{"id":1051830,"date":"2026-06-26T18:02:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1051830\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T18:02:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:02:20","slug":"rapist-nicholas-rossi-who-fled-to-scotland-to-escape-justice-dies-in-us-hospital-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1051830\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapist Nicholas Rossi who fled to Scotland to escape justice dies in US hospital \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

American rapist Nicholas Rossi, who fled to Scotland after appearing to fake his own death in an attempt to escape justice, has died in hospital in the United States.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old, who is also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, had been serving a jail sentence in Utah for raping two women in the state in 2008.<\/p>\n

The Utah Department of Corrections confirmed he died from complications from an existing medical condition at 8.32pm on Thursday, having chosen to discontinue medical treatment.<\/p>\n

\"NicholasNicholas Rossi was extradited to the US in 2024 (Andrew Milligan\/PA) <\/p>\n

Rossi used a number of aliases to evade detection and allegedly faked his death, with an obituary published online claiming he died on February 29 2020 of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.<\/p>\n

\"Trevor<\/a><\/p>\n

It is not known when Rossi first came to the UK, but he lived in Bristol for a time before coming to Scotland.<\/p>\n

He was arrested at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow in 2021, while being treated for Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Hospital staff had recognised by his distinctive tattoos that he was a person the US authorities wanted to extradite.<\/p>\n

A lengthy court process ensued, which gathered international attention for its bizarre nature, with Rossi \u2013 who would be taken into court in a wheelchair while using an oxygen mask \u2013 steadfastly claiming he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight.<\/p>\n

\"NicholasNicholas Rossi was taken in and out of court in a wheelchair (Andrew Milligan\/PA) <\/p>\n

He also claimed to have been given the tattoos while he was in a coma in hospital so that he resembled the wanted man.<\/p>\n

At one stage he claimed he was so unwell he was unable to raise his arms above his head, despite having visibly done so in court the day before.<\/p>\n

In November 2022, a Scottish judge ruled he was in fact Nicholas Rossi, and in August 2023 the same judge ruled he could be extradited to the US to face justice.<\/p>\n

Rossi appealed against the decision, claiming he would not receive a fair trial in the US because he was investigating those seeking to extradite him, and that he had been denied medical care in prison.<\/p>\n

However the court dismissed his claims as \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d, and he was put on a plane back to the US in 2024.<\/p>\n

The following year he was convicted in separate trials of raping two women in Utah in 2008.<\/p>\n

He was handed a cumulative sentence of at least ten years in prison.<\/p>\n

In a statement the Utah Department of Corrections said: \u201cRossi was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Thursday, June 25, 2026, at 8.32pm. He was 38 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cRossi died from complications of an existing medical condition after choosing to discontinue medical treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis notification follows communication with Rossi\u2019s family and his victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cRossi was serving a cumulative sentence of 10 years to life for two counts of first degree felony rape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American rapist Nicholas Rossi, who fled to Scotland after appearing to fake his own death in an attempt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1051831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,30,85475,918,4884,168406,712,16,15,1732],"class_list":["post-1051830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-glasgow","tag-britain","tag-courts","tag-extradition","tag-glasgow","tag-great-britain","tag-nicholas-rossi","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-utah"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116817728099843566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}