A FUGITIVE accused of rape and fraud has given a tear-filled interview after he faked his personal demise and assumed a brand new identification overseas.
Rhode Island native Nicholas Rossi, 35 – who has passed by a number of different names – has been dwelling in Scotland beneath the moniker Arthur Knight since 2017.
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The suspect, whose actual title is Nicholas Alahverdian, reportedly fabricated his personal demise after pretending to have most cancers and fled the U.S. to keep away from quite a few fraud and sexual assault costs that he is dealing with throughout the nation.
He instructed native information media in 2020 that he was affected by late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had solely weeks to stay.
An obituary revealed in February of that 12 months claimed that Rossi had died, The Associated Press reported.
Rossi was taken into custody in 2021 after he checked right into a Scottish hospital with a extreme case of COVID-19.
Final 12 months, a British choose dominated that the suspect is the truth is Rossi.
The choose was satisfied by the person’s distinctive tattoos – together with the coat of arms for Brown College in Windfall – and the truth that his fingerprints matched these supplied by police within the U.S.
Decide Norman McFadyen instructed the Edinburgh Sheriff Courtroom: “I’m in the end glad on the stability of possibilities … that Mr. Knight is certainly Nicholas Rossi, the individual looked for extradition by america.”
Rossi beforehand accused regulation enforcement of tattooing him whereas he was in a coma and secretly taking his fingerprints to border him, AP reported.
Since then, the suspect has been combating makes an attempt to have him extradited.
Rossi has been charged for a 2008 rape in Utah and is needed on fraud costs in Ohio.
Authorities in Rhode Island have additionally charged him with failing to register as a intercourse offender after he was convicted of a sexual crime in Ohio in 2008.
NBC managed to get an in-person interview with Rossi, which can air on tonight’s episode of Dateline at 9pm ET.
He continues to insist that he has by no means been to the U.S. and that he’s Arthur Knight, an orphan from Eire.
“I’m not Nicholas Alahverdian,” he stated with an English accent in a preview clip.
“I do not know find out how to make this clearer.”
The suspect, who was accompanied by his spouse Miranda Knight for the interview, claims that he is nonetheless affected by medical issues associated to his Covid case and can’t stroll.
Throughout the interview, Rossi was carrying an oxygen masks which fogged up his glasses when he received labored up.
For years, Rossi was an outspoken critic of the Rhode Island Division of Youngsters, Youth, and Households – the group that runs the state foster care system that he grew up in.
In a lawsuit filed towards the division in 2011, Rossi claimed that he confronted routine abuse throughout the system and was not cared for correctly, WPRI reported.
Though the division has by no means admitted any wrongdoing, Rhode Island did waive $200,000 value of Rossi’s medical debt in 2013.
The suspect is presently detained at HM Jail Edinburgh in Scotland.
He was due in courtroom this week for a listening to on extradition however did not make it to the courtroom after an “altercation with courtroom employees,” BBC reported.
His subsequent listening to is about for Could 4.
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