Nika Nikoubin, a Texas woman who lured a man to a Las Vegas hotel for sex and then stabbed him in the neck, said in a new interview that she thought she was Salma Hayek’s vampire character in the 1996 film “From Dusk Till Dawn” during the attack.
“I essentially looked in the mirror and I thought, ‘This actress is hot,’ thinking I’m Salma Hayek from the ‘Dusk Till Dawn’ movie, and I was hallucinating there was a snake around my shoulders,” Nikoubin, 23, told the New York Post in an interview published Tuesday.
Nikoubin, who wrote in her freshly published autobiography that she has bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, initially told police her motive was revenge for the U.S. missile strike that killed designated terrorist leader Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
A judge sentenced Nikoubin to three years of probation this month after she agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges of false imprisonment with a deadly weapon. She had initially been charged with attempted murder and battery and accused of choosing her target because he was an American citizen.
Police in Henderson, Nevada, 16 miles from downtown Las Vegas, arrested Nikoubin on attempted murder and other charges in March 2022, alleging that she met a man on a dating app, took him to bed, blindfolded him during sex and then stabbed him twice in the neck with a pink steak knife.
The man channeled his inner Seth Gecko, fought back and survived. Gecko, played by George Clooney in the action flick, took out Hayek’s villainess by shooting the rope on a chandelier above her.
In her Post interview, Nikoubin said she made up the Soleimani story as she was imagining herself as Claire Danes’ bipolar character Carrie from Showtime’s “Homeland” TV series during questioning.
“I don’t believe in the things that I said that night,” she told the outlet. “It is not within my political views, it is not within my family’s political views.”
Nikoubin said she had stopped taking her prescription medication and was drinking heavily at the time of the stabbing.
A spokesperson for Nikoubin told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that the public may have some misperceptions about the stabbing case.
“Nika has cooperated fully with mental health professionals and her legal team, and [she] has gone through a fairly grueling legal process and outcome, which she will have to live with,” she said.
Nikoubin plans to tell her side of the story in a newly published book in which she hopes to raise awareness about mental health issues.
In a video she posted to her YouTube channel Wednesday, she announced her autobiography and said, “Am I in a movie? What’s going on?!?!”
The volume, titled “Who is Nika Nikoubin? A Bloody Las Vegas Hotel Story,” is “Based on real events,” according to the video.
“What really happens that night?” the captions ask. “Did the news media get the story right?”
Following Nikoubin’s arrest, officials from the University of Texas at Dallas told Fox News Digital that she had been removed from campus due to safety concerns.
The former high school commencement speaker had been admitted ahead of the spring 2023 semester, but when authorities learned of the Nevada criminal charges, the school took action.
Campus police became aware of the stabbing only after a reporter reached out with questions about safety concerns after digging into Nikoubin’s budding singing career, according to court records.
A LinkedIn profile under Nikoubin’s name states that she moved to the U.S. from Iran in 2012 “to pursue success in academics and also become a musical star.”
Her YouTube channel contains a music video and a recording of her delivering a high school commencement speech, as well as the trailer touting her autobiography.
According to the Defense Department, Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and allied troops and injuries to thousands more.
Days before then-President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed him, Soleimani orchestrated a deadly attack on a U.S. base in Iraq.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
