Maybe her drawing skills aren’t half-baked.
Viktoria Nasyrova, the Russian-born former dominatrix who was sentenced to more than two decades behind bars for trying to poison her look-alike pal with a slice of tainted cheesecake, has taken up drawing while cooling her heels in the clink.
“My so called ‘signature’ work is letters of people’s names –with butterflies and other things — in 3D,” Nasyrova, 47, recently told The Post from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in a series of jailhouse interviews.
“You would be very surprised,” she continued. “I get an enormous amount of pleasure from seeing people’s faces when I give them what they ordered from me — nobody ever expects it. I can call what I make, without false modesty, works of art … Even for me, they look like little miracles.”
The raven-haired alleged serial poisoner said she always liked art, culture and travel — but it’s gotten hard for her to find people to talk to about that since she moved to the Westchester County women’s prison following her April sentencing.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m better than others, although in some ways I am,” Nasyrova said. “But to find a person on your intellectual level … It’s hard to find people here that I can really communicate with. I want to talk about art, culture, travel, books.”
But even since discovering her new passion for drawing — and being able to enjoy fresh vegetables she didn’t get while on Rikers Island awaiting trial — Nasyrova said she’s “on edge all the time.”
“I wasn’t like that before. In jail, you get the sense that something is about to happen any moment. You can be eating and then the next minute someone next to you is fighting … I can’t relax,” she whined.
All that will end if she succeeds in her plans to appeal her February attempted murder conviction — which Nasyrova insisted would happen because she is, of course, innocent.
“I didn’t do anything,” she insisted as she sat in a visitor’s room at Bedford Hills. “I never robbed anyone. I never killed anyone. I never tried to kill anyone. They sentenced me to 21 years for a crime I did not commit.”
That’s not what a Queens jury thought when it found Nasyrova guilty of trying to kill Olga Tsvyk, a 35-year-old eyelash stylist, by feeding her a piece of poisoned cheesecake in August 2016.
Prosecutors trotted out a string of damning witnesses during the trial, including Tsvyk; Ruben Borukhov, the former beau who told the court that Nasyrova poisoned him during a date, stole his credit card and went on a $2,600 spending spree; and Nadezda Ford, the daughter of a Russian woman whose body Nasyrova allegedly torched after she killed her.
The testimony — combined with DNA evidence Nasyrova left on the cheesecake box — doomed the defendant, whom Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder called “an extremely dangerous woman.”
But during her interview with The Post, Nasyrova tried to paint herself as less evil killer, more arts and crafts teacher.
“I had no idea I can draw, but I am good,” she said, adding that she made a few hundred dollars each month in Rikers for her illustrations, which run the gamut from Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse to classic cartoons like Roger Rabbit and Betty Boop.
“I make all sorts of things for inmates: cards, posters, T-shirts,” she said. “Once, I made birthday decorations for an inmate’s daughter. She liked the Minions, so I made large cardboard cut-outs, painted them like the Minions.
“Then I put on 3-D glasses, stood them up, then made T-shirts for all the kids with the Minions characters and their names on each T-shirt,” she beamed. “It’s only the beginning.”
Despite her pleasant new hobby, the old, fiery Nasyrova quickly surfaced when asked about things like the food in prison — or the trial that put her there.
“The food here is garbage,” she said. “But I like that I can order fresh fruit and vegetables … I get more recreation time here. I already lost 20 pounds.”
She has also refused to go to mandated anger management courses because she thought it was a waste of time.
“It’s bulls–t,” she said. “They don’t care about what they are doing. They are not going to help me. I do have anger issues, but they are not the kind of anger issues that these classes can help me with.”
Other inmates have already felt her icy wrath, she claims.
“Once I got into a fight, and I was so angry that I kept beating her, and she was covered in blood,” Nasyrova said. “Then I realized that if I don’t stop, I am going to seriously maim her. So I stopped.”
Her arrival at Bedford Hills was quite the spectacle, she said.
She was covered in blood when she arrived, which she claimed was from a transport guard punching her in the nose.
They called extra security and “strapped me up like Hannibal Lecter,” she said, referring to the fictional cannibal serial killer, and adding she was then placed on suicide watch.
“I told them, ‘I will never kill myself. With my intellect, if I wanted to kill myself, I would have done it already, believe me,’” she said.
“Everybody knows who I am here,” Nasyrova boasted. “There are a few Russian-speaking inmates here, and before I arrived they were asking them about me, ‘You know she’s coming here? She’s a legend.’”
But Nasyrova also claimed her supposed reputation is overblown.
“I’m not gangster, I’m not criminal — I’m a regular human being,” she said, before adding that she doesn’t “tolerate any disrespect.”
“When people call me ‘Russia’ or anything other than my name, I don’t respond,” she said. “I tell them, ‘You can call me Viktoria or inmate Nasyrova, not “Russia,” or “white-ass,” or anything other than my name.’ You don’t have to like me, but you have to respect me.”
She lashed out at every person involved in her case — including the prosecutors who “turned the trial into a Broadway show” and the witnesses who testified against her.
“It’s a totally fabricated case,” she said, arguing she had no reason to poison Tsvyk, who nearly died after eating the powerful Russian tranquilizer Phenazepam, and that an old drug conviction should have wounded Borukhov’s credibility.
Prosecutors said Nasyrova tried to hijack Tsvyk’s identity by making off with her passport and cash, among other things.
“The trial was built on the fact that I tried to kill this woman because we look alike and I want to steal her identity,” the temptress countered. “But she is not a US citizen, she doesn’t have a green card, she doesn’t have any rights … what is the point for me to try to kill this woman?”
Nasyrova claimed Tsvyk is the real villain, accusing the victim of trying to frame her and putting the Phenazepam on the cakebox herself so she could remain in the US — without making clear how those two things were connected.
Nasyrova also ranted about an illegal organ donation ring that she claims operates in the tri-state area, said she wants to sue the jail because a correction officer punched her on the way to Bedford Hills, and believes the Russian government is trying to frame her.
When The Post contacted Tsvyk, she said Nasyrova deserves what she got.
“Yeah, I planted the Phenazepam,” Tsvyk said, sarcasm dripping from her words. “I poisoned myself, and all those other people also drugged themselves. Yet she is the one in jail … she is lying about everything.”
Borukhov admitted he was arrested for growing pot about 15 years ago, but served his time and never used drugs himself.
“I told the truth,” Borukhov said. “What she did to people … she deserves whatever she gets. Everyone is lying, everyone is corrupt, she is the only one that says the truth, yet she got 21 years.”
Nasyrova, meanwhile, compared herself to Matt Damon’s character in the movie “The Martian,” one of her favorite flicks that she says has “inspired” her.
“Can you imagine a person in such a situation? To be left alone on a foreign planet, and not only to survive, but to make it back home?” Nasyrova asked.
“For me it’s the same situation — not only to survive in jail, but to gain my freedom.”
But her victims are less concerned about Nasyrova’s supposed struggles and more worried about what she’ll do if or when she eventually gets out.
“She’s a very dangerous person, a scary person,” Tsvyk told The Post. “She is a manipulator and a liar. I thank God that she can’t do what she’s been doing to people anymore, although who knows what she’s doing in jail. She is capable of anything.”
“I hope they don’t let her out early, lest she come after me.”