Nicholas Rossi: Fugitive who faked death appears in US court

A man who spent two years fighting extradition from Scotland to the United States has appeared in court in Utah charged with rape.

Nicholas Rossi was sent back to the US last month after his claims to be the victim of mistaken identity were rejected by Scottish judges.

Mr Rossi, 36, continues to claim he is an Irish orphan called Arthur Knight.

The 36-year-old appeared before Utah's Fourth District Court by prison video link.

Mr Rossi had previously refused to appear at two hearings at separate courts in Utah on rape charges.

And last month he was warned he could be forced to attend.

On Tuesday Judge Derek Pullan told Mr Rossi he was charged with rape, a first degree felony alleged to have occurred in September 2008 in Utah County.

A separate charge of sexual battery was dismissed.

A further hearing in the case was scheduled for next month.

Mr Rossi is also facing a separate allegation of rape in Salt Lake County.

Mr Rossi was arrested under an international arrest warrant in December 2021 after being admitted to hospital in Glasgow with Covid.

He claimed to have been the victim of mistaken identity and insisted his name was Arthur Knight.

But in November 2022 a sheriff in Edinburgh ruled that the man was Nicholas Rossi after hearing that his tattoos and fingerprints matched.

He lost his final appeal against extradition on 14 December last year.

Prosecutors in Utah said he was charged with raping a 21-year-old woman in 2008.

Mr Rossi was not identified as a suspect until about a decade later due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the state's crime lab.

During the previous hearing, he denied being Nicholas Rossi and said his name was Arthur Knight Brown.