Rhode Island man arrested in Scotland after faking his own death to flee rape charge: report

On Friday, Jezebel reported that a fugitive Rhode Island man was arrested in a Scotland hospital after he faked his own death to run from a rape charge in Utah.

"Last January, a 35-year-old orphan from Ireland named Arthur Knight was arrested in a Glasgow, Scotland, hospital," reported Audra Heinrichs. "Only the man wasn’t Knight, nor was he an orphan from Ireland. He is Nicholas Rossi, a Rhode Island fugitive who’d faked his own death and fled the U.S. to avoid prosecution for a sexual assault in Orem, Utah, per a statement from the Utah County Attorney’s office."

"Ever since his incarceration, Rossi has reportedly attempted to convince authorities that he was, in fact, Arthur Knight (a reference to King Arthur and the knights of the round table? Unclear.)" the report continued. "This week, an Edinburgh court ruled that Rossi had hatched an elaborate plan — one that even included an obituary on a memorial website, claiming he’d died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in February 2020 — to escape charges. Rossi’s true identity was confirmed via his tattoos and fingerprints after he was apprehended 'for obstructing the course of justice and allegedly behaved in a threatening or abusive manner' at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital."

"'In 2018 the DNA profile from the Utah sexual assault came back as a match to a sexual assault case in Ohio,' Utah County Attorney David Leavitt said in a statement following Rossi’s arrest," said the report. "Rossi was convicted on two sex-related charges of a 21-year-old Ohio woman on Sept. 13, 2008. Authorities think it’s likely that Rossi is linked to other sexual assaults."

According to the report, it was only thanks to Rossi's hospitalization for COVID-19 that authorities were able to put two and two together and figure out his true identity.

Some other high-profile rape cases have involved international abscondence. In 2018, an Uber driver accused of raping a woman in the back of his car fled to his home nation of Ghana after posting bond.