A man who authorities say faked his own death and fled to Europe to escape rape charges in the United States has died after being transported from a Utah prison to a hospital, officials announced Friday.
Nicholas Rossi, 38, had been serving a sentence of at least 10 years following his 2025 convictions on two separate sexual assault charges.
Rossi passed away Thursday night due to “complications of an existing medical condition after choosing to discontinue medical treatment,” according to Richard Piatt, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Corrections.
Piatt confirmed that Rossi’s victims and family members had been informed of his death. He declined to provide specifics about the nature of Rossi’s health issues, though Rossi had appeared in a wheelchair and relied on supplemental oxygen during court proceedings.
Also known by the name Nicholas Alahverdian, Rossi was brought back to the United States from Scotland in 2024 after being extradited to face charges in Utah.
Utah investigators had been searching for Rossi after a DNA match from a rape kit collected more than a decade earlier identified him in 2018. Shortly after charges were filed, an online obituary surfaced claiming he had died on February 29, 2020, from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, Rhode Island police, a former attorney, and a former foster family all raised serious doubts about whether he had actually died.
He was taken into custody in Scotland the following year while being treated for COVID-19. Hospital workers recognized him by his distinctive tattoos, including a Brown University crest tattooed on his shoulder — despite the fact that he never attended the school.
Throughout the legal proceedings, Rossi maintained that he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being wrongfully accused. Investigators say they uncovered at least a dozen different aliases he had used over the years in an effort to avoid being caught.
