Nicholas Rossi now: What happened to 'Arthur Knight', fugitive who faked own death (2024)

Irishman Arthur Knight wokefrom a Covid coma in a Glasgow hospital to find himself surrounded by police.

What followed was a story stranger than any fiction as Knight’s life unravelled to reveal his real identity and past as American sex offender Nicholas Rossi.

Now a Channel 4 True Crime docuseries tells the true life story of Rossi, how he ended up in Scotland under a different name and in an apparently different life.

The four-part series Imposter: The Man Who Came Back From The Dead starts on Channel 4 on Monday 20 May at 9pm, with the second episode shown at 10pm.

Parts three and four will be shown on Tuesday and Wednesday night at 10pm.

We take a look at the man behind the Knight’s tale.

Nicholas Rossi was born on 11 July 1987 to Diana and Jack Alahverdian in the US city of Providence, Rhode Island.

He changed his name in 1996 to Rossi, the surname of his stepfather David Rossi, an Englebert Humperdinck impersonator.

His parents said they struggled to manage his behaviour and he was taken into psychiatric care, where he was diagnosed with ADHD and a narcissistic personality disorder.

He eventually ended up being placed in care with the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF). He later alleged that during that time he was threatened, assaulted and abused and in 2003 was sent to the states of Nebraska and Florida.

As an adult, he became a vocal critic of children’s services in the state. Rhode Island authorities have said there is no record of him being abused.

By 2005, he was placed in an independent living programme. Three years later he was convicted of a sex offence.

According to a Sinclair Community College student in Dayton, Ohio, he sexually assaulted her in the stairwell of the college building after they met on the social networking site MySpace.

He was convicted of public indecency and sexual imposition and placed on the sex offenders register.

A bid by him for a retrial failed and he then sued the victim for libel, which was found to be without merit. In 2014, he wrote a book called My Personal 9/11 in which he accused the victim of ruining his chances of personal success and public service.

Two years after the Sinclair Community College incident, police were called to a domestic incident at an apartment in Rhode Island.

A woman answered the door with injuries to eyes, neck and arms. She accused Rossi of knocking her to the ground when she tried to leave the flat. He pleaded no contest to domestic simple assault.

It would later emerge that a string of complaints had been made about him across a number of states from 2007 onwards.

In 2022, a court document was released by a Utah law enforcement officer which noted police reports against Rossi in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Utah “involving criminal cases of sex assault, harassment, and possible kidnapping from 2007 through 2019”.

During this time, he married twice. His first wife divorced him in May 2011 after six months of marriage, with a restraining order put in place to protect her.

His second marriage to Kathryn Heckendorn also ended in divorce in 2016, after seven months, with a temporary restraining order once again in place.

In June 2107, he boarded a plane bound for Dublin where he lived for a while before travelling on to London and then Essex. He was arrested for an alleged rape during his time in Essex but was not charged.

He met his third wife Miranda Knight in Bristol in 2019 under the guise of Arthur Brown and they were married in early 2020, with him assuming the name Arthur Knight. The couple moved to Glasgow in 2021.

Around the time he met Ms Knight, he made it known to US media in Rhode Island under his original identity that he had been diagnosed withnon-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to live.

An obituary published online on 29 February of 2020 claimed Nicholas Alahverdian/Rossi had died.

However, reports of his death were soon being investigated by police in Rhode Island.

It occurred at the time the FBI had begun a fraud investigation into him, he was also accused of failing to register as a sex offender in Rhode Island in relation to his 2008 conviction in Ohio.

Known as Arthur Knight, Rossi established a new life with his wife in Glasgow claiming to be an Irish orphan who moved to London as a teenager and was now working as an academic at the university.

But Covid was to prove his downfall.

He was admitted to hospital in December 2021 with Covid and during his stay he was identified by his fingerprint and distinctive tattoos as being someone other than Arthur Knight.

When he awoke from his medically induced coma, he found his bed surrounded by police officers.

And on 13 December 2021 he was arrested in connection with an allegation of rape in Utah in 2008.

In his court appearances in 2022 in Scotland, he maintained he was Arthur Knight and not Nicholas Rossi and was a victim of mistaken identity.

When he appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court on 7 July 2022, prosecutor Julie Clark told the court “fingerprints taken when he was arrested for this matter were confirmed to be Nicholas Rossi”.

By this stage, he had started appearing in court in a wheelchair and claimed he had converted to Judaism.

Finally on 11 November 11 2022, Sheriff Norman McFadyen of Edinburgh Sheriff Court ruled that he was Nicholas Rossi and not Arthur Knight and extradition proceedings could being.

The same month Essex Police confirmed Rossi was under investigation for an allegation of rape.

In August 2023, Sheriff McFadyenconcluded there was no legal barrier to extradition.

Scotland’s Supreme Court, the High Court of Justiciary ruled Rossi should be extradited four months later in December.

The 36-year-old appeared before a judge in Utah this week, where he faces rape allegations and the prospect of between five years and life in jail.

He has chosen to defend himself despite warnings from the judge that he would be at a disadvantage and could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

He said: “That’s a chance I’m willing to take your honour.”