A fake biography was conjured that she was a trained U.S. Navy SEAL and had a chain of Australian bookshops. Neither is true.

“Then they started the hunt,” Pevchikh said. “These troll factories and fake media and state-owned channels started this whole operation.”

State media were dispatched to question former neighbors for gossip. Unidentified men started following Pevchikh’s mother constantly, she said. Journalists for state media sought out the grandmother.

“It’s a dirty game that they’re playing. It doesn’t get lower than this, approaching an 85-year-old woman saying, ‘What do you think about your granddaughter being a murderer?’ I hate them doing that,” she said.

State television broadcast Pevchikh’s passport photo and innocuous surveillance video of her going back to 2014, suggesting she had been under watch for years.

“I guess they just wanted him to die in the hotel room, and we would find him in the morning. And then the poisoning would always be a conspiracy theory,” said Pevchikh. “Whereas now it’s a medical fact.”