A man accused of faking his death and fleeing the US to avoid rape charges has faced an alleged victim in court as a jury trial in Utah began.
The man known in the US as Nicholas Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Utah in 2008.
Prosecutors are trying the cases separately, with the first set in Salt Lake County.
Mr Rossi (38) was extradited from Scotland to the US in January 2024 after a lengthy case in the Scottish courts.
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He came to the attention of authorities when he was identified at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow in December 2021 while being treated for Covid-19 under the name Arthur Knight.
He was arrested after being identified by his distinctive tattoos as a person the US authorities wanted to extradite, but claimed this was a case of mistaken identity.
Months of court proceedings in Edinburgh followed, but in November 2022 Sheriff Norman McFadyen determined the man claiming to be Knight was indeed Mr Rossi.
An extradition hearing took place in June 2023, with Sheriff McFadyen ruling there was no barrier to Mr Rossi’s extradition.
In his Scottish hearings, Mr Rossi would appear in a wheelchair and sometimes with an oxygen mask.
An extradition warrant was signed in September 2023 and Mr Rossi was finally sent to the US in January 2024.
Prosecutors in the US say they have identified at least a dozen aliases Mr Rossi used over the years to evade capture.
Mr Rossi appeared in court on Monday in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.
The alleged victim identified him from the witness box, saying he is “a little bit heavier, a little bit older” but mostly looks the same.
District judge Barry Lawrence helped clarify for the jury some of the twists and turns of the case, explaining that different people may refer to Mr Rossi by different names.
The defence and prosecution agreed it is factual that Mr Rossi was in Utah in 2008 and had a relationship with the alleged victim that year.
Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman.
He raped her when she pushed back against his attempts to control her, deputy Salt Lake County district attorney Brandon Simmons alleged.
The woman, who the judge asked not be identified publicly, described a whirlwind relationship with Mr Rossi that began in November 2008 while she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury.
The two began dating after she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist and were engaged within about two weeks.
The woman described being asked to pay for their dates, cover Mr Rossi’s rent so he would not be evicted from his apartment and take on debt to buy their engagement rings.
Then, the relationship spiralled quickly, with Mr Rossi “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me”, she alleged.
The couple got into a fight in which Mr Rossi pounded on her car and used his body to block her from pulling out of the parking garage, she alleged.
She finally let him inside and drove him home but said she had no plans of continuing a relationship.
She agreed to go into his house to talk, but he instead pushed her on to his bed, held her down and “forced me to have sex with him”, she alleged.
The woman described lying still, paralysed with fear.
“I was a little bit more of a timid person back then, and so it was harder for me to stand up for myself,” she said.
Dismissive comments from her parents convinced her not to go to the police at the time, she said.
She did, however, try to bring Mr Rossi to small claims court over the engagement rings but dropped the case.
Mr Rossi’s lawyers sought to convince the jury that the alleged victim built up years of resentment after Mr Rossi made her foot the bill for everything in their month-long relationship, and accused him of rape to get back at him a decade later when she saw him in the news.
Mr Rossi will also stand trial in September over another rape charge in Utah County.
Mr Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death.
An obituary published online claimed he died on February 29th, 2020 of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
State police, along with Mr Rossi’s former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.
A year later, hospital staff in Scotland recognised his tattoos from an Interpol notice and alerted authorities. – Associated Press
