Fugitive accused of faking his own death sobs as he insists: ‘I’m an Irish orphan’
Nicholas Rossi, also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, appeared on US television claiming mistaken identity
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A suspected rapist said to have faked his own death while on the run from the FBI and living in Scotland has made a bizarre television appearance to insist he is not the man detectives are hunting.
Nicholas Rossi, also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, burst into tears during an interview with NBC programme Dateline when asked what he would say to people who believed he was Alahverdian.
The drama came a day after Rossi failed to appear at his latest extradition hearing after an “altercation” in his jail cell, Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told.
He has been fighting efforts to send him back to the US, where authorities in Utah have accused him of a 2008 sex offence. Prosecutors say he is from the state of Rhode Island in New England, and fled the US in 2017.
The 35-year-old, who appears in public wearing an oxygen mask, claims to be Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan and a victim of mistaken identity who has never been to America.
Last November, after months of court hearings, Sheriff Norman McFadyen ruled that Rossi was indeed the man US authorities were seeking in connection with rape and sexual assault charges.
In a story described by NBC as “stranger than fiction”, it has been alleged Rossi faked his own death in 2020 and fled to the UK to evade prosecution.
He was arrested in late 2021 after being treated in intensive care for Covid in the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow under the name Knight and claiming to be an academic tutor. He was re-arrested in January 2022.
From tattoos on his body, police and hospital staff initially identified him as Rossi. Interpol issued a red notice – a request for arrest – with pictures of the wanted man, including images of his tattoos and his fingerprints.
On Thursday, Sheriff McFadyen told the court he would allow two further weeks for expert reports to be acquired, and Rossi was remanded in custody until 22 May.
Speaking alongside his wife, Miranda Knight, Rossi angrily told NBC he was Arthur Knight.
He appeared to try standing up, slumping back into his chair, to prove that he was unable to walk.
“I am not Nicholas Alahverdian. I do not know how to make this clearer,” he said behind his oxygen mask.
“We were once a normal family, but thanks to the media our lives have been interrupted.
“And we’d like privacy and I would like to go back to being a normal husband, but I can’t because I can’t breathe, I can’t walk.”
He has worn the oxygen mask after nearly dying of Covid last year.
When asked whether it was all an act, he said: “That is a low blow, that is a right low blow.”
US authorities say Rossi is an alias used by Alahverdian, who has been charged in connection with a Utah rape.
Authorities in Rhode Island say Alahverdian is also wanted in their state for failing to register as a sex offender.
The FBI has said he also faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.
In 2020, he claimed he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to live.