August 24th 2024.
A man named Nicholas Rossi has found himself in hot water after allegedly faking his own death and leaving the United States to avoid facing rape charges. On Thursday, a judge in Utah ruled that Rossi will have to stand trial for his actions. The decision came after a preliminary hearing where District Judge Barry Lawrence determined that there was enough evidence to justify a jury trial, as reported by KTVX-TV.
According to prosecutors, Rossi, who is 37 years old, is accused of raping a former girlfriend, who was 26 at the time, following an argument in Salt Lake County back in 2008. But that's not all - he is also accused of raping a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah in the same year. However, he was not identified as a suspect until a decade later due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab.
Interestingly, Rossi's attorneys at the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Thursday evening. It seems that Rossi has been quite elusive and has even used multiple aliases to evade authorities. In fact, he even claimed to be an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never set foot on American soil and was being framed.
But despite his attempts to escape justice, Rossi's past eventually caught up with him. Growing up in foster homes in Rhode Island, he had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death and fleeing the country. In an attempt to deceive authorities, an obituary was even published online claiming that Rossi had passed away on February 29, 2020, from late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, both authorities and his former foster family had doubts about his supposed death.
Rossi's luck ultimately ran out when he was arrested in Scotland in 2021 after being recognized at a Glasgow hospital while receiving treatment for COVID-19. He then lost an extradition appeal in the country in December, which led to his return to the US to face the charges against him. But that's not all - court documents in Utah County also reveal that Rossi is facing similar charges of sexual assault, harassment, and possible kidnapping in Rhode Island, Ohio, and Massachusetts, as reported by KTVX-TV. It seems that Rossi's past actions are finally catching up to him, and he will have to face the consequences of his alleged crimes.
[This article has been trending online recently and has been generated with AI. Your feed is customized.]
[Generative AI is experimental.]
