CNN —
This week’s court hearing for Nicholas Rossi, who is accused of rape in Utah, was meant to be routine.
On Tuesday, Rossi made an appearance on camera from the Utah County jail; his voice was hardly heard and his face was partially covered by an oxygen mask. “Are you Mr. Rossi?” the judge asked him, and he murmured a different name with what seemed like a British accent.
The suspect then introduced himself as Arthur Knight Brown and provided a birthdate that was one year off from what was recorded in the court files. He entered the date in the British format, which is the day, month, and year.
“Objection, my lady, that is complete hearsay,” was Rossi’s response to the prosecutor’s statement to the judge that he “has not admitted his name or birth date accurately.”
This latest incident is part of the increasingly odd story of a man who, according to officials, has attempted to fake his own death, left the country, and taken on false identities in order to avoid being charged with many counts of sexual assault against women.
Rossi identified himself as an Irish orphan who had never been to the US after he was apprehended in Scotland in 2021. However, detectives claim that he is an American who left Utah to avoid being charged with rape and fled to Scotland and Ireland by posting his own fictitious obituary.
An August ruling by a Scottish court allowed Rossi to be extradited to the United States. Arriving in Utah this month, the 36-year-old, also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, is facing accusations related to an alleged 2008 rape that occurred in Orem, approximately 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake County, he is additionally charged with another rape.
According to a Scottish prosecutor, Rossi has gone by at least ten different names and has been known to talk with accents that vary depending on which identity he is assuming at the moment.
Rossi didn’t have an attorney when he appeared in court in Utah, and it’s unknown if he does in the US. A lawyer named in court records has been contacted by CNN.
Authorities claim that there was a pattern to his attacks.
After Rossi was accused of sexual assault in Salt Lake and Utah counties, investigators in Utah sought his extradition from Scotland.
In 2020, a Utah state investigator seeking an arrest warrant for Rossi declared that he had also been found guilty of sexual charges in Ohio and that there had been police reports of potential harassment, sex assault, and kidnapping in other jurisdictions, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The investigator claimed in court documents that there was a pattern to his attacks. According to court filings, Rossi met the women online, persuaded them to meet alone, and made inappropriate contact. According to the records, he threatened to commit suicide or force an unconsensual experience if the woman attempted to leave.
When Utah authorities started looking through old kits for sexual assault in 2017, they found that a DNA profile from a 2008 rape case matched one from an Ohio sexual assault case. According to court document s, Rossi was the suspect’s name.
A death in Europe was reported in an internet obituary.
According to a court document, Rossi requested a “reduction in sex offender registry level” in January 2020, which would have erased his image and details from the internet. According to court records, he had been found guilty in Ohio of public indecency and sexual imposition and was mandated to register as a sex offender.
A few weeks after the petition was started, Nicholas Alahverdian’s cremated remains were said to have been scattered at sea in an online obituary. However, the obituary’s source was not stated, and the court record stated that “officers have not located any official death notification.”
