Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 07.17.23

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Woman poisons lookalike friend to steal her identity. Monisha Harrell disappears after moving to Bessemer, Alabama.  For more crime and justice news go to crimeonline.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace, breaking crime news now. Victoria Nasarova is invited to a new friend's New York apartment. Like any good guest, she brings a gift, a homemade cheesecake laced with sedatives. Nasarova puts the woman in bed, empties the bottle of the sedative around her to make it appear like a suicide. She then steals the victim's ID and passport. Nasarova, 47, now convicted of assault, unlawful imprisonment, and theft, facing up to 25 years behind bars. Nancy, Nasarova used a powerful Russian tranquilizer,

phenazepam, to drug Olga Svik. Svik began vomiting heavily after eating the cheesecake and eventually passed out. The next morning, a relative discovered Svik unconscious in her bed and called 911. Svik was treated for the overdose, and doctors report that she nearly had a heart attack. The two women are very physically similar, and it appears Nosorova intended to use Svik's identity to travel back to Russia, where Nasarova is a wanted woman in relation to an allegation that she killed her neighbor and burned their body before fleeing to New York City in 2014. Nasarova has also used poison before, drugging a date, then stealing his watch and credit cards. After a roughly 10-day trial,

Nasarova's sentenced to 21 years in prison. She expressed her displeasure with the judge's decision with yelled expletives as she was escorted from the courtroom. More crime and justice news after this. With the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Limley. We begin in Minnesota, where a man who fatally shot a nine-year-old girl while she was playing on a trampoline with friends has received a sentence of more than 37 years in prison. For details, we turn to Sydney Sumner with Crime Online. Our friends with the Minneapolis Star Tribune report that 20-year-old Dupree Sharif Robinson pled guilty in March to second-degree murder in the killing of Trinity Otteson Smith in 2021. Later, he made an unsuccessful bid to withdraw the guilty plea. A criminal complaint

stated that Trinity was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting involving a gang. According to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, Robinson's intended targets and a trampoline in a backyard were both in the line of fire. Trinity's friends and family members attended the sentencing hearing. Avela, Trinity's best friend, whose birthday was being celebrated at the time of the shooting, also wrote messages for her father and stepmother to read in court. The incident in May of 2021 was one of three shootings in Minneapolis that summer that resulted in injured children. Investigators looking into the stabbing incident involving disgraced former sports physician Larry Nassar in a federal prison in Florida are missing

a crucial piece of information, footage of the assault. According to a source familiar with the situation who spoke to the Associated Press, Nassar was attacked inside his cell, which is a blind spot for prison surveillance cameras that only capture communal areas and corridors. Due to the lack of video, it is referred to as a quote, unwitnessed event in federal prison lingo. Nassar, the former doctor for the U.S. women's gymnastics team, is currently serving a long prison sentence for sexually abusing athletes and having access to obscene photos of young children. This is his second assault while in federal detention. Leslie Van Houten, a Charles Manson follower who at the age of 19

assisted in the gruesome murders of a wealthy Los Angeles couple at the cult leader's direction has been released from a California jail after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence. Once again, Crime Online's Sydney Sumner. Van Houten, who is now 73, was released to parole supervision according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Her attorney, Nancy Dutriault, says Van Houten was driven to transitional housing during the early morning hours after leaving the California Institution for Women in Corona, east of Los Angeles. Days earlier, Governor Gavin Newsom declared he would not appeal the state appeals court's decision that Van Houten should be granted parole. The state Supreme Court, he claimed, was not likely to take an appeal into consideration.

The murders in 1969 and the trials that followed riveted the country during a turbulent time that included the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Van Houten claimed during a parole hearing in 2016 that Manson had named the impending racial war Helter Skelter after a Beatles song, and that the killings marked the beginning of it. She went on to say that in order for his disciples to be able to live in a hole in the desert underground, Manson had them trained to fight and taught them how to can food. Van Houten was sentenced to death in 1971 for helping Manson's group carry out the killings of Lina LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. Her sentence was later commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court overturned the

state's death penalty law in 1972. Voters and state lawmakers eventually reinstated the death penalty, but it did not apply retroactively. Manisha Harrell normally checks in with family once a week after she moves to Bessemer, Alabama. But when the 36-year-old stops responding, Bessemer police called for a welfare check. No one answers the door at Manisha's apartment. Witnesses say the last time she was seen around the apartment was July 19, 2021. Manisha Harrell last seen wearing leggings and flip-flops. Harrell has pierced ears and a tattoo on her forearm. If you have seen or think you have seen Manisha Harrell, please call Bessemer PD at 205-428-3541. For the latest crime and justice news, go to CrimeOnline.com. With this crime alert, I'm Nancy Grace. This is an iHeart Podcast.