By the Associated Press’s Hannah Schoenbaum
Salt Lake City (AP) In his first of two trials in Utah, a Rhode Island man who was accused of staging his death and escaping the country to avoid rape accusations was convicted on Wednesday of sexually abusing a former girlfriend.
Nicholas Rossi was convicted guilty of rape in 2008 by a Salt Lake County jury following a three-day trial during which his accuser and her parents testified. Hours after Rossi, 38, refused to testify on his own behalf, the verdict was rendered. He is scheduled to go on trial for a second rape accusation in Utah County in September and will be sentenced in the case 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 a statement released Wednesday evening, Gill expressed gratitude to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward years after the crime. We are grateful for her patience while we tried to get the defendant back to Salt Lake County so that she could receive justice and this trial could happen. 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 the state pushed to clear its backlog of rape kits, he was one of thousands of rape suspects who were later identified and 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, he was detained in Scotland when Glasgow hospital workers identified his unique tattoos from an Interpol notice.
In January 2024, Rossi was deported to Utah, claiming he was being set up as an Irish orphan called Arthur Knight. 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.
Prosecutors presented an image of an intellectual man who used a young woman who was susceptible by using his charm throughout the trial. When she replied to a personal Craigslist ad Rossi put, she was recuperating from a catastrophic brain injury and lived with her parents. In roughly two weeks after they started dating, they became engaged.
The woman said on Monday that she was expected to pay for their dates, pay for Rossi’s auto repairs, give him a $1,000 loan to keep him from losing his flat, and take out a loan to purchase their engagement rings. She stated that shortly after their engagement, he became angry and one night after she drove him home, he raped her in his bedroom.
The woman said that her parents’ contemptuous remarks persuaded her not to call the police at the time. 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 tried to persuade the jury that his accuser harbored animosity toward him for years after he forced her to pay for everything during their month-long romance. They maintained that years later, when he was receiving media exposure, she had retaliated by accusing him of rape.
Emails requesting comment following the verdict on Wednesday night were not immediately answered by Rossi’s lawyers.
However, Rossi’s accuser did go to the police at the time in the Utah County case. Although Rossi won’t be on trial for that rape charge until next month, she testified on Tuesday about her personal interactions with him.
In September 2008, Rossi is accused of assaulting the second lady, a former girlfriend, at his Orem residence when she arrived to retrieve money that she claimed he had stolen to purchase a computer. Rossi said she had raped him and threatened to kill him when he was first interviewed by police.
Before reportedly staging his death, Rossi had returned to the foster homes in Rhode Island where he had been raised. Due to his failure to register as a sex offender, he was previously wanted in the state. According to the FBI, he is also facing fraud charges in Ohio, where he was found guilty in 2008 of sex-related offenses.
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