Arrest in 'Baby Angel' case stuns those who know the Winona mother of 2
Apr. 24—WINONA, Minn. — The announcement of charges filed in Winona's "Baby Angel" cold case has stunned people familiar with the woman in custody.
Jennifer Baechle, 43, a Winona mother of two and Winona State graduate known for supporting performing arts and volunteering at local music festivals and fundraisers, faces two counts of second-degree manslaughter related to the death of an infant in 2011. She was arrested on Thursday morning.
The charges were announced Thursday, April 24, 2025.
Baechle is a longtime resident of Winona and a graduate of WSU. She has been married since 2016, has two children and is involved in the community, volunteering her time with nonprofits, including cooking for a church fundraiser for the Winona Immigration Network, people who know Baechle said.
Retired Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand, who led the initial investigation into the infant's death, said it isn't the profile of a suspect he expected.
"I'm kind of surprised, and I'm wondering why she had to do what she did, you know, and now she's got a couple of kids," he said.
Baechle is accused of placing her newborn baby in a tote bag along with angel figurines and ornaments, incense and other items and placing the bag in the Mississippi River in 2011.
More than 150 Winona-area community members attended a funeral for the infant shortly after she was found in September 2011. Community donations funded a grave marker and a bank account Brand opened continues to fund the ongoing efforts to maintain the grave and provide fresh flowers for the marker.
"For more than 13 years, Baby Angel's tragic death has weighed heavily on the hearts of this community," said Winona County Sheriff Ron Ganrude. "We are grateful to be able to provide answers for this community and for Baby Angel."
Baechle had also been an adjunct faculty member at Winona State University, where she graduated. She was teaching a class in the English department for spring semester 2025.
On Thursday, the university announced Baechle was replaced by another faculty member who will teach the course for the remainder of the semester, according to a statement from WSU.
"This is a shock to the Winona State University community, and our hearts go out to those involved," the statement said.
After graduating from WSU, she taught English and lived abroad in Kazakhstan from 2008 to 2010, trained teachers there and returned to Winona in December 2010, according to U.S. Peace Corps records.
According to a search warrant filed in Winona County, sheriff's deputies investigating the death of the infant spoke with Baechle's family, who said they had no personal contact with Baechle in 2011. Baechle had been living in her van in the Winona area that year, they told investigators. Her family members also recognized items found with the infant in the bag and told investigators that Baechle collected angels and that they gave her an angel ornament every Christmas.
Baechle was also a volunteer board member with the Bluff Country Coop in Winona, serving as an officer on the board through 2024.
Baechle was a fixture at live music and performing arts events in the community befriending musicians and organizers. She would volunteer her time at Winona area music festivals.
People familiar with Baechle through music and the arts declined to speak on the record about Baechle. However, a common word among people who know her was "stunned" about the news.
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When Tsvyk's sister, Iryna, heard about what happened, she hopped on a flight from Ukraine. She arrived on September 1, and found Tsvyk so lethargic—'like a vegetable,' Iryna testified—that she could barely move. Tsvyk needed assistance to get to the bathroom and to eat. She couldn't sleep. Courtesy of CBS News Police recovered this plastic container that had held the cheesecake at Tsvyk's apartment. While nursing her sister back to health, Iryna discovered a scatter of small white pills around her bed. She couldn't find Tsvyk's Ukrainian passport, U.S. paperwork, or her purse. As she searched, she realized Tsvyk was also missing a red bag, some clothes, a gold ring, and perfume, plus $3,000 in cash. She opened Tsvyk's wallet: There was just $17 left. It was an enormous loss for Tsvyk, who already felt like she had to hold her breath every month until she made the rent. She had barely recovered, and now she had to get out of bed and drag herself back to work. 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Tsvyk was furious and bluntly accused Nasyrova of poisoning her and stealing from her, and trying to make it look like a suicide by dressing her up in fancy lingerie and scattering the pills by her bed as if she was some jilted lover. 'Fine,' said Nasyrova, suddenly turning cold. 'Then go to the police.' Tsvyk had already gone to the police, of course. She kept waiting nervously every day for Nasyrova to be arrested. About six months passed before the case took a turn, when a New York City private investigator named Herman Weisberg got a call from a client. She was a wealthy older woman, who often asked Weisberg to do jobs for other women she knew. Maybe the women were having trouble finalizing a divorce or getting shared custody—his client would pay the bill, like a fairy godmother. 'We called her 'the mitzvah lady,' ' Weisberg says. This time, the mitzvah lady introduced Weisberg to Nadezda Ford, a Russian woman who lived in Brooklyn. Ford said she was looking for a dangerous woman who had lived next door to her mother back in Russia. 'It was easy for her to steal. It was easy for her to kill.' A tearful Ford explained that her mother, Alla Alekseenko, had first disappeared and had later been found dead, her body charred beyond recognition. Her apartment had been stripped of cash and valuables, including gold, handbags, perfume, her passport, and even her toothbrush, according to Ford. Weisberg soon discovered that Russian authorities had identified Nasyrova as a person of interest in the Alekseenko investigation, but she had left Russia sometime in 2014 or 2015. Interpol even put out a 'Red Notice,' a worldwide alert, seeking her apprehension, in the summer of 2015. Nasyrova had a motive to assume Tsvyk's identity, prosecutors later argued, because her visa status was set to expire and she needed a plan to avoid capture by Russian authorities. Weisberg got to work, first scanning Nasyrova's social media. She might have been laying low in Brooklyn, but on Facebook, she was selling a life of luxury, wearing fur coats and swanning around casinos in Atlantic City. She was also highly active on Russian dating sites. Weisberg found an address where she appeared to be living in Sheepshead Bay, and put her under surveillance, getting his team to stake out her house at night and in the early morning. He called Homeland Security and Interpol, without much success, so Weisberg tapped some contacts at his local police precinct. They met early one March 2017 morning in front of Nasyrova's home. When the officers knocked on her door, Nasyrova appeared. 'It was very early in the morning, and she didn't look as confused or irate as I would be if somebody dragged me out at 6:30 in the morning and put me in handcuffs,' Weisberg says. In fact, to Weisberg, she seemed defiant, even cocky, walking to the squad car in jeans and a green parka with a strut in her step, like she was making her way down a catwalk. When Tsvyk later identified her in a police lineup, she remembers that Nasyrova was smiling. Gregory P. Mango / Polaris Nasyrova under arrest in Brooklyn on March 19, 2017. During the jury trial, prosecutors argued to the jury that Nasyrova had a pattern of predation and brought up another allegation of how Nasyrova cultivated closeness with an unsuspecting victim and then attacked, mostly for financial gain. In June 2016, prosecutors said, a New York dry cleaner named Ruben had met a woman named Anna on a Russian dating site. She was nice, he said, and extremely attentive. She invited him over to her apartment, telling him that she wanted to make him dinner. Ruben brought Anna flowers, wine, and chocolates; she prepared fish and salad for them to eat. Ruben had only a few bites before he passed out. He awoke three days later, with no memory of what happened to him, in NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital in Queens—the same hospital Tsvyk would be admitted to three months later. He was missing his watch, and he soon discovered fraudulent credit card activity. Ruben would later testify that 'Anna' was in fact Nasyrova. On April 19, 2023, on the eve of National Look-Alike Day, the jury handed down a verdict. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz called Nasyrova a ruthless and calculating con artist who tried to 'murder her way to personal profit and gain.' In a victim impact statement read aloud to the court, a trembling Tsvyk recounted her ongoing fear that Nasyrova 'would come back and finish what she started.' 'It was [an] easy thing [for her] to gain the trust of another person, and then take everything from that person,' Tsvyk said. 'It was easy for her to steal. It was easy for her to kill.' Tamara Beckwith/NY Post/MEGA Viktoria Nasyrova photographed at New York City's Rikers Island Correctional Facility in April 2017 while she was awaiting trial. Nasyrova was convicted of attempted murder, attempted assault, assault, unlawful imprisonment, and petit larceny. She was sentenced to 21 years, followed by five years of post-release supervision. After her sentence was read, Nasyrova showed her displeasure by yelling 'Fuck you' at the judge. When Tsvyk and I meet almost two years later, on a perfect sunny day in December in West Palm Beach, Florida, she's wearing bright pink lipstick and an oat-colored cashmere T-shirt and sipping on a cappuccino in the shade of a palm tree. She was polite, if a bit wary, when I reached out to her. Since her ordeal, Tsvyk has created an entirely new life for herself, running her own day spa, Tsvyk and I chat for over an hour. She tells me it had taken her a long time to start feeling like herself again. In the years following Nasyrova's attack, Tsvyk navigated her way through the fog of being a victim, of testifying at a criminal trial, of having her face and personal details on TV—'the pictures of me in court were so bad,' she says. When Nasyrova was arrested in 2017, Tsvyk checked herself into a silent meditation retreat. She slept in an austere room and ate only vegetarian food; eye contact wasn't permitted. On day three, Tsvyk saw a woman who looked like Nasyrova, and it all came rushing back. But she pushed through, and by day five, she had regained her calm. 'The universe sent me that woman to get over what happened,' Tsvyk says. She has worked hard to control her thoughts and force Nasyrova out of her head. 'At first, I wanted her to die,' Tsvyk says, nonchalantly. 'Now I feel nothing bad for her at all.' Courtesy of Olga Tsvyk Olga Tsvyk That generosity might be made easier, at least in part, because of Nasyrova's spectacular decline. She's presently incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Center in Westchester County, New York, where she is reportedly making and selling 3D art to her fellow inmates—and refusing to take court-ordered anger management classes. She had also filed an appeal, arguing that the trial court should not have allowed prosecutors to mention Alekseenko's murder or Ruben's poisoning because she hadn't been charged or convicted of either of those crimes, and that they prejudiced her chances with the jury. The New York Appellate Division disagreed and denied Nasyrova's appeal last fall. She's also been subject to another, perhaps more cosmic form of justice. While awaiting trial, she was injured during her detention at New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail complex, and sued, winning almost $160,000. She entrusted that small fortune to a friend—giving her power of attorney, asking her to handle payments to her lawyer and make disbursements to her family back in Russia. But after paying some of Nasyrova's legal fees, the friend disappeared with around $55,000, according to documents related to the case. The Queens district attorney's office declined to comment on whether they intend to pursue prosecution. This story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE. More True Crime Sarah Treleaven is a writer and producer and the host of USG Audio's The Followers: Madness of Two podcast. She lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.
San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
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LAPD fires flash-bang grenades, less-lethal rounds at protesters
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