Man who fled to Scotland to avoid US rape charges jailed for at least five years

A man who fled from the United States to Scotland after he appeared to fake his own death to avoid rape charges, has been sentenced to at least five years in prison.

Nicholas Rossi, 38, originally from Rhode Island in the US, was sentenced by district judge Barry Lawrence in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Associated Press reports.

It was the first of two sentences handed to Rossi, who was found guilty of a second rape charge in September.

Both offences took place in northern Utah in 2008.

Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, will be sentenced for the second conviction in November.

His first sentence will be carried out at the Utah State Correctional Facility and will begin immediately.

The judge said Utah has an indeterminate sentencing, meaning it is given in a range of years rather than a fixed number, so he could spend life in prison as the state’s board of pardons and parole will determine the release date.

Shortly before his sentencing, one victim said he had left a “trail of fear, pain and destruction” behind him.

“This is not a plea for vengeance. This is a plea for safety and accountability, for recognition of the damage that will never fully heal,” she said.

Rossi did not give evidence on his own and when given a chance to speak, he maintained his innocence.

“I am not guilty of this. These women are lying,” Rossi said softly, with a raspy voice, according to the Associated Press.

Rossi had appeared to stage his own death. On 29 February 2020 an online obituary said he had died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He had been living in Bristol for some time before then, but the exact date when he left the US for the UK is unclear.

He fled to Scotland, where he lived under the radar until December 2021, until he was arrested at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow after staff recognised by his distinctive tattoos that he was a person the US authorities wanted to extradite.

Rossi said it was a case of mistaken identity and claimed his name was Arthur Knight and that he was of Irish origin and an orphan.

In November 2022, a judge concluded he was in fact Nicholas Rossi, and he was extradited to the US in Janurary 2024.

Investigators say he had used at least a dozen aliases in order to evade capture, including Arthur Brown, by which he went before marrying Miranda Knight, whom he is thought to have met while in Bristol.

The couple later moved to Glasgow.

In July 2020, a DNA discovery linked him to one of the rapes in Utah in 2008.

The sentencing for his second rape conviction will take place on November 4.