SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Rhode Island man who appeared to fake his death and flee the United States to avoid rape charges will be sentenced Monday for one of two rape convictions in Utah.
Nicholas Rossi, 38, faces five years to life in prison when he is sentenced Monday by District Judge Barry Lawrence in Salt Lake City.
The sentence is the first of two scheduled for Rossi after he was convicted separately in August and September of raping two women in northern Utah in 2008. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 4 for the second conviction, also five years to life in prison.
In August, jurors found Rossi guilty of rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand. Rossi did not testify on his own behalf.
More than a decade passed from the time of the rapes to his conviction. Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified in 2018 through a decade-old DNA rape kit linked to the other case. He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when Utah made efforts to clear its backlog of rape kits.
Months after he was charged in that case, an online obituary stated that Rossi died on February 29, 2020 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, doubt he is dead.
He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19. Hospital staff recognized his distinctive tattoos, including the Brown University crest tattooed on his shoulder, although he never attended, thanks to a tip from Interpol.
He was extradited to Utah in January 2024 after a lengthy court battle. At the time, Rossi insisted that he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed. Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases that Rossi used over the years to evade capture.
At his first trial in Utah, Rossi’s public defender denied the rape allegation and urged jurors not to make too much of his move abroad.
The victim had been living with his parents and recovering from a traumatic brain injury in 2008 when he responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. They started dating and got engaged after a couple of weeks.
She testified that Rossi asked her to pay for appointments and car repairs, lend him $1,000 so he wouldn’t be evicted, and go into debt to buy her engagement rings. He became hostile shortly after their engagement and raped her in her room one night after she brought him home, she said.
She went to police years later after hearing that Rossi was accused of raping another woman in Utah around the same time.
The victim in that case went to police shortly after Rossi attacked her in her Orem apartment. The woman had gone there to collect money that, according to her, he had stolen from her to buy a computer.
Rossi grew up in foster care in Rhode Island and returned there before he appeared to fake his death and flee the country. He was previously wanted in the state for failing to register as a sex offender. The FBI says he also faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.
___
Gruver reported from Ft. Collins, Colorado.