US fugitive accused of faking his death to avoid rape charges is booked into a Utah jail
The Plot Thickens…
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A U.S. fugitive known as Nicholas Rossi, who is accused of faking his own death and fleeing the country to avoid rape charges, is in a Utah jail after he was extradited from Scotland last week, jail records showed on Monday.
Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, is charged with sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, in 2008, according to local prosecutors. He was not identified as a suspect until about a decade later, due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab.
Rossi faces another felony rape charge in Salt Lake County, where prosecutors say he sexually assaulted a 26-year-old former girlfriend after an argument, also in 2008. He faces multiple other complaints against him in Rhode Island and Ohio for alleged domestic violence, sexual abuse and fraud…
…Rossi was arrested in Scotland the following year after he was recognized at a Glasgow hospital while receiving treatment for COVID-19. He insisted he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never traveled to the U.S.
After a lengthy court battle, an Edinburgh judge ruled in August that the extradition could move forward. He called Rossi “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative.” Rossi lost an appeal in December and was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service.