Nicholas Rossi: US fugitive who fled to Scotland goes on trial for rape

BBC News

3 days ago

A fugitive who had to be extradited from Scotland while claiming he was the victim of mistaken identity is standing trial for rape in the US.Nicholas Rossi, who faked his own death in 2020, is accused of raping a woman he dated in 2008 in Utah County.He faces a separate allegation of rape in neighbouring Salt Lake County, also from 2008. Rossi denies all charges.He appeared in court on Monday, going by his other name - Nicholas Alahverdian.
The trial was scheduled by Judge Derek Pullan after discussions on a plea deal were not "fruitful".
Who is Nicholas Rossi?
Rossi caught the attention of the British press in December 2021 when he was arrested in the Covid ward of a hospital in Glasgow.Staff had recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice.But Rossi claimed he was the victim of mistaken identity - that his name was Arthur Knight, he was an Irish-born orphan who had never been to America, and that he could prove it.In an interview with the BBC, he could not produce a birth certificate or a passport.He was finally extradited to the US in January 2024, more than a year after a Scottish court had ruled that he was indeed Nicholas Rossi.
Nicholas 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 .As a teenager he spent time in care and, years later, enjoyed a degree of local fame as a child welfare campaigner.When reports of his death emerged in 2020, politicians paid tribute from the floor of the Rhode Island State House.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".Authorities suspected Rossi was somewhere in the UK, having fled after discovering that the FBI were investigating an alleged credit card fraud.That same year, Rossi married his wife Miranda in Bristol, England.His online footprint ultimately led police to his hospital bedside in Glasgow, where he was recovering from a genuine near-death experience with Covid.But the legal process in Scotland dragged on, largely due to antics by Rossi.
'Mistaken identity'
He made a series of court appearances in a wheelchair, wearing a three-piece suit and an oxygen mask, maintaining his claim of mistaken identity.Rossi insisted that he had been given his distinctive tattoos while he was lying unconscious in the Glasgow hospital in an attempt to frame him.He sacked several lawyers before a sheriff eventually ruled he was Nicholas Rossi, and that his mistaken identity claim was "implausible" and fanciful".An order granting Rossi's extradition to the US was signed by Scotland's justice secretary in September 2023, and he was flown back to America in January 2024 after losing his final appeal.During a bail hearing in Salt Lake City last October, Rossi admitted for the first time that he and the alias Arthur Knight were the same person.He denied fleeing to the UK to escape arrest, claiming that he had left the country and later used the alias in order to escape threats.