American man accused of faking his death to avoid rape charges found guilty of sexual assault in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

A jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand.

The verdict came hours after Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf.

He will be sentenced in the case on October 20 and is set to stand trial in September for another rape charge in Utah County.

First-degree felony rape carries a punishment in Utah of five years to life in prison, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place,” Gill said in a statement Wednesday night.

“We appreciate her patience as we worked to bring the defendant back to Salt Lake County so that this trial could take place and she could get justice. It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable.”

Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified through a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018.

He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when the state made a push to clear its rape kit backlog.

Months after he was charged in Utah County, an online obituary claimed Rossi had died on February 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff in Glasgow recognized his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

Rossi was extradited to Utah in January 2024 while insisting he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed.

Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

He appeared in court this week in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman.

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