Rapist Nicholas Rossi who fled to Scotland after allegedly faking own death dies in US hospital

American rapist Nicholas Rossi, who faked his own death to escape justice, died in a hospital in the United States.

The 38-year-old man, also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, was serving a prison sentence in Utah for raping two women in 2008.

The Utah Department of Corrections confirmed his death at 8:32 p.m. Thursday, stating it was due to complications from an existing medical condition after he chose to forgo medical treatment.

Rossi’s exact arrival in the UK is unknown, although he resided in Bristol for a time before moving to Scotland.

His final capture took place in 2021 at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, where he was treated for Covid-19.

Hospital staff recognized him by his distinctive tattoos and identified him as a person wanted by US authorities for extradition.

At subsequent court hearings, Rossi vehemently denied his identity, claiming that the arrest was a case of mistaken identity and that he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight.

However, in November 2022, a Scottish judge ruled that he was indeed Nicholas Rossi, leading to his extradition to the US to face justice in 2024.

An online obituary claimed that Rossi died of end-stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on February 29, 2020.

But the police in his hometown, his former lawyer, and his former foster family cast doubt on whether he was actually dead.

He was arrested in 2021 while being treated for Covid-19 in Scotland after hospital staff in Glasgow noticed his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol announcement.

Rossi was extradited to Utah in January 2024 after losing an extradition appeal in which he claimed the accused was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight.

Who is Nicholas Rossi?

According to reports in the US newspaper, Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in July 1987 in Rhode Island to Diana and Jack Alahverdian. Providence Magazine.

He was adopted by his stepfather David Rossi and changed his surname to Rossi.

He grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and made a name for himself as a vocal critic of the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families.

According to his former lawyer, Rossi moved to Ireland in 2019, but his exact location is unclear.

A sealed arrest warrant for the Orem Utah rape was issued in 2020 after he was identified as a suspect a decade after the alleged incident.

This delay was due to a backlog of DNA testing kits at the Utah State Crime Lab.

Rossi is thought to have met his wife, Miranda Knight, in Bristol in 2019, under the guise of Arthur Brown, and married her in early 2020, taking the name Arthur Knight.

The two moved to Glasgow in 2021, where he claimed to be a professorial lecturer at the University of Glasgow.

Rossi was extradited to the United States after losing his final appeal in December 2023.