Man accused of faking his death and fleeing U.S. to avoid rape charges faces alleged victim in Utah court
The man known in the U.S. as Nicholas Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Utah in 2008. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors are trying the cases separately, with the first set in Salt Lake County.
Rossi, 38, was arrested in Scotland in 2021 — a year after he was reported dead — when he was recognized at a Glasgow hospital while receiving treatment for COVID-19. He lost an extradition appeal after claiming he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never set foot on American soil and was being framed.
Prosecutors say they have identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.
Rossi appeared in court in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank. The alleged victim identified him from the witness stand, saying he's "a little bit heavier, a little bit older" but mostly looks the same.
District Judge Barry Lawrence helped clarify for the jury some of the twists and turns of the case, explaining that different people may refer to Rossi by different names. The defense and prosecution agreed it's factual that Rossi was in Utah in 2008 and had a relationship that year with the woman who testified.
Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. He raped her when she pushed back against his attempts to control her, said Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons.
The woman, who the judge asked not be identified publicly, described a whirlwind relationship with Rossi that began in November 2008 while she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. The two began dating after she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist and were engaged within about two weeks.
The woman described being asked to pay for their dates, cover Rossi's rent so he wouldn't be evicted from his apartment and take on debt to buy their engagement rings.
"I was a little bit more of a timid person back then, and so it was harder for me to stand up for myself," she said.
The relationship spiraled quickly after their engagement, with Rossi "becoming controlling and saying mean things to me," she testified. The couple got into a fight in which Rossi allegedly pounded on her car and used his body to block her from pulling out of the parking garage. She finally let him inside and drove him home but said she had no plans of continuing a relationship.
She agreed to go into his house to talk, but he instead pushed her onto his bed, held her down and "forced me to have sex with him," she testified. The woman described lying still, paralyzed with fear.
Dismissive comments from her parents convinced her not to go to the police at the time, she said. She did, however, try to bring Rossi to small claims court over the engagement rings but dropped the case.
Rossi's lawyers sought to convince the jury that the alleged victim built up years of resentment after Rossi made her foot the bill for everything in their monthlong relationship, and accused him of rape to get back at him a decade later when she saw him in the news.
Rossi will also stand trial in September for another rape charge in Utah County.
Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death. An obituary published online claimed he died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. State police, along with Rossi's former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead. A year later, hospital staff in Scotland recognized his tattoos from an Interpol notice and alerted authorities. He was extradited to Utah in January 2024.
Former Utah County Prosecutor David Leavitt had officially filed rape charges in August 2020, several months after the obituary was posted on Rossi's personal website, CBS affiliate KUTV reported. Leavitt's media coordinator during his time as the county attorney released a statement at the time of Rossi's extradition, saying it marked "a pivotal moment in the pursuit of justice."
"At the core, this process demands transparency, a fair trial based on facts, and the judgment of a jury," the statement said. "The victims deserve nothing less, and the world will be closely observing this crucial journey towards justice."
MacKenzie Potter, one of Rossi's attorneys, described the case as being "like old puzzle from the thrift store."
"It's 13 years old, not all the pieces are there, some pieces are from a different puzzle. And when you start going through everything, you're not going to get a complete picture."
Prosecutors pushed back, saying that if any "puzzle pieces" are missing, it's because Rossi's attorneys fought to have some evidence dismissed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sturgeon: Salmond happier for SNP to be destroyed than succeed without him
Alex Salmond would rather have seen the SNP 'destroyed' than have it succeed without him, Nicola Sturgeon has claimed. In her memoir, Frankly, the former first minister said she had come to the realisation that her former friend and mentor 'wanted to destroy me'. She said her relationship with the late politician began to deteriorate as soon as she became leader of Scotland. Mr Salmond, who died last year, quit as SNP leader and first minister in 2014 after the Scottish independence referendum. Ms Sturgeon also claims in her book that Mr Salmond had admitted to her that the 'substance' of one of the sexual harassment complaints had been true. The former Alba Party leader was acquitted of all charges relating to the allegations at court in 2020, while a judicial review found the Scottish Government's own investigation of him was tainted with apparent bias. Ms Sturgeon said her former mentor had created a conspiracy theory about Scotland's core democratic institutions to shield himself from accountability. She said Mr Salmond never produced a 'shred of evidence' to support these claims. She accused him of trying to 'distort' and 'weaponise' the trauma of victims. In her book, which was on sale in some places ahead of schedule on Monday, she said: 'In his (Salmond's) efforts to turn himself into the wronged person, he demonstrated that nothing and no one was sacrosanct for him. 'There was never the merest hint of concern about the damage he did to the party he previously led. 'Indeed, it felt to me that he would have rather destroyed the SNP than see it succeed without him.' She accused her former boss of having 'impugned the integrity' of the institutions 'at the heart of Scottish democracy', including the Government, Police Scotland and Crown Office. She went on: 'The fact that he never produced a shred of credible evidence that a conspiracy existed, because it didn't, wasn't enough to stop him seeking to damage the reputation of these institutions and shatter the morale of those who worked in them. 'He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all. 'A jury concluded that what they experienced wasn't criminal, but that does not mean those experiences didn't happen. 'Even if he never said so explicitly, he was accusing them of being liars, of making it all up.' The former SNP leader said Mr Salmond had made his former allies and SNP colleagues 'mortal enemies' in the fallout over misconduct claims against him. 'In that regard,' she wrote, 'I was clearly public enemy number one. For a while, I told myself that the bonds between us would be stronger than his thirst for revenge. 'Eventually, though, I had to face the fact that he was determined to destroy me. 'I was now engaged in mortal political combat with someone I knew to be both ruthless and highly effective. 'It was a difficult reality to reconcile myself to. 'So too was losing him as a friend. I went through what I can only describe as a grieving process. 'For a time after we stopped speaking, I would have conversations with him in my head about politics and the issues of the day. 'I had occasional, but always vivid, dreams in which we were still on good terms. I would wake up from these feeling utterly bereft.'
CBS News
4 hours ago
- CBS News
Wisconsin woman found guilty in U.K. murder plot 6 years after trying to shoot man at point-blank range
An American woman on Tuesday was found guilty at a United Kingdom court of participating in a 2019 plot to murder a British man caught up in a bitter feud between families. Aimee Betro, 45, was extradited earlier this year from Armenia, where she was living, to face trial in the central English city of Birmingham. Prosecutors told the court Betro had covered her face in a niqab as she climbed out of a car in September 2019 and tried to shoot Sikander Ali at point-blank range. But the handgun jammed and Ali fled to his car parked outside his home. The investigation into the Wisconsin native revealed her to be "fairly unexceptional" with virtually no "criminal footprint," the BBC reported. Prosecutors said Betro was part of a plot with co-conspirators Mohammed Aslam, 56, and his son, Mohammed Nabil Nazir, 31, to attack another family. Both men were jailed for over 40 years in 2024 for their roles in a "violent" feud which erupted after they were injured in a brawl at Ali's father's clothing store in July 2018. The feud between the families, Birmingham Crown Court heard, "clearly led Nazir and Aslam to conspire to have someone kill Aslat Mahumad or a member of his family," the BBC reported. The pair turned to Betro — a woman not known by police "to have a huge footprint criminally" in the U.S. or anywhere, according to Officer Alastair Orencas from West Midlands Police's major crime unit. Betro, a childhood development and graphic design graduate from West Allis, Wisconsin, arrived in the U.K. in August 2019 to carry out the hit, the BBC reported. "Betro tried to kill a man in a Birmingham street at point-blank range. It is sheer luck that he managed to get away unscathed," said prosecutor Hannah Sidaway. The case had been brought to trial after "years of hard work doggedly pursuing Aimee Betro across countries and borders," she added. Betro, who did not know Ali, denied three charges including conspiracy to murder and possessing a self-loading pistol. She maintained the real shooter was "another American woman" who sounded similar to her and had the same phone and brand of trainers. Betro told jurors it was "just a terrible coincidence" that she had been close to the scene of the attack. She will be sentenced on Aug. 21.
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Forbes
How The Dutch Got Their Cycle Paths: In Song
An Edinburgh musician and composer is crowdfunding to produce a video to accompany a song he has written about the cycling nirvana that is Amsterdam. 'My song is about how Amsterdam became so great for cycling, and asks why we couldn't have that infrastructure too,' says Dan Abrahams. The fundraising is to hire a director, cinematographer, and animator to produce the video. Edinburgh cycling advocacy group Spokes will match all donations up to $1,346. Previously, Abrahams has written a piece for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra which featured a home-made percussion instrument made from bicycle wheels, and he has also produced an earlier video calling for safer streets in his adopted city. 'My song is a reminder that we could be more like Amsterdam,' says Abrahams. 'People say that cycling is only so popular in the Netherlands because it's flat, doesn't rain, and because they've been cycling forever. But the reason the Netherlands has such great cycling infrastructure is because they protested for it, and lobbied politicians to make it happen.' This protest was a 1970s campaign against 'child murder,' which helped transform Dutch streets, making them safer for pedestrians and cyclists. In 1971, motorists in the Netherlands killed 3,000 people, 450 of whom were children. One of these was Simone Langenhoff, the six-year-old daughter of Eindhoven-based journalist Vic Langenhoff, a senior writer on national daily newspaper De Tijd. In anguish, he wrote a 1972 front-page article headlined, 'Stop de Kindermoord' – 'Stop the Murder of Children.' Langenhoff wrote: '[The Netherlands] chooses one kilometer of motorway over 100 kilometers of safe cycle paths ... There's no pressure group? Let's start one. Parents of little victims, worried parents of potential little victims should unite!' In the polemic, he urged that children be taken to school by bus rather than walk or cycle. His article hit a nerve, and urban activists were inspired to create the Stop de Kindermoord campaign organization. Led by Maartje van Putten, a 23-year-old new mother, the body advocated not for school buses but protection from motorists. This poignant campaign–along with the others that had preceded it–persuaded the authorities, drip by drip, to extend and improve the already extensive cycling infrastructure that had been installed in some parts of the Netherlands since the 1930s. Stop de Kindermoord organized demonstrations across the nation, usually with many children in tow. Crucially, it offered practical solutions. The protest group recruited traffic engineer Steven Schepel as technical advisor. He drew up child-friendly street designs specific to whichever local authority or municipality asked for them. In 1989, Stop de Kindermoord changed its provocative name to Kinderen Voorrang, meaning 'Priority for Children.' In 2001, it was subsumed by the road safety campaign, Veilig Verkeer Nederland–'Safe Traffic Netherlands'–which continues to campaign for road safety. Maartje van Putten later became a Member of the European Parliament. Cycling nation The protests of the 1970s did not create the cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has been the world's leading cycling nation since about 1912. The first cycleway in the country was converted from a sidewalk in 1885 on the Maliebaan, a long, straight road in Utrecht. This gravel cycle path was created for high-wheel riders by 44 members of the Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders Bond (Royal Dutch Touring Club), ANWB for short, and founded two years previously. (The ANWB is now a motoring organization, the Dutch equivalent to the AAA, but also still advises on bicycling matters.) Originally a members-only racing track, it was opened for all cyclists in 1887, and was later extended to become a regular cycleway; it's still used for this purpose today. The separation of transport modes—alien everywhere else at the same time—quickly became standard in the Netherlands. In 1898, London's Spectator magazine reported: 'On the route from the Hague to Scheveningen there lie parallel to each other a carriage road, a canal, a bicycle track, a light railway, side-paths regularly constructed.' Writing in 1924, a Christian Science Monitor correspondent pointed out: 'Everyone in Holland cycles and everyone can cycle everywhere' because 'there is a wonderful system of roads and pathways for the cyclist.' In 1933, Karel Čapek (the Czech writer who introduced the word robot to the world) was impressed not only by the numbers of Dutch cyclists but also how they moved: 'I have seen various things in my time, but never have I seen so many bicycles as, for instance, in Amsterdam; they are no mere bicycles, but a sort of collective entity; shoals, droves, colonies of bicycles, which rather suggest teeming of bacteria or the swarming of infusoria or the eddying of flies.' An American travel journalist writing in 1934 wondered: 'If there really is anything in all this talk about evolution, another century will see the Dutch children coming into this world on tiny bicycles.' By 1938, the Netherlands had a 1,170-mile main-road network, 866 miles of which had adjoining cycleways. By contrast, in the same year, the U.K. had about 400 miles of Dutch-style cycle tracks. From the mid-1970s, more investment was made in cycling infrastructure across much of the Netherlands, with federal policies put in place that entitled municipalities to receive payment for 80% of the costs of new cycling infrastructure. At the time, the Netherlands National Tourist Office in New York encouraged Americans to visit the country on bikes. The organization produced 'Holland-Cycle Land' and other pamphlets extolling the virtues of cycling in the Netherlands. Cycling author Rob Van Der Plas—a naturalized American born and raised in the Netherlands—visited in 1974, and particularly liked the cycling infrastructure centered on Assen which had 'bikeway systems [that] are really bicycle freeways: They have well-designed crossings with other roads, often form the most direct link between towns and villages, are well surfaced. They are used [for] transportation . . . because they do not delay the cyclist.' New Yorker writer H. P. Koenig went on a cycle holiday two years later and came back with glowing reports of a country where 'bicycling is still a way of life . . .' and where 'paved bicycle lanes run alongside main roads.' Many of these paths, said Koenig, had been 'built 60 years ago,' including a 'surge of building' in the 1930s. 'A master plan for 250 miles of paved paths [near Assen, in the province of Drenthe] was devised in the mid-'50s, most of which has been completed.' Koenig added that, in Assen, he 'enjoyed the kind of bicycle riding that doesn't exist anywhere else in the same satisfactory way.' In the 1980s and 1990s, more cycling infrastructure was built, with Dutch road engineers now working to a five-point formula: Coherence: cycling infrastructure should provide good connectivity between all origins and destinations in the area. Directness: road authorities should minimize detours and delays for cyclists. Safety: road authorities should minimize the number of conflicts between motor traffic and cycle traffic and minimize the outcome of remaining conflicts. Comfort: cycling infrastructure should allow for comfortable maneuvering and minimize the use of (precious) human energy. Attractiveness: as slower modes of movement are more sensitive for the quality of urban space, cycle routes should preferably use varied small-scale environments. Safe 'Over the 18 years I've lived in Edinburgh I've seen cycling infrastructure improve very slowly,' said Abrahams, 'but it's not nearly enough to make people feel safe getting about the city. 'For the sake of the climate, air quality, people's health, congestion, more pleasant streets and much more, we need to get away from having so many cars. That means better public transport and more cycling.' 'Why can't we do it like Amsterdam,' asks Abrahams in his song. 'I want to ride my bike like they do.' Abraham's video—which he hopes will encourage Edinburgh's politicians to build more Dutch-style cycling infrastructure—will feature parts of Edinburgh being transformed by German artist Jan Kamensky, who produces animations with cars and car-centric infrastructure uprooting and levitating out of frame.
