The Final Escape: Nicholas Rossi Dies in Utah Prison
Nicholas Rossi, fugitive, fabulist, convicted rapist, and author of his own false obituary, has died in a Utah hospital. He was 38.
The First Death
After authorities linked Rossi to rape cases through a national DNA database, after an old rape kit had been submitted for testing, he left the United States in 2017.
He fled before Utah formally charged him.
By late 2019, federal authorities had contacted him. He told the FBI he was in Ireland.
He settled in Scotland and tried to conceal his identity by creating a fake memorial website under the name “Nicholas Alahverdian.”
Nicholas Alahverdian was Rossi’s birth name.
As Nicholas Alahverdian, he had been a Rhode Island child-welfare advocate with a searchable record, media clips, legal disputes, and a public biography.
Utah was looking for Nicholas Rossi, the name tied to the rape cases and sex-offender records.
The fake death was dated Feb. 29, 2020. The memorial page on EverLoved said Nicholas Alahverdian died that day of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that his ashes were scattered at sea
Father Bernard Healey of Our Lady of Mercy Parish Church in Rhode Island received a call from an English-sounding woman using the name Louise, saying Nicholas Alahverdian had died and asking him to hold a memorial Mass.
The priest agreed.
By July, the Rhode Island State Police were investigating whether the death was real.
Utah filed the rape charge on Rossi under seal in September 2020 and obtained a warrant two weeks later.
Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan living in Scotland, was the name Rossi used in Scotland. He was, to all appearances, an eccentric aristocratic gentleman in Glasgow’s west end who said he was a college professor.
He claimed television was a mystery to him and said he never watched it.
The Nurse and the Tattoo
In December 2021, Knight was admitted to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow for COVID-19 treatment.
A nurse recognized him from an Interpol wanted notice because of his distinctive tattoos, including a Brown University crest, a perfect detail, since he had never attended Brown.
Scottish police arrested him there on Dec. 13, 2021.
Rossi insisted the arrest was a mistake. He was truly Arthur Knight, the Irish orphan, and had never been to America.
He had been raised in Christian Brothers homes called St. Mary’s and Sacred Heart, he said. He had no birth certificate, no identification for his parents, and no precise birthplace in Ireland because after all, orphans are frequently without the means to prove their identity.
Ultimately he said he discovered his birthplace. It was Dublin, he said.
He said he later moved to London, met his wife Miranda, then moved to Bristol and Glasgow because of a job opportunity
The Times/Business Insider reporting described him as masquerading as an eccentric English or British academic/professor and living near Glasgow University.
Neighbors believed he worked there.
On Dec. 23, 2021, a judge granted him bail by video link while still hospitalized. The court expected him to remain in the hospital for weeks.
He left the hospital the day after making bail and arranged private transport and oxygen.
Prosecutors set out to prove that the man arrested in Scotland was the U.S. fugitive wanted in Utah.
They produced fingerprints and proof of his tattoos.
Knight claimed his fingerprints had been tampered with to match Rossi. He claimed the tattoos linking him to Rossi had been placed on his body while he was unconscious in the hospital.
The court did not entirely buy it.
Jan. 2022: After he missed an Edinburgh court hearing, he was re-arrested in Glasgow. Prosecutors called him a flight risk, his bail was revoked, and he was remanded in custody.
He was granted bail again in early February 2022.
Sky News interviewed him while he was out on bail in Glasgow. The reporter found him in a dark flat, in a wheelchair, with his wife, Miranda, nearby.
Miranda moved him in and out of cars. She sat for interviews with him.
Rossi posed for a photo with his back to a bookcase. On the shelf, prominently in shot, was Machiavelli.
In 2022, a Scottish judge ruled that Arthur Knight was indeed Nicholas Rossi. The ruling allowed the extradition case to proceed.
By January 2023, his bail application was refused, and he was held at HM Prison Edinburgh while fighting extradition
Arthur Knight Goes Home
Rossi was returned to Utah in 2024.
Once he was back in Utah, he asked for bail, but a Utah judge denied it. Rossi went to trial twice in Utah in 2025.
Two juries convicted him of raping two women in separate 2008 cases. He was later sentenced to 10 years to life.
Salt Lake County prosecutor Sim Gill, who oversaw the case, described Rossi as a "master manipulator" who preyed on women he met online.
The Utah Department of Corrections said that Rossi died from “complications of an existing medical condition” after he chose to discontinue medical treatment.
He had faked one death, invented names, buried one identity, and claimed another. There was no widow named Louise or Miranda to spread the news this time.
Arthur Knight could not die for him. The last death came without an alias.