Will the CHEESECAKE POISONER GET HER just deserts?
She’s the glamorous Russian seductress who attempted the perfect murder. Here, the Mail talks to the investigator who tracked her down after an alleged international crime spree that has all the makings of a Netflix thriller
at Tsvyk’s eyelash extension salon. But in August 2016, she called Tsvyk saying she desperately needed an eyelash touch-up but couldn’t get to the salon and the beautician agreed to see her at her own home in Queens.
Nasyrova turned up carrying a cheesecake as a thank-you gift which, she said, was from ‘the best bakery in Brooklyn’. In a scene that carried echoes of the children’s story, Snow White, Nasyrova ate two slices to make it look harmless, before persuading Tsvyk to eat one.
Within a few minutes Tsvyk was vomiting and hallucinating. Nasyrova helped her to bed and returned the next day with chicken soup. After eating it, Tsvyk fell into a coma. She was found semiconscious two days later, by her sister. She had been dressed in lingerie and pills had been scattered around her to make it look as if she’d tried to kill herself.
Her valuables were missing, including €4,500 cash, jewellery and her Ukrainian passport and US-issued employment authorisation card.
Forensic examinations revealed that the cheesecake had been laced with phenazepam, a powerful sedative developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s to treat insomnia and anxiety which can be fatal in large doses.
The cheesecake box was covered in Nasyrova’s DNA.
While NYPD police continued to search in vain for Nasyrova, Weisberg began working on his own investigation after Nadia contacted him in February 2017.
He says his first thought, given that the Russians, the FBI, Interpol and NYPD had all failed to find her was: ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ But after obsessively staring at her Facebook photographs he began to piece together vital clues.
‘I never look at what people want me to see on these sites,’ he explains adding that Nasyrova’s vanity was her downfall: ‘She’s the centre of her own universe. She thinks she’s it.’
The first thing he noticed was a car dashboard reflected in Nasyrova’s sunglasses; that and the white stitching on the black leather seats led to the conclusion that she was driving a Chrysler 300.
He also noted that many of the ‘likes’ attached to the photograph were centred around Sheepshead Bay, a neighbourhood of New York’s Brooklyn district.
His investigators searched the area for Chrysler 300s and checked the licence plates. The owner of one of them had a Russiansounding name and when Weisberg checked the address, he recognised the building in Nasyrova’s other selfies. She was living with the owner of the car. After staking out the building and making certain she was there, he called NYPD officers who swooped in and arrested her.
‘It felt like something out of a movie, waiting for her to be arrested,’ he says. ‘I was anxious that nothing would go wrong.’
Recalling the ‘beautiful’ moment she was brought out in handcuffs, he adds: ‘I said: “Good morning, Viktoriya,” and she looks at me as if to say, “What the hell is going on here?” ’
‘For me it was a great day at work but for Nadia it was a life-changer.’
Nasyrova’s arrest in March 2017 made headlines from New York to
Her vanity ended up being her downfall
Moscow. But while she was locked up in New York’s famous Rikers Island jail it took nearly six years to bring her to trial.
Although the delay was partly because of Covid, Nasyrova, ever the manipulator, went on hunger strike and sued prison authorities over an alleged beating by female inmates, managing to get herself a payout of around €400,000.
She is due to be sentenced next month and faces up to 25 years in jail for her crime.
After that, it’s likely she’ll be extradited back to Russia where she will stand trial all over again, this time for murder.
For her part, Nasyrova continues to protest her innocence in all matters. Her attorney told this newspaper that they are ‘disappointed in the jury’s verdict and are exploring our options going forward’.
Justice may have caught up with Nasyrova, but it’s unlikely that she’s going to go away quietly.
There is another, scarcely believable, plot twist, too. The Mail has discovered that Nasyrova recently got married after meeting a male inmate in a transport bus and writing to him before getting permission to wed.
The jaw-dropping story of the Russian cheesecake poisoner looks set to run and run.