associated Press.

Iana Kasian, 30, had just given birth to their first child three weeks earlier.

In a detail seemingly pulled from Leibel’s own graphic novel, prosecutors said her body had been “drained” of its blood.

Leibel has pleaded not guilty. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face the death penalty, the AP reported.

Such a sentence would be a bizarre and ironic twist for the graphic novelist, whose best-known work begins with the execution of a serial killer on death row.

It would also mark a sudden and precipitous fall for Leibel, the son of a wealthy Toronto developer and former Olympian."