Nicholas Alahverdian, also known as Nicholas Rossi, was found guilty of rape on Wednesday August 14 in the United States. He had been arrested in Scotland in 2021, when everyone thought he was dead.
In 2020, an online Billology announced that it had succumbed to non -Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In reality, Nicholas Alahverdian, also known as Nicholas Rossi, was hiding in Scotland under the name of Arthur Knight. At the time, the young American man was under an investigation for rape and fraud at the credit card … It was to escape justice that he therefore staged his death. But Wednesday August 14, Nicholas Alahverdian was indeed declared guilty of rape in Utah by a court of the county of Salt Lake. The prosecutor announced that his conviction would be pronounced on October 20. He faces a sentence ranging from five years in prison to life imprisonment. He also faced a second trial, there too for rape, in a neighboring county and scheduled for next September, indicates NBC News.
It was in 2021 that he was arrested in Scotland in a Glasgow hospital where he was treated for the COVID-19. At the time, he said he was called Arthur Knight and be an orphan from Ireland. “The officers arrested a 34-year-old man in Glasgow on December 13, in conjunction with an international arrest warrant,” a spokesperson for the Scottish police in the “National” said. The vice quickly tightened on the fugitive whose fingerprints, and DNA, were inscribed in the Database of Interpol.
He had also been confused thanks to tattoos which the man then said they had been made on his skin by the authorities themselves when he was in a coma. According to him, the government would have tried to make him look like the fugitive sought to trap him. Judge Norman McFadyen, quoted by local media, had immediately declared that this story was “highly improbable” and “fanciful”.
Known in the United States for its good deeds …
Especially since he was not entirely unknown. Before becoming a sought-after fugitive, he had first managed to obtain public sympathy by committing, in the United States, for a better child protection system. But the boy who then skimmed conferences and appearances in the media, announced at the end of 2019 being suffering from cancer at an advanced stage which left him only a few weeks to live. He had then done everything to publicize his fight for the defense of children, explaining that he had a lot of time to do so. In February 2020, two months after this sad news, his death had been formalized.
His necrology then described him as a “warrior” whose last words were “not afraid and run towards the happiness of the sun”. Her funeral had even been organized in the presence of a woman pretending to be his wife. It had also been indicated that the latter, and their two children were by his side when he died.
In his introductory statement, the County Prosecutor of Salt Lake said that Nicholas Alahverdian confessed his true identity under oath last year. He was accused of having violated a woman in her twenties in 2008, after a love story and lightning engagement. According to the story of the victim, the man had quickly become authoritarian and bad after buying their rings and after lending him money to pay the rent. It was by wanting to separate from him, removing his famous ring, that a argument broke out and that he ended up attacking him.
A story denied by the lawyers of the accused who claim that it lacks “pieces to this puzzle” and believe that the story of the young woman is not verifiable. But other women who also shared her life have reported similar physical and sexual violence. After the assault, the victim fled the apartment and went to a friend in Provo, in Utah, about 8 km away. She then reported the incident to the police. Asked at that time, Nicholas Rossi said he was “raped by his girlfriend”. Repeated declaration during the trial.
The story therefore did not convince the jurors. “We are grateful to the victim of this case for having agreed to testify, years after the attack,” said Sim Gill, a prosecutor of the county of Salt Lake, in a statement. “We appreciate her patience while we are working to bring the accused back to the county of Salt Lake so that this trial can take place and she gets justice. It took courage and bravery to testify and face his attacker so that he can answer his actions. »»
