Judge in Utah: Nicholas Rossi must stand trial for rape

A 37-year-old man who authorities say faked his own death in the United States to avoid rape charges in Utah has insisted his name is Arthur Knight since his arrest in 2021.

Not Nicholas Rossi or Nicholas Alahverdian – the person Utah authorities accuse of raping two women in Salt Lake and Utah counties in 2008. He has previously claimed he is an Irish orphan who has never set foot in the United States. And in court hearings this year, since his extradition from Scotland to Utah County Jail, he has often interrupted judges to correct them: He is Arthur Knight.

But at preliminary hearings in Salt Lake City and Utah counties last week, he did not contradict prosecutors' claims that he was actually Nicholas Rossi.

“My client requests his identity for today,” defense attorney Shawn Howell told a Utah County judge on Tuesday. “That is not an issue today.”

It is unclear whether his defense team will make any identity claims in the future, although Howell clarified to the judge on Tuesday that her client's legal name is Arthur Knight.

The man was identified as a suspect in a 2008 rape in Orem, but the case was closed without being sent to prosecutors for review, according to a news release from the Utah County District Attorney's Office. DNA evidence collected in the case was submitted for testing through the State Bureau of Investigation's Sex Assault Kit Initiative – and in 2018, a match was found to another rape case in Ohio in which Rossi was also a suspect.

In September 2020, he was charged in the Orem case. During the investigation, authorities discovered that Rossi was suspected “in a number of similar crimes in Utah and throughout the United States,” the press release said. In July 2022, he was charged with the 2008 rape of a South Salt Lake woman.

Rossi, or Knight, had fought extradition to Utah to face charges, saying he was framed by authorities and they had the wrong person. Lt. Karalee Johnson of Orem testified during his preliminary hearing Tuesday in the Utah County case that the man's DNA was taken when he arrived at the Utah County Jail earlier this year – and that it matched DNA in the 2008 rape kit.

The man was known by several aliases, authorities said. According to the Providence Journal, he was living in Rhode Island under the name Nicholas Alahverdian when he allegedly faked his own death in February 2020. Investigators believe he then fled to Ireland and then Scotland to avoid arrest.

According to The Scottish Sun, he was arrested in December 2021 at a Glasgow hospital while being treated for COVID-19. He lived in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.

Judges in the Utah County and Salt Lake County rape cases found there was enough evidence to send the cases to trial. Rossi is scheduled to appear in court again in October, where his attorneys plan to request the opportunity to post bail and be released from the Utah County Jail.