Nicholas Rossi, convicted rapist who faked death, dies in prison

Nicholas Rossi, the Utah inmate who faked his death and used aliases including Nicholas Alahverdian and Arthur Knight, died Thursday night at a local hospital after choosing to discontinue treatment for an existing medical condition. He was 38. The Utah Department of Corrections notified Rossi’s victims and his family, and Rossi was serving a cumulative sentence of 10 years to life for two first-degree rape convictions in Utah and Salt Lake counties.

Investigators connected him to a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018. Months later, an online obituary falsely claimed Rossi died on Feb. 29, 2020, of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, even as authorities kept looking for him. He was identified in December 2021 at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow while being treated for Covid-19 under the name Arthur Knight, then arrested and spent months fighting extradition from Scotland before being returned to Utah in January 2024.

His convictions came from two separate rape cases involving women he met in 2008. In Salt Lake County, jurors found him guilty on Aug. 13, 2025, and Judge Barry Lawrence sentenced him on Oct. 20, 2025 to five years to life. In Utah County, Rossi’s flight to Scotland and his attempt to fake his own death delayed the case before a jury convicted him in a separate case after a week-long trial.