Nicholas Rossi, an American rapist who fled to Scotland after faking his own death in an attempt to evade justice, has died in hospital in the US.
The 38-year-old man was serving a prison sentence in Utah after being convicted of raping two women in 2008 following two separate trials in 2024.
The Utah Department of Corrections said he died of complications from an existing medical condition at 8:32 p.m. Thursday after deciding to stop treatment.
Corrections spokesman Richard Piatt said Rossiโs victims and his family have been notified of his death.
Rossi was once called a โserial rapist of womenโ by a judge and sentenced to 10 years to life in prison for crimes including sexual assault. The American lived in Bristol before moving to Scotland and was arrested in the Covid ward of Glasgowโs Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in 2021.
Hospital staff learned he was a man U.S. authorities wanted to extradite through an Interpol request from distinctive tattoos on his arms, including one depicting a red cross over an angelโs wing.
Rossi initially claimed that the arrest was a case of mistaken identity and claimed that he was an Irish-born orphan named Arthur Knight who had never been to the United States.
A series of preliminary hearings took place, during which he fired at least six lawyers and said he was tortured in prison. In November 2022, a judge at Edinburgh Sheriff Court ruled that the man was Nicholas Rossi and he was extradited to the US to face justice in 2024.
Authorities in Utah began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified in 2018 using a decade-old DNA kit linked to a separate case.
He was among thousands of rape suspects who were identified and later charged as Utah moved to clear a backlog of rape kits, which are boxes of DNA evidence.
Months after the charges were filed, an online obituary claimed that Rossi died on February 29, 2020, from non-Hodgkinโs lymphoma. But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and former foster family, have questioned his death.
In his first trial in Utah, the court heard the victim was living with her parents and being treated for a traumatic brain injury in 2008 when she responded to Rossiโs personal ad posted on the classifieds website Craigslist. They started dating and got engaged a couple of weeks later.
She testified that he became hostile shortly after their engagement and raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home. Years later, a woman went to police after learning that Rossi was accused of raping another woman in Utah around the same time.
The victim in the second incident contacted police shortly after Rossi attacked her at his Orem apartment. The woman came there to pick up money that she said he stole from her to buy a computer.
Following news of his death, a statement attributed to Utah State Attorney Sim Gill said: โMr. Rossi was a sexual predator who tried to avoid responsibility.
โThose who survived his heinous acts take comfort in the fact that he died in prison knowing the crimes he committed.โ
Associated Press contributed reporting