SALT LAKE CITY — A man accused of faking his own death and fleeing the U.S. to avoid rape charges will stand trial, a Utah judge ruled Thursday.
District Judge Barry Lawrence ruled during Nicolaas Rossi’s preliminary hearing finds prosecutors have presented enough evidence to warrant a jury trial, KTVX-TV reported.
Prosecutors say Rossi, 37, raped a 26-year-old ex-girlfriend after an argument in Salt Lake County in 2008. In a separate case, he is accused of raping a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, that same year and was not identified as a suspect for about a decade because a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab.
His attorneys at the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Thursday evening.
Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, has used several aliases and said he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never set foot on American soil and was lured into a trap.
The American fugitive grew up in foster care in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death and fleeing the country. An obituary posted online claimed that Rossi died on February 29, 2020, from late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Authorities and his former foster family doubted his death.
Rossi was arrested in Scotland in 2021 after being recognised in a Glasgow hospital while being treated for COVID-19. He lost an extradition appeal in the country in December.
Utah County court documents show Rossi also faces charges of sexual assault, harassment and possible kidnapping in Rhode Island, Ohio and Massachusetts, KTVX-TV reported.