A rape suspect accused of faking his personal demise has made a weird first look in a US courtroom after being extradited from Scotland.
Nicholas Rossi was flown out of the UK a couple of weeks in the past after a long-running courtroom battle throughout which he claimed to be a sufferer of mistaken id.
US officers accuse him of raping a girl in 2008 and say he faked his personal demise – even establishing his personal memorial service – earlier than fleeing to the UK.
Rossi spoke in an obvious English accent at a Utah courtroom on Tuesday, referring to the choose as “m’lady” and saying claims he wasn’t giving his true identify have been “complete hearsay”.
He claimed he was Arthur Knight Brown and spoke in a laboured, breathy tone whereas taking air from an oxygen masks.
Rossi gave his beginning date in British format, with the day first adopted by the month – reverse to the US customary.
The 36-year-old was first arrested after somebody recognised him when he was unwell with COVID and brought to a Glasgow hospital in December 2021.
A 12 months later, Edinburgh Sheriff Court dominated his tattoos and fingerprints matched these of Rossi – as featured on an Interpol needed discover.
Rossi recommended they’d been carried out by an NHS worker when he was unconscious as a part of an try to border him – and insisted he was an Irish orphan who had by no means been to America.
However, it emerged he had modified his identify 4 occasions in three years and concocted quite a lot of tales to cover from justice.
Four years in the past, Rossi instructed media within the state of Rhode Island he had non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to reside. An on-line obituary later claimed he had died on 29 February 2020.
The case performed out over quite a lot of years in Scotland, with Rossi dismissing his authorized groups and representing himself as he appeared in courtroom in a wheelchair and oxygen masks.
Judge Norman McFadyen stated he was “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative” when he accepted the extradition final summer time.
He misplaced an enchantment in December and was lastly flown to the US in the beginning of this month.
Rossi will subsequent seem in courtroom in Utah on 26 January and was denied bail.
Source: information.sky.com”