Fugitive Nicholas Rossi who fled to Scotland goes on trial for rape in US
Fugitive Nicholas Rossi, who was extradited from Scotland while claiming he was the victim of mistaken identity, is standing trial for rape in the US.
Rossi, who faked his own death in 2020, is accused of raping a woman he dated in 2008 in Utah County, reports the BBC.
He faces a separate allegation of rape also from 2008 in the neighbouring Salt Lake County. Rossi denies all charges.
Today, he appeared in court, going by his other name - Nicholas Alahverdian.
After discussions on a plea deal were not "fruitful", the trial was scheduled by Judge Derek Pullan.
Rossi was arrested in the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital in 2021 after staff recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice.
He claimed he was Arthur Knight, an Irish-born orphan who had never been to America, and he had been victim of mistaken identity.
In January last year, Rossi was finally extradited to the US after more than a year since he was ruled to be Nicholas Rossi in Scottish courts.
Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in 1987. Rossi was the name of his stepfather, who at the time was a popular Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator in Rhode Island.
He spent time in care as a teen and later became a child welfare campaigner. Politicians paid tribute to him on the floor of the Rhode Island State House in 2020 when reports of his death emerged.
However, a priest who had been asked to arrange a memorial mass was warned by a detective not to go ahead because "Nicholas isn't dead".
Rossi, who fled after discovering that the FBI were investigating an alleged credit card fraud, was suspected to be in the UK.
He married his wife Miranda in Bristol that same year. His online footprint would eventually lead police to his Glasgow hospital bedside, where he was recovering from a near-death experience with Covid.
Rossi appeared in court in Scotland maintaining his claim of mistaken identity while in a wheelchair, wearing a three-piece suit and an oxygen mask.
He insisted his tattoos were given to him while he lay unconscious in the Glasgow hospital in an attempt to frame him. It was eventually ruled he was Nicholas Rossi and that his mistaken identity claim was "implausible" and fanciful".
Scotland's justice secretary signed an order granting Rossi's extradition to the US in September 2023. He was flown back to America in January 2024 after losing his final appeal.
Last October, during a bail hearing in Salt Lake City, Rossi admitted for the first time that he and the alias Arthur Knight were the same person.
He claimed he left the country and later used the alias in order to escape threats after denying fleeing to the UK to escape arrest.
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