It’s like a thriller: From Russia — with poison.
Viktoria Nasyrova, 47, is on trial in Queens this week, charged with trying to kill her doppelganger with tranquilizer-laced cheesecake and chicken soup as part of a sinister identity-theft plot.
“She’s quite a manipulative person from what I can tell,” private investigator Herman Weisberg, who tracked down the Russian-born Nasyrova in Brooklyn, told The Post. “If you take all of these allegations and put them together, she’s a menace to society — there’s no other way around it.”
Nasyrova denied the poisoning in a previous interview with The Post. Her attorney, Christopher Hoyt, did not return messages seeking comment, but he told jurors Monday the charges against his client doesn’t match the former fugitive’s actions.
The international fugitive’s tale began in November 2014 when Nasyrova was caught on a traffic camera in Russia with the body of her neighbor, Alla Alekseenko, propped up in the passenger seat of her car. Alekseenko’s remains were later identified via dental records, Alekseenko’s daughter, Nadezda Ford previously told The Post.
“All that was left basically was a skull and bones,” Ford said. “No legs, no left hand … I couldn’t believe it.”
Court documents allege Nasyrova later failed a lie-detector test about her neighbor’s death. Russian authorities believe she killed the 54-year-old to get her hands on roughly $53,000 that Alekseenko made from selling her late mother’s home in Krasnodar in western Russia.
Perhaps in fear of Russia’s notorious prisons, Nasyrova became an international fugitive — fleeing the country for Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. There, she sometimes used the names “Rachel” or “Mara” while working as a dominatrix, she told The Post in 2017.
“We mutually satisfied each other’s primal instincts,” Nasyrova said of the men. “I was giving them what they weren’t getting at home. You know what I’m talking about. Men who want to be women, but they can’t openly declare it.”
Naturally, she needed to keep up appearances for her job. She began visiting a salon in Forest Hills, Queens, where she met stylist Olga Tsvyk in early 2016.
The two dark-haired women bore a striking resemblance to each other. “In some pictures, we really do look the same,” Tsvyk told The Daily News in 2018. “We look like two sisters.”
On Aug. 28, 2016, Nasyrova claimed she couldn’t meet at the salon because of a scheduling conflict but begged to see her at home in Forest Hills for an eyelash touch-up, according to Tsyvk. Seemingly grateful, she brought with her a gift: cheesecake that, she said, was from the best bakery in Brooklyn.
Nasyrova ate two slices herself and offered Tsyvk one as well. Tsyvk said she vomited about 20 minutes after eating the dessert, then spent the night feeling sick. The next day, Nasyrova dropped back by with that universal healer, chicken soup.
After eating it, Tsyvk slipped into a coma. She was later found wearing a nightgown with pills scattered around her bed. Prosecutors claim Nasyrova had staged it to look like a suicide attempt after poisoning both the cheesecake and soup with phenazepam.
A depressant developed in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and legally available via prescription, phenazepam is commonly used to treat seizures, anxiety and muscle spasms. But too much of it can lead to “profound sedation,” respiratory depression or death, according to a Department of Justice-Drug Enforcement Administration fact sheet.
Tsyvk spent the next three days in the hospital. As she began to come out of her fog, she reportedly recalled Nasyrova going through her things at the house.
The Russian-born temptress has previously denied poisoning Tsyvk in a jailhouse interview to The Post.
“The last time I saw Olga, she was already not feeling good — she said she either ate something or got food poisoning,” Nasyrova said in April 2017.
Prosecutors allege that Nasyrova took cash, Tsyvk’s passport and employment authorization card, as well as clothes and jewelry that she sold for around $100,000.
“Everything was done in this case very carefully and very methodically by this defendant,” Queens Assistant District Attorney Konstantinos Litourgis told jurors Monday. “This defendant is a very smart individual.”
Nasyrova denied the Russian charges in a CBS interview in 2018.
Nasyrova gave Tsyvk the cheesecake tainted with a powerful tranquilizer, phenazepam, in order to steal her doppelganger’s identity, according to Litourgis.
“This is not a joke,” he told jurors. “It’s not just a story. It’s not an accident and it’s not a mistake. This defendant intended to kill this woman and steal her identity.”
But she wasn’t caught for a while after the alleged poisoning. At the same time, Weisberg, a retired NYPD detective, had been by the relatives of Alekseenko — the dead Russian woman in the car — to track down Nasyrova. He got a break in March 2017 when the dominatrix brazenly posted photos on Facebook of herself clad in fur and with Manhattan’s skyline as a backdrop.
Following her trail to Brooklyn, Weisberg spotted Nasyrova buying a 50-inch television with her boyfriend. The veteran investigator was shocked at the international fugitive’s boldness, he said.
“Considering who was looking for this person and the resources behind it, when I first found her, I was like, ‘This can’t be that easy,’” Weisberg recalled. “She was just hiding in plain sight. She was just there even though she was wanted by Interpol. She was continuing down this bad path here in New York.”
Nasyrova was arrested in Alekseenkso’s murder in March 2017 with help from Weisberg. She was later indicted on second-degree murder charges in February 2018 for allegedly trying to murder Tsyvk. If convicted, she faces up to 25 years in prison.
On top of all this, a Queens man who claims he was drugged by Nasyrova after meeting her on a Russian dating site in 2016 will also take the stand during the trial, which is expected to last more than a week.
The man had eaten fish and vegetables cooked by Nasyrova and was hospitalized three days later, Litourgis said.
“His symptoms almost mirrored that of Olga’s,” he told jurors. “You’re going to learn that the person who did all that was the defendant.”
Nasyrova was previously charged with drugging and robbing two Brooklyn men she met on online dating sites, but ultimately pleaded guilty in June 2019 to a single misdemeanor charge in exchange for 90 days in jail.
But Weisberg warned that attempted murder charge against Nasyrova is “not a slam dunk case by any means” due to the time lapse and the difficultly of proving poisoning allegations.
John Bandler, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Manhattan prosecutor, agreed with Weisberg, saying it’s typically “very hard” to prove drugging allegations.
Some other legal scholars believe the case against Nasyrova relies too heavily on circumstantial evidence.
“This case looks difficult to prosecute because [Tsyvk and Nasyrova] were known to each other,” Brooklyn Law School professor Cynthia Godsoe told The Post. “And so, the fact that her DNA is on the cheesecake doesn’t necessarily prove that she put the drugs in it and that she put the drugs in it intending to kill someone.”
Godsoe continued: “There’s a lot of steps there that could lead to reasonable doubt.”