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A man accused of faking his death and fleeing the country to avoid facing sexual assault charges was convicted Wednesday of first-degree felony rape. The verdict in the 2008 rape case came after a three-day trial in which the accuser and her parents testified.
Nicholas Rossi, who refused to testify on his own behalf, is set to be sentenced Oct. 20 and faces five years to life in prison under Utah law. He is also slated to stand trial in September for a Utah County rape.
“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place,” said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. “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.”
Authorities identified Rossi from a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018, according to the Associated Press. He was charged as Utah was working to clear its rape kit backlog.
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Rossi, who is from Rhode Island, returned to his home state before fleeing the U.S. While in Rhode Island, Rossi told reporters he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Later, an online obituary stated that Rossi had died in February 2020, though several people close to him cast doubt on his death.
He was arrested in Scotland in 2021 when hospital staff recognized his tattoos from an Interpol notice. However, Rossi claimed he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never been to the U.S. This was one of many aliases investigators say Rossi used. He was extradited to Utah in January 2024.
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The victim said she met Rossi — whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian — as she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. The Associated Press reported that the victim answered a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. The relationship progressed quickly, and they were engaged just two weeks after meeting, according to the Associated Press.
“He was very charming and seemed very interested in school and politics and music, and he was just very nice to me,” the victim told the jury, according to Fox 13 Salt Lake City.
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The victim recalled being asked to pay for dates, Rossi’s car repairs, and even their engagement rings. She also said she had to lend Rossi $1,000 so he wouldn’t be evicted from his apartment. Rossi’s lawyers apparently tried to paint the victim as being resentful and seeking revenge for being put in this financial position.
Rossi later raped the victim in his bedroom one night after the victim drove him home, according to her testimony. She cited her parents’ dismissive response as the reason she did not come forward at the time. Her father — from whom she is estranged, allegedly for reasons unrelated to Rossi — said that if his daughter told him she had been raped, he didn’t hear it, according to Fox 13 Salt Lake City.
The victim said she decided to come forward years later after seeing a news report stating that Rossi was accused of another rape.
Rossi is accused of raping another former girlfriend at his apartment in September 2008 when she came to his apartment to get money she claimed he stole from her to buy a computer.
Though Rossi will not stand trial in this case until next month, the victim testified Tuesday in the Salt Lake City case about her experience with the now-convicted rapist.
The Utah County victim went to police at the time of the alleged rape to report Rossi, who later claimed in an interview with authorities that she had raped him and threatened to have him killed. It remains to be seen how this will play out in court next month.
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