The Curious Case of...

She did eat cheesecake.

Whether it was poison, I don't know, but she did

eat cheesecake. - It wasn't, like,

so delicious as she advertised before.

She's within minutes of dying.

Olga and Viktoria, they was kind of style the same.

They both was, like, curvy.

There was a look-alike.

-Like, you know, it's -- -I don't think so.

-I don't see it. -No, I see it.

There was a look-alike.

She thinks that she's the smartest person

in the room at all times.

She doesn't have a degree in pharmacology.

She doesn't know what she's doing.

She's just haphazardly poisoning people.

She's wanted for murder in Russia.

She's very dangerous.

I'm very particular about my gear,

the type of gear that I have, where my gear is.

I shouldn't have to look to see where gear is.

So I just have, um...

fresh spare magazines. I have my flashlight.

I have a combat application tourniquet in the back.

I have handcuffs.

I have a level-three retention holster.

So that just because we're dealing with children,

you don't want any issues where kids are trying to grab at it

because some of the young guys do get

sort of fascinated by it.

I did 20 years with the New York City Police Department.

Now I'm sitting here in a playground.

My name is Kevin Rodgers.

I'm a former detective with the NYPD.

I retired in July of 2021, and I moved

to Middletown, Delaware.

I'm now a constable at Lorewood Grove Elementary School.

I like to be that the first law enforcement touch they have

is me, meaning it's not...

the police coming to your house because there was an argument

or a car stop or something like that.

I liked them to be, "Hey, the first cop that I ever

"dealt with was in my school.

"And he was cool as heck, and he got along

with all of us, and he was awesome."

On September 2nd, 2016, it was your quote-unquote normal day

up in the detective squad, thinking about what we're gonna

get to eat and having some coffee and things like that.

But I remember when the phone rang, everything changed.

The phone call was from patrol, just stating that they had

a grand larceny.

The victim, she's missing items from her apartment, cash,

jewelry, and identification.

So I said, "OK, you know, put me down as notified,"

because something like that, a grand larceny,

isn't something that we wouldn't jump to.

So I probably wouldn't have gotten the case had I not

received another call from the lieutenant,

which is unheard of.

He tells us that she's just out of it.

"She's not drunk, and she doesn't seem

"like she's under the influence of anything, but she just seems

"just extremely groggy and just out of it.

And would you mind coming out and talk to her?"

I said, "Sure."

I'll be honest, I'm cynical.

A lot of times it could be an insurance job

or it could just be they were careless

and they don't wanna take blame for it,

so they say, "I'll just say somebody stole it."

I'm thinking, this woman's full of it.

We're gonna get there for two minutes.

We're gonna prove this woman wrong.

We're gonna punch holes in her story.

We tell her she's lying, tell her, "Have a nice day,"

so we can get back to the office and investigate actual crimes.

We walk in through a side door.

There's a bunch of cops there, still sort of scratching

their heads as far as what's going on.

The victim is 35-year-old Olga Tsvyk.

She's an immigrant from Ukraine,

and she's a esthetician. She does eyelashes.

She just seemed, like, not lucid in any stretch

of the word.

Her eyes were not darty, but just very sort

of not following us with her eyes

as quickly as a normal person.

It was very strange, very strange.

Now, cops are trained in determining

when somebody's under the influence.

She was not exhibiting the telltale signs of being

under the influence of alcohol.

She did not have dilated pupils, which could be

an indicator of certain drugs in her system.

The situation with Olga was very puzzling.

The lesson I learned that day is that women will go

and they will pay

to have extra eyelashes inserted into their eyelids.

She's saying that, "I'm missing about $1,700 of cash."

In my line of work, I have to be direct.

And unfortunately, if it offends somebody, I'm sorry.

But these are the questions that I have to ask.

And one of the questions I did ask her several times was,

you know, you do eyelashes every once in a while.

You live in this really nice neighborhood.

How else are you supporting yourself?

But she was very adamant. Like, "I understand

this looks bad. I'm telling the truth."

In my cynical view, she wants to make this

out to be that she's a victim of some type of crime

when she just wanted to stage something.

Other people had to be interviewed with this case

because I feel like it was getting a little bit bigger

at that time.

So I said, "Let me talk to Stella, her boss,"

who was the one that was one of the people that found her.

My name is Stella Stepanya.

I'm owner of the Salon Estelle Hair Studio.

We do styling, lashes, facial.

My clients and my coworkers, I feel like it's my family.

I'm like their mom,

and they are like my kids.

Olga was very nice girl.

She was doing the most popular, pretty lashes at that time.

Olga was good to the salon,

and salon was good for Olga as well.

Olga was always on time.

If it's anything, she always texts me.

That's why when Olga did not show up that day,

it was very surprise.

I was worried, but I was thinking, maybe she went out,

maybe she's not feeling well, but nothing serious.

So after work, I went to the dinner,

and I had a phone call

from Olga.

There was her neighbor. She called me saying,

"Your coworker, she's acting like not normal.

"She's saying something not normal.

Come and see what we're gonna do together."

I walked up the stairs, and I see Olga

was leaning in a bed with the heat on.

There was a lot of pills in the floor, in the bed.

She dressed with, like, very sexy lingerie.

Her face was swollen. Her body was swollen.

Her arm was swollen.

Maybe something happens with her.

She got upset.

I said, "She probably wanna kill herself."

Ambulance say, "If you guys gonna call in

five more minutes later, she will be probably passed away."

They took the blood work. They see she's not on her drugs.

I said, "I know the girl. She doesn't even smoke."

The hospital actually does a lumbar puncture,

a spinal tap.

Both of those tests came back negative for any type

of psychotropic or crazy narcotic drug.

I was expecting to find some type of an opiate,

a benzo, a Xanax, or a Klonopin, or something that would

put her in this state.

If she's in this bad shape, blood work, urinalysis,

spinal taps, something is gonna pop where that,

"Oh, she had this in her system."

Nothing.

OK, so this is weird, right?

I mean, her toxicology screen is clear, and there's no

medically known reason. She wasn't having a stroke.

There's no discernible, identifiable drugs

in her system that would have caused this.

So why did she almost die? What caused it?

Stella goes to Olga's house.

One of the things that she points out to me

in sort of passing, saying, "Oh, and by the way,

her room was 107 degrees."

The heat was on full blast, and that in order for her

to turn the heat off, she had to look for the remote control

which controlled the unit, which was thrown under the bed.

Somebody intentionally turned the heat up all the way

in late August in New York

and didn't want someone to turn it off.

NYPD are great officers and detectives, OK?

They're so experienced.

This is a city of multiple millions of people.

They see everything, and they are really puzzled.

I went to Olga's house thinking, "We're gonna be back

in the office having dinner in 20 minutes"

Now I'm in the house two hours, three hours, and thinking,

"I think something actually happened."

Either I'm dealing with a complete sociopath,

or she's telling the truth.

You remember you went next day to the hospital?

I asked you to go to the hospital.

I don't think I ever saw Olga in that situation before.

She was swollen.

She didn't even look like Olga at that time.

When you saw her, she was already

a little better, because night before,

when I took her to the hospital, she was really weird,

swollen even more bigger than you saw her the next day.

-Really? - Mm.

I don't know. That was the --