A 37-year-old man who authorities say faked his own death in the United States to evade rape accusations in Utah has been insistent since he was arrested in 2021 that his name is Arthur Knight.
Not Nicholas Rossi, or Nicholas Alahverdian — the person who Utah authorities accuse of raping two women in 2008 in Salt Lake and Utah counties. He has claimed previously that 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 the Utah County jail, he has often interrupted judges to correct them: He is Arthur Knight.
But in preliminary hearings in Salt Lake and Utah counties over the last week, he did not fight prosecutors’ assertions that he was actually Nicholas Rossi.
“My client for today’s purposes stipulates to identity,” defense attorney Shawn Howell told a Utah County judge on Tuesday. “That is not an issue for today.”
It is unclear whether his defense team will raise identity claims in the future, though Howell made it clear to the judge Tuesday that her client’s legal name was Arthur Knight.
The man was identified as a suspect in a 2008 Orem rape, but the case was closed without being referred to prosecutors for screening, according to a news release from the Utah County attorney’s office. DNA evidence collected in the case was submitted for testing as part of the State Bureau of Investigation’s Sex Assault Kit Initiative — and in 2018, a match was found with another rape case in Ohio, where Rossi was also a suspect.
He was charged in the Orem case in September 2020. During the investigation, authorities found that Rossi was a suspect in “a number of similar offenses in Utah and throughout the United States,” the news release states. In July 2022, he was charged in the 2008 rape of a South Salt Lake woman.
Rossi, or Knight, had fought being extradited to Utah to face charges, saying he was framed by authorities and they had the wrong person. Orem Lt. Karalee Johnson testified during his preliminary hearing on Tuesday in the Utah County case that the man’s DNA was taken when he arrived to the Utah County jail earlier this year — and that it matched the DNA in the 2008 rape kit.
The man has been known by a number of 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.
He was arrested in a Glasgow hospital in December 2021 while he was being treated for COVID-19, according to The Scottish Sun. He had been living in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.
Judges in both the Utah County and Salt Lake County rape cases found there was enough evidence for the cases to move toward trial. Rossi is expected to be back in court in October, where his attorneys are planning to ask for the opportunity to post bail and be released from the Utah County jail.
