by Salt Lake City (AP) In his first of two Utah trials, a Rhode Island man who was accused of staging his death and escaping the country to avoid rape accusations was convicted late Wednesday of sexually abusing a former girlfriend.
Nicholas Rossi was convicted of rape in 2008 by an eight-member jury in Salt Lake County following a three-day trial during which his accuser and her parents testified. Rossi, 38, refused to provide his own testimony. He is scheduled to go on trial for a second rape offense in Utah County in September and will be sentenced on October 20.
According to Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, rape in the first degree is punishable by five years to life in prison in Utah.
In this instance, we appreciate the survivor’s courage to come forward years after the attack, Gill said in a statement. To confront her attacker and hold him responsible, she had to have the guts and bravery to stand up.
When Rossi, whose official name is Nicholas Alahverdian, was identified in 2018 using a ten-year-old DNA rape kit, Utah authorities started looking for him. When Utah pushed to clean its backlog of rape kits, he was one of thousands of rape suspects identified and subsequently charged.
According to an internet obituary, Rossi passed away on February 29, 2020, from late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma, months after he was charged in Utah County. However, his former lawyer, a former foster family, and authorities in his home state of Rhode Island questioned if he was deceased.
The following year, while undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in Scotland, he was detained when hospital workers identified his unique tattoos from an Interpol alert.
Rossi, who was extradited to Utah in January 2024, claimed he was being set up as Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan. At least a dozen names that Rossi used to avoid capture over the years have been identified by investigators.
This week, he used an oxygen tank, wore a suit and tie, and arrived in court in a wheelchair.
Rossi’s public attorney refuted the allegation of rape and cautioned jurors against extrapolating his subsequent move abroad.
Samantha Dugan, an attorney, stated that you are free to change your identity, relocate, and go somewhere else.
Prosecutors presented an image of an intellectual man who used a young woman who was susceptible by using his charm throughout the trial. Those who report being sexually abused are usually not named by the Associated Press unless they come out in public.
When she replied to a personal Craigslist ad Rossi put, the woman was recuperating from a catastrophic brain injury and living with her parents. In roughly two weeks after they started dating, they became engaged.
She provided testimony. Rossi requested that she take out a loan of $1,000 to keep him from being evicted, pay for dates and auto repairs, and incur debt to purchase their engagement rings. She claimed that shortly after their engagement, he became irate and one evening after she had driven him home, he raped her in his bedroom.
Brandon Simmons, the deputy district attorney for Salt Lake County, informed jurors on Wednesday that the woman had not given her consent. This isn’t romantic, and she isn’t making mistakes.
The woman said that she was deterred from calling the police by her parents’ contemptuous remarks. Ten years later, after seeing him in the news and hearing that he was charged with another rape that year, she came forward.
Rossi’s attorneys said that after he made her pay for everything during their month-long relationship, the woman developed years of animosity. They contended that she tried to damage her reputation with jurors by accusing him of rape in order to exact revenge on him years later when he was receiving media exposure.
Following the verdict, calls and emails seeking comment were not immediately answered by Rossi’s public lawyer.
A previous girlfriend also served as Rossi’s accuser in the Utah County case, and she testified at this week’s trial. At the time of the alleged rape, she went to the police. He is charged with assaulting her in September 2008 at his Orem residence after she arrived to retrieve money that she claimed he had stolen to purchase a computer.
Rossi said she raped him and threatened to kill him when he was first interviewed by police.
Before allegedly staging his death, Rossi returned to Rhode Island, where he had been raised in foster homes. Due to his failure to register as a sex offender, he was previously wanted in the state. According to the FBI, he is charged with fraud in Ohio, where he was found guilty in 2008 of sex-related offenses.
