48 Hours - Hollywood Horror Story

Episode Date: July 14, 2019

A wealthy Hollywood producer is accused of murdering his girlfriend. Was he following the plot of his frightening novel? "48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher investigates.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. People from all over the country come to Los Angeles, all over the world really. You know, they're all chasing a dream. My name's Scott Johnson. I'm a senior writer at The Hollywood Reporter.

Blake Leibel is the son of a wealthy Toronto real estate developer who, in his early 20s, moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in entertainment, film, and graphic novels. The storyline is about when a new planet enters our solar system. He took up with this woman, Yana Kassian. I think for a lot of women, Blake was a good catch. Yana was raised in Ukraine. She was a very curious and adventurous-seeking type of person. She fell in love with L.A., shared her experiences with her mother.

in love with LA, shared her experiences with her mother. Did she think that this man was the man she wanted to marry and have children with? Yes, I was in agreement with her. She really wanted to have a baby. He was a perfectly normal, happy person sitting with his new family. Something must have happened. He has a brother, Cody Leibel.

Cody drives a series of very rare, very expensive Ferraris, owns multi-million dollar homes around town. He's the flashy brother. He's the flashy one, yeah. Cody Leibel was an amateur gambler, played in a local game called Molly's Game, which later became a movie. I was in a room with movie stars,

directors, and business titans. They were going all in, all the time. There were a number of high-rolling poker players who were part of this game. This is the Russian mafia, and the three are tied together in the indictment through a poker game. Blake was concerned about his brother's gambling.

He started to become very paranoid that his brother was indebted to mobsters. He was worried that there were people associated with that game who might threaten him or his family with bodily harm. The Salt Lake Sheriff's Station. Help me, the police. I had this feeling that something was wrong.

Police swarmed this building after a mother's intuition told her something was not right with her daughter. I would like my police to come over to my daughter's apartment. Nothing on the phone prepared us for what we were walking into. And I asked them, where is my daughter? And they didn't answer. It's hard to talk about it without kind of gagging.

It's not often that a 48 Hours correspondent would caution a homicide detective about the language they use to describe a crime scene. The blood evidence in this case told me that this was a prolonged and brutal crime. The deeper you dig, the more mysterious it becomes. This case reads like a movie script. It's just more like a horror movie. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access,

I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was.

Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. There's still a huge police presence out here. In terms of murders, it's far and away the most grisly, awful story I've ever covered. As horror stories go, says Scott Johnson, a writer for The Hollywood Reporter and a 48 Hours consultant, it doesn't get any darker than the death of Yana Kassian. For her mother, Olga, the news was unbearable. I am the mom whose daughter was being murdered.

And I did not do anything to prevent that from happening. Until the moment Olga learned Yana had been brutally killed, her 30-year-old daughter's life had seemed charmed. The sunny glamour of Los Angeles is about as far as you can get from the freezing winters of Kiev, Ukraine. She wanted to live in a huge, strong country. She really loved it. Yana was a tax lawyer in her late 20s when she moved to L.A., where she was learning to work as a translator, says the family's attorney, Jake Finkel. Her biggest dream was to, you know,

have children and raise a family here in the United States. dream was to, you know, have children or raise a family here in the United States. And it seemed like all of her dreams were about to come true when she met and fell in love with the incredibly wealthy Blake Leibel. He, by all accounts, was friendly and people appreciated him. We find a new enemy that's about 12 to 18 feet, and they ride and control dinosaurs like dogs. Blake, an aspiring Hollywood producer, speaking here at a comic book convention, had millions of dollars inherited from his family in Toronto. He was sort of born into the lap of luxury. But Blake's life was complicated. He had every advantage, but one of the things that I learned was that from a very early age, he felt jealous

of his brother's attention from the father. And were they close, or is this Cain and Abel? I think it's a little of both. Cody, the older brother, developed real estate and owned a record label. The family's wealth came from both sides. On his mother's side... His grandfather started a plastics empire.

Jake Edmiston is a reporter in Toronto for the National Post and a 48 Hours consultant. On the father's side, he's a major Toronto developer. So both of them brought a substantial amount of wealth to the marriage. But the parents separated, and they separated the children. Cody would live with his father in the most expensive area of the city, while Blake was raised by his mother here,

in what many consider to be the second most expensive area in Toronto. Would you say that this is a neighborhood where if children are growing up here, this is a life of privilege? I would say wealth and privilege, yeah. But in Blake's case, money did not mean happiness. His relationship with his father was strained. After his mother died in 2011, Blake waged a court battle over her estate. What was the estate worth?

Millions and millions of dollars. According to court records, about $12 million. Blake ended up with less than half, which by most accounts was still a lot of money. Blake continued his quest to write and direct in Hollywood. Was he taken seriously, or is this just a rich kid who came in and it was pay to play? Some people found him to be sort of like a goofy trust funder who was just sort of playing with daddy's money, but other people said that he was hardworking, that he poured his

energies into these projects and really wanted to succeed. I'm 20 years old and I'm losing all of my hair. Blake directed a low-budget film called Bald, about a college student who tries to raise money for his hair transplant by creating a website featuring female students. He worked on an animated series called Spaceballs that stemmed from a Mel Brooks movie But his biggest project was a graphic novel called Syndrome That he hoped to turn into a television show

Blake's ambition and probably his money drew beautiful women to him In 2006, long before Yana was in Los Angeles, he met Amanda Braun, a model who would become his wife. His wife, Amanda, was and has been described as the one who would, you know, urge them to go to the Chateau Marmont, to get out, see people, go to parties. And he was kind of more retiring. He liked to stay at home and look at comics. He was sort of a homebody. The couple had a son together, but just as another baby was on the way, Blake picked up and left. He left her very abruptly in the summer of 2015. She was about to give birth to their second child.

And he took up with this woman, Yana Kassian. and he took up with this woman, Yana Kassian. And he told Yana his marriage was over. It looks like things are actually going pretty well. They're taking trips. There's lots of dinners out. He buys her a very expensive Mercedes. They moved into this condo. It was amazing news. We were so happy. All of us were so happy. Olga was aware Blake's romantic life was rather unsettled, to say the least. He kept telling Januszko that he was

either already divorced or in the process of divorcing his wife. Olga flew to LA to meet the man who said he was going to marry her daughter and to help with the baby. A few days later, a little girl named Diana was born on Olga's 60th birthday. Diana was happy. She was very happy. And he too. She was happy. She was very happy. And he too. Father, mother, daughter, beautiful. In the first few days after Diana was born, Blake certainly seemed content with his new

family. Did he seem like a good man and was he kind to Yana? Yes, because he always kissed her and he kept saying, Любимая in Russian, which means my beloved. That picture of the happy family was a stark contrast to a fear Blake felt a year earlier. And he was expressing these fears in these text messages to a very close friend. In Blake's mind, he believed his brother Cody may have had big gambling debts, and those poker-playing Russian mobsters posed a serious threat to everyone Blake loved.

Texting, these people Cody owes money to are dangerous. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly?

Introducing the best idea yet. A brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bolder risk takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party.

So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. Unlike his younger brother, Blake, Cody Leibel lived loud. He's a big man about town, you know, loves fast cars, fast lifestyle. He was much more of a public figure and a public presence.

Cody played in that high-stakes poker circuit depicted in the movie Molly's Game, frequented by celebrities and some shady rich men, including, reportedly, members of the Russian mafia. Close friends of both Cody and Blake have told me that Cody, in at least one case, was taken for a large amount of money by some of these other more experienced poker players. How large? Over a million dollars, I heard. Blake was afraid that the people associated with the gambling game posed a mortal threat to him and members of his family. As Blake's earlier texts revealed.

But as investigators began to unravel Yana's murder, they discovered more immediate pressures on Blake that painted a disturbing picture. He had made choices that ensnared him with three different women simultaneously and that was kind of catching up to him. In early 2016, Blake Leibel's personal life had become very complicated. He'd moved out of this house here in Beverly Hills and was in the throes of a divorce with his wife Amanda. Beverly Hills and was in the throes of a divorce with his wife, Amanda. Meanwhile, he was living here at the West Hollywood condo with Yana. And on top of that, he was seeing a third woman, Constance Bukafuri, who lived in this posh little home a couple of miles away, which was also owned by Blake.

His life had become an unwieldy love-hate quadrangle. So he was going between Yana and Constance, the condo, and this house. And this house, that's correct. He's living multiple lives. Rob Martindale and Bill Cotter investigated Yana's murder for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. They say that in mid-May 2016, less than a week before Yana's killing, Constance accused Blake of sexually assaulting her in this house. I believe that something occurred here, some unwanted touching occurred in this house by Blake. Blake was arrested and held in jail. Yana had to help bail him out.

There probably was a source for tension between the two. Blake was never prosecuted, but his affair was revealed to Yana. And she must have been asking Blake, like, what's going on here? Like we just had a baby together. Like why aren't you at home helping me with the kid? I need your help. Olga says her daughter's dream of life in America was quickly turning into a nightmare. Yana was so afraid of losing Blake,

she agreed to let her newborn daughter live with her mother in a separate apartment a few miles away, paid for by Blake. That way, Yana could focus on her relationship with Blake, who had suddenly become uninterested in the new baby. He constantly demanded sex and that he could leave her for another woman. Yana was still recovering from a C-section. He threatened to leave her for another woman if she didn't have sex with him? Yes, he even said that to her.

To Olga, Yana seemed intimidated by Blake. He was controlling her like a hawk. He wanted her to do everything he wanted. Olga begged her daughter to move on from Blake and move in with her and the baby. And what would she say? She would run back to him. She would run back to him. On May 23, 2016, Yana, seen on this security video, went shopping with her mother.

Later in the day, Olga says Yana started getting texts from Blake. Upon receiving those texts, she would change like a chameleon. Her facial expression changed. After those texts, she would say, I'm going to him. So she left? She did. The next afternoon, Olga had trouble reaching her daughter. I did try to call her, and the calls went to the voice message. Six calls with no response. All of a sudden, I had this feeling that I have to go there. Call it mother's intuition.

Just out of the blue, you had a feeling that you had to go to Yana and check on her? Yes. I wanted to go there, but the baby was sleeping. She called the police. They put me on hold for a very long time, and then eventually they found a girl who could speak Russian. After you called the police, do they go to the condo to check on her?

I don't know. I called them again and again and again. Finally, she decided it was up to her. The morning after, I just called the taxi and rushed there myself. Help, help me. She's like a tiger trying to get to her cub. She wanted to get in that room. By Wednesday morning, Olga was frantic. For two days, she had not seen her daughter.

As this security video shows, Olga went to Yana and Blake's condo with a friend and tried desperately to get into the gated property. And I went across the street from that building to look at the patio. Olga says she looked up at their third-floor apartment and saw a man standing in the window. And I started calling, Blake, Blake. You saw Blake inside from the street? I did. And then another resident opened the gate. I ran to that apartment.

I was knocking at the door. I was ringing the bell. No answer. So again, she called police. This time, uniformed officers showed up. And I kept telling them, here he is, here he is, break the door. And they said that they had no right to break the door because they couldn't hear anybody screaming inside.

There was also no indication that there was any foul play going on at that time. So the decision was made at that time not to go into the complex. Police tried to call Blake. Hello, this message is for Blake Leibel. This is the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station. We are at your apartment and we need to speak to you immediately, sir. Blake did not respond. Police waited outside for a few hours and then eventually left.

Are you angry that they didn't respond and listen to you on that Tuesday and on Wednesday? Yeah, I chose to. I am angry. Angry and overwhelmed. Convinced Yana was inside, Olga was torn. She did not want to leave Blake's condo, but she had to get back home to her infant granddaughter, who was being cared for by a friend. I was feeling that fear, a fear of police, fear of leaving the baby alone. The next morning, Thursday,

Olga was back at the apartment and back on the phone begging the police for help. I wanted the police to come and free my daughter. Finally, police agreed. It was time to go in. They were concerned that Yana might be in medical distress because she had recently given birth. Tell her that we'll go ahead and send somebody over, but she has to be there. When they arrived, I wanted to lead them upstairs to the third floor, but they told me to

sit near the main entrance. So you sitting outside, and they all go inside. I was outside sitting on the sidewalk. To your left is the door. This is it here? Yeah. After calling out Shearer's department, yelling out Blake's name, Ayanna's name, and no answer, they finally obtained a key from the realtor.

But when they unlocked it, tried to go inside, they encounter those hotel-style locks, which tells them that somebody's got to be in there. So the decision was made to breach that door. Police break down the front door and enter the condo. The living room is kind of in a disheveled look. This animation of the condo, which was later created for the prosecution, shows police immediately ran into several other obstacles. First, the hallway door into the bedrooms is locked and barricaded. So they were forced to actually take the door off the hinges. As police look into the guest bedroom, they see the first signs of a

struggle. Blood. They call out again to Blake. Still no answer. Still no movement. After clearing the guest bedroom, they move toward the master bedroom. But that door is also barricaded with a mattress. So as they're trying to push forward the mattress is pushing it back but at that same time a man yells out, Blake liable. He is basically saying he's not coming out. And tells them Yana isn't home. Blake calls a friend seen here on this surveillance tape rushing into the condo. The friend convinces Blake to open the door and come out of the bedroom. Wearing only boxer shorts, Blake emerges from the room. Detectives Cotter and Martindale are then called to the scene. Been a lot of crime scenes over the years, but walking into that one was just different.

Stepping into the hallway that led to the bedrooms, then things started to appear. They enter the guest bedroom. Started to see blood, saw the bloody headboard, blood on the walls. Then the master bedroom. There was an obvious, large blood stain on the wall that someone had tried to clean up. And then they saw Yana. At that point, she was covered to the bottom of her chin. Covered in a Mickey Mouse blanket.

At first, she looked almost peaceful. Once her head was off of the pillow, then you could see the full damage. The injuries she suffered were horrific and unspeakable. The injuries she suffered were horrific and unspeakable. Yana had been scalped. Her body was eerily and unusually pale. It wasn't simply the killing of somebody. It was... Sadistic.

Blake had scratches and bruises on his face and a bite mark on his arm. She fought. She fought valiantly. Police also found a pair of Blake's pants with his passport and four thousand dollars stuffed in a pocket. What did it tell you? That this was a man who was probably going to dispose of Ayanna completely, clean up the condo, and then probably flee this country back to his native Canada. Police arrest Blake. By then Olga had made her way into the building. And then I saw Blake handcuffed and they were leading him out. I did not really

pay attention to him. I kept looking at that door because I thought that they would bring my Yana out. I was crying out. I was screaming, where is my daughter? And right here on the floor, right behind you, is where Olga's leaning against the wall. This is where you had to tell Olga? This is where I had to inform her that her daughter had been killed. I tried to crawl to that apartment.

I was screaming, but they did not let me in. Detectives questioned Blake, seen here oddly smiling in his arrest photo. But he denied having anything to do with Yana's gruesome death or the horrific crime scene. Did he give any explanation of what he thought happened to Yana? Like, who would have done this to her? He gave no reasonable explanation. Actually, no explanation at all. He said, really, the point of the thing was,

science is going to tell you who did this. And the science would shock everyone. Wow. Yes. It's stunning to see that much. Yes. For me, there's like, what the hell happened? Blank Libel told police the science would tell them just what happened to Yana. And it did.

All right, so walk me through what you saw when you went in. As soon as I walked in, leaning against this bookshelf was a mattress. Leslie Thompson is a crime scene specialist with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. So what really struck me about this scene in general was really the lack of blood. The lack of blood. The lack of blood that was present. For a murder this brutal, she expected a lot more. So where did it all go?

Thompson set up a demonstration. All right, so you've prepped this horse. This is a piece of linoleum that you've put animal blood. That's correct. And to my naked eye here, I just see some blood spatter that's right here. She showed us how she can analyze what happened, even if there's not a lot to see. So this is actually, I like to call it Luminol 2.0. It's called Blue Star Magnum. It's a chemical compound that when sprayed on a surface reveals where blood was

and where a cleaning substance was used to remove it. It creates a luminescence or it creates light. It's a search tool for blood that you cannot see with the naked eye. Okay, let's see what it does. Wow. Oh, you can see the footprints, the wiping. Oh, you can see the footprints, the wiping. When investigators first came into the master bedroom,

they noticed some bloodstains on the mattress, but that was all they could see. Okay, let's bring up the blue star. Wow. Then, the bathroom. This is what it looked like when you walked in, essentially? Essentially, yes. Okay, now bring up the blue star.

Wow. And so this, none of this you could really see clearly? You couldn't see it at all. The guest bedroom also lit up. In fact, much of the condo was splashed with luminescence. It lit up. It lit up in a bad way. Even though we had been in there now for two days, until she did that and lit this up,

and then all of a sudden, at least I gained a much better appreciation for what happened there. What was the story it said to you about Yana and what happened to her? The story was this event didn't just happen quickly in one location. And perhaps most shocking of all is how Yana died. It's called exsanguination. Am I saying it correctly? There's a new vocabulary word.

I've been a crime reporter for 25 years, and I've not heard this one. First time I've heard it as well. Exsanguination, meaning the blood had been drained from her body. That's why Yana was so pale. Detectives believe it took between six and eight hours for Yana to die. six and eight hours for Yana to die. It was clear Yana's killer had tried to cover up any incriminating blood evidence, wiping down floors and walls.

But where did all those cleaning materials, as well as the bedding and clothing, go? And this is the shoot, so everything went down here. Yes. Almost immediately after they arrived, detectives noticed how close the trash chute was to the apartment. So this is the chute that? Came from the third floor to the trash dump. Detective Cotter and his team collected 11 trash

bags from the dumpsters, each filled with an abundance of evidence. Towels, clothing, and bedding. One particular item stood out, a bed skirt with this bloody handprint. As you can see, it appears part of the pinky finger is missing. Turns out Blake was missing part of his right pinky finger. Match for match. Just that much. Pinky missing. Yes. Everything at the scene pointed to Blake as the killer. There was no other suspects. It was it was clear as

to what occurred. This murder had nothing to do with Russian mobsters or jealous girlfriends. There's no concrete evidence that Cody actually had big gambling debts, only that Blake believed he did. In fact, Blake never mentioned any scenario that pointed away from him. It also wasn't a drug-fueled attack. Only a small amount of marijuana was found in his system. So why did Blake kill Yana? Detectives struggled to find a motive.

I was trying to extract something to explain what can cause a man to do this to a woman he professed to love and was engaged to. Did you get anything from that interview that answered that question? When he said, women don't like me. And he alluded to the fact that if it wasn't for money, women wouldn't like me. I think that he's a person that controlled the women in his life with money. And I think at some point there was probably no was said to him. And I think he

said, you don't say no to me because I control the pocketbook. And I think that ultimately caused her demise. Still, a crime this unconscionable doesn't usually come out of nowhere, which is why detectives even tried looking into Blake's background. We ran into roadblocks. Not a lot of people would talk to us. None of his family would. We also searched for answers. Here in Toronto, we approached virtually everyone we could find from Blake's early life. Family members, classmates, even teachers.

And here in L.A., we tried to talk to everyone from his adult life, his wife, girlfriends and friends. But no one, not one of them, was willing to go on camera and talk about him. Did you find anything in his background, any history, any whiff of a story that he was a violent or abusive or strange kid or teenager? No, none of that. Toronto reporter Jake Edmiston. I think speaking to people who knew him in different phases of his life, all of them are as shocked as we are. You know, the big question is, he must be crazy.

Look at what he did. You know, he's tortured this woman. Look at what he did. You know, he's tortured this woman. But Blake is not crazy, says forensic psychologist and 48 Hours consultant Chris Mohandy, who worked with the prosecution on this case. So you can do outrageous, heinous, terrible things to other people, but that's different than being found

insane or incompetent in the eyes of the law. Mulhandy never met Blake, but a court-ordered psychiatrist did and found Blake fit to stand trial. Mulhandy says that's because Blake Leibel understands right from wrong, which is the legal standard. It's shocking what he did, but it's not surprising what he did. Mulhandy points to Blake's background, a rich kid alienated from his father at a young age with a need for power and control over women.

He's always gotten everything he wants when he wants it. But he also has an underlying violent fantasy life that he's been mentally rehearsing for years. And so when the rage comes out, it takes the form of those fantasies. The fantasies? Remember that graphic novel Blake was working on years before Yana's murder? Turns out it was about a vicious killer, and it was soon to take center stage in Blake's story. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In June 2018, two years after Yana's murder, a very different-looking Blake

Leibel went on trial. Even without a clear motive, prosecutor Beth Silverman was sure once the jury saw that graphic novel, they would convict him of Yana's murder. This crime appears to be patterned after the defendant's book, Syndrome. But would that be enough? Tell me about when you heard the verdict. See more of the crime scene animation at 48hours.com. What this book provides, this syndrome, it provides a blueprint for this murder. It provides a blueprint for this murder. Prosecutor Beth Silverman believes Blake was acting out a fantasy from his graphic novel, which shows a doll with its scalp missing on the cover.

Inside, more chilling details. The depiction of two victims hanging upside down in order to drain the blood or to exsanguinate the blood from these fictional bodies. Prosecutors say that during the prolonged period Blake was torturing Yana. Over and over and over again. He somehow manages to have food delivered several times as this security footage shows. We know that the defendant had ample time to stop and change his mind. He chose to commit these horrendous crimes against Deanna Cassio. They also present all that blood evidence from the crime scene. Just to be clear, this is all the victim's blood. And along with the jury,

Olga sees dozens of graphic photos of Yana. How a human could do such a thing? And for the first time, here's exactly how profoundly her daughter suffered. Why did you feel the need to sit through the trial and to sit through the details? I am her mom, and I must put all her pain through me. I asked them to give me those pictures, those photos. I wanted to hug each of those photos and kiss each of those photos. Olga says someone who loved Yana needed to bear witness to all that she had gone through.

Blake's brother Cody was in court every day, but declined our request for an interview. Their father did not attend the trial. After six days of testimony from 14 prosecution witnesses, the defense calls none of its own. Instead, lawyer Haida Takasugi tries to create reasonable doubt, arguing that Blake didn't actually author that graphic novel. He hired writers. They brought the story to life, and it was presented for Mr. Laibel for his approval. And we believe, as is your duty as jurors, and you will critically look at the evidence, we believe that you will realize its shortcomings and downfalls,

that the only verdict in this case would be not guilty for the charges and all the special allegations. But the prosecution has the last word. This obviously was a vicious, a horrific, a gruesome, sadistic, unspeakably evil set of crimes. And it's your job in this case to seek justice. unspeakably evil set of crimes. And it's your job in this case to seek justice. It takes the jury just three hours to reach a verdict. The group will read the verdicts. We, the jury, find the defendant, Blake Lybell,

guilty of first degree murder of Ayanna Kazian. Blake shows no emotion, but out in the hallway, Olga is over calm. She just wants to scream, Yanochka, Yanochka. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't save you. We're all alone. I'm lost. When you heard the verdict, but you're very emotional about it. Yeah.

Given what we knew about the case, I did take it home. And it hung like a picture on the wall for me. I mean, I have two daughters. Rob has one daughter. You know, as fathers, there's that paternal instinct. Olga says while she appreciates the detectives, she is also haunted by the knowledge that her instinct to call the police

was not enough to save her daughter. Do you believe if they had broken down the door on Wednesday when you were there with them, that she would still be here today? I think so, yes. It's a difficult question to answer, but I think based on, if we look at the timeline from the pathologist's standpoint, I believe she might have already been dead at that point.

The defendant's profound brutality. Blake is sentenced to life in prison without parole. And his inconceivable cruelty. With both Blake and Yana gone, the focus is now on their two-year-old daughter, Diana. Nothing can ever make the death of Yana right, but I'm hoping that the Liable family does something honorable and assist in her time of need.

But Olga says she has never heard from anyone in the Leibel family. One would think that they would attempt to reach out to Olga, seeing as that Olga's granddaughter is also a granddaughter of Blake's father and a niece to Blake's brother. There has not been one cent paid from their family to support Diana. More than anything in the world, Yana wanted her daughter to be brought up in America. But because of a lack of money, Diana is now living in Ukraine, in the town where Yana was laid to rest.

For some reason, I want to keep talking about her. It makes my life easier. I feel her presence every day, every minute. Last February, the Kazian family won a wrongful death civil suit against Blake Libel and was awarded a settlement of $41.6 million. They have yet to receive any money.