Fugitive Rape Suspect Drops Bogus English Accent, Lastly Admits He Assumed a Pretend Identification
A 37-year-old man accused of faking his personal dying and fleeing throughout the Atlantic to evade rape costs in Utah admitted for the primary time this week to assuming a false identification and shifting to Europe, however claimed he’d solely accomplished so due to “credible” dying threats he and his household had acquired.
Requested in a Provo, Utah, courtroom on Wednesday to disclose the supply of these threats, Nicholas Rossi refused. “I don’t wish to give a mouse cheese,” he mentioned.
Bewildered, a prosecutor requested after a second, “What would giving their names… How would that give a mouse cheese?” in keeping with The Providence Journal.
“That means that will stoke the fireplace they’ve needed to proceed with their actions towards me,” Rossi mentioned. “That’s why I haven’t gone public.”
Rossi was arrested in Glasgow, Scotland, in December 2021, three years after he was recognized because the suspect within the rape of a 21-year-old lady in Utah in 2008. He has additionally been charged with one other rape that very same 12 months, with the 26-year-old alleged sufferer recognized as a former girlfriend of his.
He was extradited again to the U.S. earlier this 12 months after his case wound its means by means of the Scottish courts, a course of that was extended by Rossi’s continued insistence that he was not Rossi in any respect however relatively a mild-mannered Irish tutorial named Arthur Knight.
Whereas sustaining the ruse, Rossi insisted on talking in a phony English accent, saying archly in 2022, “As certain because the queen is about to have a Platinum Jubilee, I’ll show that I’m Arthur Knight.”
He continued doing this even after his deportation, referring to the decide overseeing his hearings in Provo as “m’girl,” in keeping with The Times of London.
Rossi lastly dropped the Obtained Pronunciation on Wednesday, talking at his bail listening to in an American accent. He defined that he’d left the nation after receiving “two credible threats” associated to his work in Rhode Island as a baby welfare reform advocate.
“They threatened to destroy my life, destroy my life, made frequent threats to kill me, made frequent threats to kill my household,” he mentioned.
After Rossi made his “mouse” comment, the decide briefly closed the courtroom to permit him to establish the supply of the threats.
On the identical listening to, Rossi additionally acknowledged for the primary time that he’d been “born with the identify Nicholas Alahverdian,” explaining he’d modified his surname to Rossi, his stepfather’s, in 1996.
It was “Nicholas Alahverdian” who supposedly died in Rhode Island in February 2020, in keeping with contemporaneous information experiences. Authorities beforehand recognized Alahverdian as one other considered one of Rossi’s aliases.
Wednesday’s proceedings ended with the decide denying Rossi bail after prosecutors pointed to his many deceptions, saying he was “extremely” prone to skip city. His attorneys argued unsuccessfully that Rossi was not a flight threat, citing his bodily situation.
The 37-year-old is dependent upon a wheelchair and an oxygen tank on account of being incapacitated by COVID-19 in 2021. He was hospitalized after falling sick with the virus, with hospital workers recognizing him as Rossi based mostly on photographs of his tattoos circulated by Interpol.
