Latest news with #StrangeButTrueCrime
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Nicholas Rossi: How the mask slipped during US fugitive's court saga
I first met Nicholas Rossi - or Arthur Knight, as he insisted on being called - in February 2022 in a corridor at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. He was there to fight extradition to the US, where he was accused of rape. Sitting in his electric wheelchair, dressed in a three-piece suit and sporting a wide brimmed hat, the raspy voice behind the oxygen mask was telling anyone who would listen that this was all a terrible misunderstanding. His hands, meanwhile, were hoovering up reporters' business cards. Rossi's departure that day set the tone for what became a familiar scene - a slapstick performance in front of the cameras during which he tipped his wheelchair onto the pavement while trying to manoeuvre into a waiting taxi. Later that evening an unknown number flashed up on my mobile phone and I heard that same raspy voice. "Hello Steven, it's Arthur… do you have a minute?" And so began an exercise in separating fact from fiction that continues three years later, which I have explored in a new podcast as part of the Strange But True Crime series on BBC Sounds. The name Nicholas Rossi first came to wider attention in December 2021 when he was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital. Staff had recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice. The problem for the American authorities was that the man they were seeking to extradite swore blind he was the victim of mistaken identity. He claimed he was Arthur Knight, an Irish-born orphan who had never been to America - and said he could prove it. A couple of weeks after our first phone-call, "Arthur" was sitting opposite me in a BBC studio, his wife Miranda by his side, telling his tale for the cameras. He said he grew up in care in Dublin and escaped to London as a teenager. There, he sold books with his friends at Camden market, like Del Boy from the comedy Only Fools and Horses. Years later he married Miranda in Bristol before they moved to Glasgow. He showed me their marriage certificate - accompanied by a special licence from the Anglican Church, because "I wouldn't lie to the Archbishop of Canterbury". What he couldn't produce was a birth certificate. Or a passport. He was vague about his schooldays and couldn't say what happened to his old friends. At times the conversation veered as wildly as his accent – from claims he survived the London Tube bombing (he got the date wrong) to a story about once meeting Del Boy's sidekick Rodney. He repeatedly denied being Nicholas Rossi, but when I asked about tattoos he said he was "too tired" to show me his arms. It was a surreal, unconvincing performance that was being watched across the Atlantic by plenty of people who recognised the main character. "I'd know those hands anywhere," Mary Grebinski later told me. She'd been a college student in 2008 when Nicholas Rossi sexually assaulted her on the way to class. He was convicted and placed on the sex offenders register. In Dayton, Ohio – the city where that attack happened – I also spoke to Rossi's ex-wife. Kathryn Heckendorn said she had bought him the red silk pyjamas "Arthur" had been filmed wearing outside court. Their unhappy marriage lasted eight months. The judge who granted their divorce in 2016 said Rossi was guilty of "gross neglect of duty and cruelty" on account of his abusive behaviour. Conversations like this helped fill in the blanks. Nicholas Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in 1987. Rossi was the name of his stepfather, who at the time was Rhode Island's premiere Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator. 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 Alahverdian's death emerged in 2020, politicians paid tribute from the floor of the Rhode Island State House. According to an online obituary his last words were: "Fear not and run towards the bliss of the sun." But it didn't take long for this deception to begin unravelling. 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". Instead, the authorities suspected Rossi was somewhere in the UK, having fled after discovering that the FBI were investigating an alleged credit card fraud. It was his online footprint that ultimately led police to his hospital bedside in Glasgow – ironically as the fugitive was recovering from a genuine near-death experience in the shape of Covid. At one of his early extradition hearings the sheriff commented that advancing the case shouldn't be "rocket science". But the legal process dragged on and on – in large part due to Rossi's antics. There were rambling courtroom monologues, questionable medical episodes and theatrical outbursts which were often directed at his own lawyers as a prelude to sacking them. Sitting in the public gallery, it was rarely dull. Rossi's claim that a corrupt hospital employee called Patrick tattooed him while he was in a coma was one of the more memorable exchanges. In the end the sheriff's conclusion was that the Arthur Knight charade was "implausible" and "fanciful". And yet Rossi stuck to his story – even as his extradition was approved and High Court judges refused his appeal. He stuck to his story as US Marshalls bundled him onto a private jet and as prison guards booked him into the Utah County jail. He stuck to his story in a Utah courtroom, until suddenly he didn't. In October last year I tuned in to a routine bail hearing online when, without warning, the posh English persona disappeared. Speaking in a clear American accent he told the judge he was born Nicholas Alahverdian before his name changed to Rossi. As he claimed to have hidden his identity to escape "death threats", I found myself wondering why he'd chosen that specific moment for the mask to slip. The saga continues, but the novelty has worn off. The intrigue and farce has been stripped away while the serious allegations remain. In May, Nicholas Rossi is due to face the first of two separate rape trials. He denies all the charges.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Nicholas Rossi: How the mask slipped during US fugitive's court saga
I first met Nicholas Rossi - or Arthur Knight, as he insisted on being called - in February 2022 in a corridor at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. He was there to fight extradition to the US, where he was accused of rape. Sitting in his electric wheelchair, dressed in a three-piece suit and sporting a wide brimmed hat, the raspy voice behind the oxygen mask was telling anyone who would listen that this was all a terrible misunderstanding. His hands, meanwhile, were hoovering up reporters' business cards. Rossi's departure that day set the tone for what became a familiar scene - a slapstick performance in front of the cameras during which he tipped his wheelchair onto the pavement while trying to manoeuvre into a waiting taxi. Later that evening an unknown number flashed up on my mobile phone and I heard that same raspy voice. "Hello Steven, it's Arthur… do you have a minute?" And so began an exercise in separating fact from fiction that continues three years later, which I have explored in a new podcast as part of the Strange But True Crime series on BBC Sounds. The name Nicholas Rossi first came to wider attention in December 2021 when he was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital. Staff had recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice. The problem for the American authorities was that the man they were seeking to extradite swore blind he was the victim of mistaken identity. He claimed he was Arthur Knight, an Irish-born orphan who had never been to America - and said he could prove it. A couple of weeks after our first phone-call, "Arthur" was sitting opposite me in a BBC studio, his wife Miranda by his side, telling his tale for the cameras. He said he grew up in care in Dublin and escaped to London as a teenager. There, he sold books with his friends at Camden market, like Del Boy from the comedy Only Fools and Horses. Years later he married Miranda in Bristol before they moved to Glasgow. He showed me their marriage certificate - accompanied by a special licence from the Anglican Church, because "I wouldn't lie to the Archbishop of Canterbury". What he couldn't produce was a birth certificate. Or a passport. He was vague about his schooldays and couldn't say what happened to his old friends. At times the conversation veered as wildly as his accent – from claims he survived the London Tube bombing (he got the date wrong) to a story about once meeting Del Boy's sidekick Rodney. He repeatedly denied being Nicholas Rossi, but when I asked about tattoos he said he was "too tired" to show me his arms. It was a surreal, unconvincing performance that was being watched across the Atlantic by plenty of people who recognised the main character. "I'd know those hands anywhere," Mary Grebinski later told me. She'd been a college student in 2008 when Nicholas Rossi sexually assaulted her on the way to class. He was convicted and placed on the sex offenders register. In Dayton, Ohio – the city where that attack happened – I also spoke to Rossi's ex-wife. Kathryn Heckendorn said she had bought him the red silk pyjamas "Arthur" had been filmed wearing outside court. Their unhappy marriage lasted eight months. The judge who granted their divorce in 2016 said Rossi was guilty of "gross neglect of duty and cruelty" on account of his abusive behaviour. Conversations like this helped fill in the blanks. Nicholas Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in 1987. Rossi was the name of his stepfather, who at the time was Rhode Island's premiere Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator. 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 Alahverdian's death emerged in 2020, politicians paid tribute from the floor of the Rhode Island State House. According to an online obituary his last words were: "Fear not and run towards the bliss of the sun." But it didn't take long for this deception to begin unravelling. 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". Instead, the authorities suspected Rossi was somewhere in the UK, having fled after discovering that the FBI were investigating an alleged credit card fraud. It was his online footprint that ultimately led police to his hospital bedside in Glasgow – ironically as the fugitive was recovering from a genuine near-death experience in the shape of Covid. At one of his early extradition hearings the sheriff commented that advancing the case shouldn't be "rocket science". But the legal process dragged on and on – in large part due to Rossi's antics. There were rambling courtroom monologues, questionable medical episodes and theatrical outbursts which were often directed at his own lawyers as a prelude to sacking them. Sitting in the public gallery, it was rarely dull. Rossi's claim that a corrupt hospital employee called Patrick tattooed him while he was in a coma was one of the more memorable exchanges. In the end the sheriff's conclusion was that the Arthur Knight charade was "implausible" and "fanciful". And yet Rossi stuck to his story – even as his extradition was approved and High Court judges refused his appeal. He stuck to his story as US Marshalls bundled him onto a private jet and as prison guards booked him into the Utah County jail. He stuck to his story in a Utah courtroom, until suddenly he didn't. In October last year I tuned in to a routine bail hearing online when, without warning, the posh English persona disappeared. Speaking in a clear American accent he told the judge he was born Nicholas Alahverdian before his name changed to Rossi. As he claimed to have hidden his identity to escape "death threats", I found myself wondering why he'd chosen that specific moment for the mask to slip. The saga continues, but the novelty has worn off. The intrigue and farce has been stripped away while the serious allegations remain. In May, Nicholas Rossi is due to face the first of two separate rape trials. He denies all the charges.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Yahoo
How viral CCTV exposed serial 'dine-and-dash' couple
Imagine ordering T-bone steaks and desserts at a family-run restaurant, racking up a bill of hundreds of pounds, before legging it without paying a penny. Well, married couple Bernard and Ann McDonagh got away with doing this time and time again, dine-and-dashing to the value of more than £1,000 at five different restaurants. They had a brazen plan which they would act out each time, even involving their children. That was until last year, when a CCTV image of the couple shared by one of the affected restaurants on Facebook went viral, and justice caught up with them. Dine-and-dash couple jailed and fined Dine and dash couple hit my pizzeria, says owner Dine-and-dash couple failed to pay £1,000 in bills Speaking to the BBC's Strange But True Crime podcast, South Wales Police Inspector Andrew Hedley recalled how the CCTV social media post "exploded". "There was a huge outcry over what these people were doing," said Insp Hedley. "There was a need to collectively bring this together under one umbrella and get a grip of it really quickly, before it escalated. "It was a brazen disregard for the law." Mr and Mrs McDonagh, from Sandfields in Port Talbot, first targeted a restaurant called The River House in Swansea in August 2023. They ordered the most expensive items on the menu, running up a bill of £267, before running off without paying. They got away with it that time - or so they thought - and went on to target Golden Fortune in Port Talbot, La Casona in Skewen and Isabella's in Porthcawl. Then, in April 2024, the couple visited the newly-opened restaurant Bella Ciao in Swansea. They ordered T-bone steaks and double pudding portions, racking up a bill of £329, before - once again - leaving without paying. The restaurant's owners, who at the time described the situation as "destroying", reported what happened to the police and shared a CCTV image of the couple on Facebook. The post gained enormous attention and social media sleuths started their own investigations, putting pressure on police who confirmed they were investigating the couple over "a number of reports of making off without payment from several businesses". Within days, the couple were arrested and in May 2024 they pleaded guilty to failing to pay restaurant bills. Mrs McDonagh was jailed for 12 months while her husband was jailed for eight months. But how had they managed to get away with it for so long? The duo had a carefully practised plan which was boldly repeated at every restaurant. Mr McDonagh would leave the restaurant first with other family members, while one child would be left behind with Mrs McDonagh to pay the bill. When she would try to pay the card would be declined, and so she would offer to go to a cashpoint and leave the child at the restaurant as "proof" she would return. But the children were trained to be part of the plan, and seconds later they would run off too. At Swansea Crown Court, Mrs McDonagh also admitted to thefts from supermarkets and obstructing or resisting a police officer. The court heard she had even lied about being pregnant to get out of custody. Judge Paul Thomas KC described Mrs McDonagh as a "prolific liar". The question asked by many was why the couple did what they did. The court heard Mrs McDonagh may have been "trying to make herself feel better" following family bereavements. Mr McDonagh's defence barrister said the father-of-six was "deeply embarrassed and ashamed". But Judge Thomas said they were motivated by "pure and utter greed". "Over a period of around eight months, you two set out on a deliberate course of sustained dishonesty," he told the court. "You would go into restaurants with your young family, you would have food and drink served to you, on the value of hundreds of pounds, then you would cynically leave without paying." The use of their children was "ruthlessly exploitative," the judge added, describing the incidents as "carefully pre-planned to a specific pattern" and "criminality for criminality's sake". Woman who lied to get nursing job jailed How two friends found £3m treasure and ended up in jail The GP poisoner: A tale of the unexpected
BBC News
30-04-2025
- BBC News
Strange But True Crime: The buried Herefordshire Hoard surrounded by treachery and greed
This is a story of treachery, secrecy and greed which led to two friends ending up in jail and a mystery about buried me take you back to April 2022 - a treasure-trove of gold and silver is laid out on a small table in a back office in London. For centuries the coins and jewellery lay undisturbed, buried in the Herefordshire countryside by a Viking warrior in the Ninth Century.I have spent years following its journey from a hole in the ground to the fringes of the criminal underworld. This story is laid out in full on the Strange But True Crime podcast on BBC me explain though what it is like to come face-to-face with precious, history-altering artefacts, wanted by criminals and historians alike. In that small office in London, I was about to wear actual treasure - gold jewellery, made for a king, queen or noble. Most of the people who have put the ring on their finger or the bracelet around their wrists have been dead for more than 1,000 Herefordshire Hoard, as it has become known, is magnificent and it has been valued at more than £ the treasure is a huge gold ring, a gold bracelet with a dragon's head clasp, a pendant made of crystal rock, a silver ingot and hundreds of silver coins. The people who discovered it could have become very wealthy indeed but, instead, they are in only 31 of an estimated 300 coins of the discovery have been the big question is, where is the rest of the hoard? The gold and silver was hidden under the earth for about 11 centuries when Welsh metal detectorists George Powell and Layton Davies discovered it in a field near Leominster in June 2015. The hoard is believed to have been taken from the Anglo-Saxons by Vikings and buried for safekeeping at about 878 AD. Legally, Powell and Davies, from Pontypridd, should have declared it. If they had done so, they could have become very wealthy men. Instead, they kept it, sold it to dealers and ended up in prison.I have been a reporter for 25 years but this is one of the most intriguing stories I have ever covered. Over the years, I had to keep quiet as the police investigation carried on.I received anonymous tip-offs and one of the criminals even sent me text messages from prison. Three years after the trial, in April 2022, I was behind the scenes at the British Museum where the hoard was taken to be studied and valued. The jewellery is beautiful but it is the coins that have changed what we know about the history of of them is double-headed, showing two rulers of England in the Ninth Century. Alfred the Great, who ruled Wessex, is on one side and Ceolwulf II, of Mercia, is on the other. Alfred the Great is famous, we know a lot about him, but Ceolwulf II is a mystery, he appears to disappear without a trace at about AD879. Historians believe that he was written out of history by Alfred's followers. Thanks to the double-headed coin, we now know that Ceolwulf was as important as Alfred, that they ruled side by side for many years. The jewellery was carefully wrapped in tissue paper but stored in a plastic cake box. Despite the rather mundane container, I found myself holding my breath as it was uncovered. It has definitely got the wow factor. It looks like the buried treasure in children's stories, shiny gold and gems. As I slipped the ring on my finger, I was amazed at how heavy and big it was. This is a ring designed to be worn over the glove of a king or a nobleman, held out for people to bow before. I was wearing a blue nitrile glove, like you see in hospitals, but it still felt amazing. What the experts still don't know is who it belonged to - and who stole it and buried it in the ground all those years what about the rest of the coins? Police believe they are in the hands of organised crime gangs around the world so the hunt for the missing treasure continues. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
27-04-2025
- BBC News
Strange But True Crime: The GP Thomas Kwan who poisoned his mother's partner
When police set up a cordon around the house of a 53-year-old GP they suspected of injecting his mother's partner with poison, BBC Look North's Peter Harris was soon there. Dr Thomas Kwan had put on a disguise, pretended to be a community nurse and given Patrick O'Hara a jab the unsuspecting 71-year-old believed to be a coronavirus booster. "You wouldn't expect this to happen around here," said a dog walker watching the firefighters and police officers filling a street in Ingleby Barwick in the north-east of what had happened nobody seemed to know but, as I arrived at the cordon separating the emergency services from the public, flashing blue lights illuminating the night sky, it was obvious something highly unusual was were not just firefighters I could see. They were dressed head to toe in luminous protective hazmat suits, the stuff they wear if they're expecting toxic and dangerous chemicals. I describe the wild scene in detail in Dr Nope, an episode in the new podcast Strange But True Crime on BBC Sounds. The team in the hazmat suits came and went from a large detached house and the dog walker was right - you really wouldn't expect this to happen among the densely packed, modern executive homes of a private housing estate in the suburbs of Stockton-on-Tees.I live nearby and friends with a house overlooking the scene had been texting me to ask if I knew what was going on. I'm a reporter, after all. Not for the first time, I hadn't a first guess was that this would be terrorism-related but the police had ruled that out even before I recorded my report for BBC Look North's late news bulletin. Next morning, I returned, and all was quiet. But there was man who lived in the house was a Sunderland GP, a family doctor, and he'd been charged with attempted murder. His name was Dr Thomas was intriguing enough, but nothing could prepare me for the e-mail that was about to land on my had just made his first appearance at Newcastle Magistrates Court and a colleague there passed on what had been GP, he wrote, had attempted to murder his mother's partner, a man in his 70s, by dressing in disguise, posing as a nurse and then injecting him with poison, pretending it was a Covid jab. Apparently, it was something do with money, over his mother's will, and he wanted her partner out of the is usual, we were not allowed report most of this at that early stage in the criminal proceedings, and most of the neighbours in Ingleby Barwick remained unaware of the extraordinary plot unfolding around his detached garage, Kwan had been keeping an array of lethal them were ingredients that could be used for making ricin - a scheduled chemical weapon - along with liquid mercury, sulphuric acid and a green plastic bag, he'd kept a glass container with a flesh-eating pesticide in it, along with a hypodermic needle and a syringe. This, it turned out, was most likely the substance he'd injected into his unsuspecting victim. To add to the intrigue, though, Kwan had pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and so it was that in October I was at Newcastle Crown Court as his trial a slight, balding, bespectacled man in his 50s, sat impassively in the dock as the details of his crime were read out, including the jaw-dropping moment when his fake ID card was displayed on the screens around the court had taken a picture of himself dressed in a wig, a false beard and glasses - part of the disguise he had used to hoodwink his mother and her partner, Patrick O'Hara, into believing he was in fact a community nurse called Raj Patel when he had turned up at their Newcastle home to deliver the Covid jab that was actually poison. After listening to the prosecution outlining their case for a couple of hours, I couldn't work out how Kwan could possibly expect to get away with it. And, by this time, it turned out, Kwan had reached the same conclusion. He changed his plea to by greed and a thirst for revenge on his mother regarding the details of her will, he was jailed for 31 years and is likely to die in prison. His victim, mercifully, is on the mend, but traumatised by the unprovoked attack from someone he thought was an NHS the start of the trial, the prosecutor had told the jury that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and that this was one such case. He wasn't residents of Ingleby Barwick weren't wrong either, when the police swooped on their estate that February really wouldn't expect that to happen around here. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
