Alleged rapist accused of faking personal demise might be extradited to US: sheriff

An alleged rapist accused of faking his personal demise and residing beneath a false identification overseas might be extradited from Scotland to the US, officers dominated Wednesday.

The 35-year-old man believed to be fugitive Nicholas Rossi – who additionally used the final identify Alahverdian – was “as dishonest and deceitful as he’s evasive and manipulative” and will face expenses in his residence nation, Edinburgh Sheriff Norman McFadyen stated, according to the BBC.

The choice will now seem earlier than the Scottish ministers.

Rossi, who now claims to be an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight, is a intercourse offender and was dealing with legal expenses in each Utah and Ohio when he supposedly died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in February 2020.

He was later found in December 2021 at a hospital in Glasgow, the place he was on a ventilator for COVID-19, the Windfall Journal reported on the time.

Hospital staffers have been unaware of Rossi’s true identification till authorities turned up on the facility and arrested him, the Scottish Solar stated.

Rossi appeared earlier than Edinburgh Sheriff Courtroom on Wednesday by way of video hyperlink.

He was hunched over in a wheelchair and hid his face earlier than shouting that the sheriff was “a shame to justice,” the BBC stated.

The outburst prompted the clerk to chop off Rossi’s video connection.

When the proceedings resumed, McFadyen stated Rossi’s weird habits “undoubtedly difficult and prolonged what’s in the end an easy case.”

“It follows that I have to ship the case of the requested particular person Nicholas Rossi to the Scottish ministers for his or her resolution whether or not he’s to be extradited,” the official dominated.

Final fall, officers decided that the person claiming to be Arthur Knight was Rossi after they photographed his tattoos and matched his fingerprints via the Nationwide Crime Company, SkyNews said.

Throughout the weird identification listening to in Edinburgh, Rossi even referred to as upon his spouse, Miranda Knight, who claimed she had no thought who Nicholas Rossi was.

Rossi, nevertheless, considerably gave himself away when his accent saved altering in public.

Much more bizarrely, HMP Edinburgh’s doctor testified that he had “no medical want” for a wheelchair, although he insisted on utilizing each that and an pxygen masks, per SkyNews.

Rossi is needed in Utah for allegedly raping his 21-year-old ex-girlfriend in her condominium in 2008.

DNA from the assault was not examined till 2017 – and the fabric additionally matched an assault in Ohio.

Along with the intercourse crimes, Rossi faces fraud expenses in Ohio for supposedly opening bank cards in his foster father’s identify and amassing over $200,000 in debt.

He’s wished in Rhode Island, the place he was beforehand lively in native politics and criticized the kid welfare system, for failing to register as a intercourse offender.

Rossi’s ex-wife, Kathryn Heckendorn, told the BBC that she married him in Dayton, Ohio in 2015, just some months after they met.

“It was the primary day he first hit me, proper after we have been married,” she recalled.

Rossi, she continued, was controlling, manipulative, and sometimes bodily abusive.

She stated that didn’t know on the time that Rossi was a registered intercourse offender who, in 2008, was discovered responsible of sexual imposition and public indecency.

Heckendorn recorded one occasion of abuse, which later helped her safe a divorce and rebuild her life.

“It angers me first that he retains pulling all these stunts – he was doing the identical factor with our divorce,” she advised the outlet of the continued proceedings in Scotland.

“At all times being unwell or having some authorized situation. Some excuse to postpone, delay, proceed the listening to, the identical precise stuff.

“The one one he’s obtained satisfied is himself.”