Trial begins for U.S. fugitive accused of faking his death to avoid rape charges

A gavel bangs in the courtroom. (Katrin Bolovtsova/Pexels)

SALT LAKE CITY — A man accused of faking his death and fleeing to the United Kingdom to avoid rape charges faced an alleged victim in court Monday as a jury trial in Utah began.

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 woman 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 with the alleged victim that year.

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 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 over 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.

“This case is like an old puzzle from the thrift store,” said MacKenzie Potter, one of Rossi’s attorneys. “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.

Hannah Schoenbaum, The Associated Press