After being extradited to the U.S. from Scotland earlier this month, Nicholas Rossi used a court appearance in Utah on Tuesday to insist again that he isn’t Rossi at all, putting on a British accent to deny allegations that he was pretending to be someone else as “complete hearsay.”
The 36-year-old instead gave his name as Arthur Knight Brown at the hearing for a charge of rape in connection with an assault against a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, in 2008. Rossi, who has previously been convicted of sexual assault and faked his own death, had previously insisted that he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Brown as he fought a lengthy legal battle against his extradition from the U.K.
Speaking from jail via a video link Tuesday, Rossi was asked to confirm his name and birthdate. He repeatedly had to lift up an oxygen mask to be heard clearly in the courtroom, telling the judge that he was Arthur Knight Brown and giving a date of birth that differed from Rossi’s, KSTU reports. He also gave the birthdate in the British format of day-month-year.
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When Deputy Salt Lake County attorney Tamara Basuez explained to the judge that Rossi hadn’t admitted his name or given a correct birthdate since returning to Utah, Rossi interjected: “Objection, m’lady! That is complete hearsay, and I would ask your ladyship that the prosecution show cause for why…”
The judge cut Rossi off to tell him that she would appoint a lawyer for him and set a detention hearing for Jan. 26. Rossi said that he had a lawyer, but they hadn’t been notified of the hearing on Tuesday.
Rossi grew up in Rhode Island foster homes and became an outspoken critic of the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. In 2020, he told local media that he’d been diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and an online obituary later claimed that he’d died on Feb. 29, 2020.
In fact, authorities say Rossi faked his death to escape charges and fled to the U.K. His time on the run ended in December 2021, when he was arrested in a hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, while being treated for COVID-19.
He then became claiming to be Arthur Brown, an innocent orphan who was being framed by authorities to connect him to Rossi. An Edinburgh court ruled in August that his extradition to the U.S. could go ahead, with a judge calling him “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative,” according to the Associated Press.
In addition to the Orem case, Rossi faces another felony rape charge in Salt Lake County also allegedly committed in 2008, according to NECN. He also reportedly faces complaints in Ohio and Rhode Island over allegations of sexual abuse, fraud, and domestic violence.
