If you look at his videos, you can tell pretty quickly that small-time YouTube personality Ash Armand is uncomfortably creepy, overtly sexual, and desperate for fame. He parlayed that desperation into a gig on a short lived TV called Gigolos, which aired on Showtime from 2011 to 2016. Ironically, his biggest brush with fame came from somewhere completely different: murdering a model in his Las Vegas condo in a drug-fueled rage.
It’s one of the most disturbing true crime stories of recent memory, if only for the brutality alone. Ash Armand, by the way, is a stage name. His real name is Akshaya Kubiak. It’s easy to throw stones and call people “creepy,” but take a look at this man’s YouTube bio, which is still up despite the heinous nature of his crime.
“Welcome to my Channel, designed so you can ask me questions about sensuality, sexuality, fitness, nutrition and spirituality. I’m Ash Armand star of showtimes Gigolos series. My purpose is to bring connected sexuality to the Main Stream by creating a database of educational sexual material. Look forward to empowering you on your journey to sexual mastery.”
…What?! One of his videos apparently teaches people how to, you-know-what. It’s not even worth mentioning explicitly, let’s just say it’s not something any regular human being would be concerned with. The victim in this murder, which happened on July 16, 2020, is a woman named Herleen Kaur Dulai.
She was a 29-year-old model with brown eyes and sparkly brown hair who graduated from Temple University. She had a lot going for her. She was pretty and smart and according to her friends she was in Vegas to get a grad degree after getting a degree in bio science in undergrad. She was also looking for a place to belong. Her friend Amrita described her as “very beautiful,” but that she spent most of her life “feeling out of place.”
She found a safe haven in the gym. She lost 40 pounds in a month, and started a youth training program. She even became a personal trainer. Eventually, she caught the eye of Kubiak. He’s an imposing figure, and hard to brush off. He had a buff body and flowing black hair, and by all accounts he was a very handsome man.
He used what God gave him to make money, charging as much as $800 for two hours, and $3,000 for an overnight. Want to spent a week with him? That’ll be $25,000. It’s a bit of a point of contention whether Dulai was a client of Kubiak’s or not. Regardless, in a few weeks they were talking every day and when from casual to intimate just like that.
Kubiak is obviously an intense person. He was raised by wandering, bohemian parents and trained in a spirituality that focused on Tantra. He was also physically abused as a child, saying he was hit by his godfather and other adults “quite harshly.”
He meditated, studied Qigong, and eventually became a massage therapist. He also got into the mediation-through-psychedelics community, and regularly practiced martial arts. He liked to do mushrooms and go to raves, and eventually he caught the eye of a man named Garren James, who founded an escort service for women.
That led to the Gigolos show and small time fame. The show changed him, though, his friends said. He got insecure about his body and started doing steroids, and he got huge. He loved the attention, and his ego blew up along with his physique. His drug use also ballooned as well.
He lost his escort job but his Gigolo fame helped him get attention online, something he coveted more and more. This was the man that Dulai met. He was living with an ex at the time, and on July 15, just one day before he brutally murdered Dulai, he told his ex that Dulai had “some horrible dark energy around her.”
On the day of the murder, Dulai went to Kubiak’s house to retrieve and dog-sit his chihuahua. Their relationship may not have been sexual at the time, but they were still close. At some point, they decided to take mushrooms. They went into Kubiak’s bedroom and prayed and watched Avatar by candlelight. Then he killed her.
The next morning, there was blood everywhere, and Dulai was black and blue, and not breathing. Kubiak called 911.
“It is going to sound insane because it is insane,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever done mushrooms before, but I was no longer in this reality. I was in trans-different realities. And then I saw the person next to me.”
He told the dispatcher that “there was a struggle” and that he “temporarily” lost his mind. Clark County Fire Captain Darren Lutes responded with three paramedics in tow, while Kubiak performed CPR. He told the dispatcher that she had a history of cancer and had a heart attack.
When Lutes walked in, he knew whatever happened was a far cry from a heart attack. She was covered in candle wax, and her ear was bruised. There were bloody handprints everywhere, and Dulai’s body showed signs of strangulation.
Lutes asked him how she got a black eye and her other injuries. “She attacked me, and I attacked her,” Kubiak said. Later, he told Lutes “I did this,” and that he would surrender when police came. Homicide detectives showed up after Dulai was pronounced dead on the scene.
There were signs of struggle everywhere. There was blood inside the washing machine, a sign that Kubiak may have tried to cover up the crime. There were also numerous towels sopping with blood as well. Kubiak was unharmed, except for a small cut on his finger.
The full spectrum of Dulai’s injuries didn’t come to light until later. Her mouth was destroyed and her teeth were shattered, and pieces of them were found in her stomach. Major organs like her brain and esophagus were bleeding. Her neck was fractured, and she suffered a broken rib.
The cause of death was listed as “blunt force trauma with strangulation as a contributing factor.”
In court, he said that he “blacked out” and didn’t recall attacking her, but he knew she attacked him. He was charged with murder, but took a deal and pleaded guilty to felony counts of manslaughter and mayhem. He was sentenced eight to 20 years in prison.