{"id":346278,"date":"2025-08-15T10:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T10:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/346278\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T10:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T10:21:10","slug":"nicholas-rossi-fugitive-who-fled-to-scotland-found-guilty-of-rape-in-us-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/346278\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicholas Rossi: Fugitive who fled to Scotland found guilty of rape in US court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Rossi, a fugitive who had to be extradited from Scotland, has been found guilty of rape in Utah.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rossi was accused of raping a woman he was engaged to in November 2008 in the US state.<\/p>\n

Following a three-day trial in a Utah County court, the jury found him guilty of first-degree felony rape after eight hours of deliberation.<\/p>\n

The offence is punishable by five years to life in the Utah State Correctional Facility.<\/p>\n

The convicted felon will be sentenced on October 20, 2025. Rossi also faces a separate allegation of rape in neighbouring Salt Lake County in 2008.<\/p>\n

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill Said: \u201cEvery survivor of sexual assault gets to choose when they tell their story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a survivor of sexual assault and have been suffering in silence, when you are ready, we ask that you come forward and report it. If it isn\u2019t reported, it can\u2019t be investigated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it isn\u2019t investigated, it can\u2019t be prosecuted, and if it isn\u2019t prosecuted, justice cannot be served.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rossi was\u00a0extradited to the US from Scotland in January 2024 following a lengthy case in the Scottish courts.<\/p>\n

During his time in Scotland, he claimed to be Arthur Knight.<\/p>\n

But last October, during a bail hearing in Utah, Rossi admitted for the first time that he and the alias are the same person.<\/p>\n

He denied fleeing to the UK in 2017 and faking his death to evade arrest,<\/p>\n

He claimed he had hidden his identity to escape \u201ccredible threats against his life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rossi refused to name those\u00a0he claimed had threatened to kill him, telling the state prosecutor: \u201cI don\u2019t want to give a mouse cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court was told that the prosecution and defence agree that Nicholas Alahverdian is the same person identified as Nicholas Rossi, that he was in Utah in 2008, and that he had a relationship with the complainant at this time.<\/p>\n

The victim told the court she was living with her parents, recovering from a car accident which had left her with a traumatic brain injury, when she met Rossi online.<\/p>\n

She described Rossi as \u201cvery charming\u201d but claimed he became controlling and was \u201cconstantly borrowing money\u201d from her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe started to become very controlling and dictated how I dressed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The victim recalled trying to end the relationship and claimed Rossi flew into a rage that forced her to lock herself in her car.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first time I\u2019d ever seen rage in his eyes. I don\u2019t remember what he was yelling. He was hitting the car. I was just sitting there, hoping he would stop,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She told the court that it was the middle of winter, so she agreed to drive him home.<\/p>\n

She recalled how he pretended he had called the police en route and kept her in the car for an hour waiting for officers to arrive before they went into his apartment.<\/p>\n

The woman started to cry as she described how, once inside, he raped her.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI was numb and scared. I didn\u2019t know what else he was capable of. \u201c<\/p>\n

The woman said she got dressed and left, and on the drive home, she decided never to see him again. The court was told in the days that followed that she changed her phone number, but he continued to email her.<\/p>\n

When asked why she didn\u2019t go to the police, she became upset.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, because I went to my parents and they didn\u2019t help me. They didn\u2019t listen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The woman contacted the district attorney\u2019s office 13 years after the alleged attack, after seeing an article online about a case in Utah County involving Rossi.<\/p>\n

Who is Nicholas Rossi?<\/p>\n

The court heard evidence that police located Nicholas Alahverdian in Bristol in 2020, where he was calling himself Arthur Knight.<\/p>\n

In July 2022, charges were filed in Utah, and he denied being Nicholas Rossi and Nicholas Alahverdian. He spoke in a British accent and insisted he was a victim of mistaken identity.<\/p>\n

Finally, in 2024, the jury heard that he agreed that he is Nicholas Rossi.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor told the jury: \u201cListen carefully to the evidence throughout this trial. We will ask you to find the defendant guilty of rape.\u201d<\/p>\n

The defence compared the case to an \u201cold puzzle found in a thrift shop\u201d, as there are \u201cmissing pieces\u201d and there will not be \u201ca complete picture\u201d.<\/p>\n

STV News is now on WhatsApp<\/p>\n

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\"WhatsApp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicholas Rossi, a fugitive who had to be extradited from Scotland, has been found guilty of rape in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-346278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115032286051435410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346278","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=346278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}