The many faces of the fugitive who faked his own death

It is March 2022, in the West End of Glasgow, and one of America’s most wanted men is gasping and gurgling as he trundles towards me in a motorised wheelchair. He is wearing a spotted bow tie, a check three-piece suit in battleship grey, plum socks and a gold pocket watch, and has a transparent respirator mask clamped over his whiskery jowls.

Behind him on a shelf are images of Winston Churchill, Julius Caesar and the Great Sphinx of Giza, plus a Paddington Bear toy. Slippers embossed with Prince of Wales feathers lie near his feet. Puffy and perspiring, he proffers a clammy hand but his greetings are all but drowned out by the roar of an oxygen generator beside a table laden with crucifixes, rosary beads and a jar with “Holy water” scrawled on it in felt tip.

Who he is depends on who you ask.

He and his wife, Miranda, maintain he is Arthur Knight, 37, an innocent Glasgow-based academic who awoke from a medically induced coma on a Covid ward at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in December 2021 to find detectives looming over him.

Police Scotland, a Scottish judge and the US authorities insist he is Nicholas Rossi, 36, a serial conman, fraudster, sexual predator, alleged rapist and fugitive from Rhode Island, who has used more than a dozen aliases including Nick Alahverdian, Nick Alan, Nicholas Brown and Arthur Brown.

The authorities in Edinburgh and Salt Lake City maintain that Rossi fled across the Atlantic in 2017 before faking his own death in an audacious bid to evade justice. They are certain they have got their man, pointing to distinctive tattoos on his arms that match those in an Interpol red notice.

After a protracted court battle, a Scottish judge ruled last August that he could be extradited to the US, where he was wanted in Utah, calling Rossi “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative”. It is alleged he raped a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, and a 26-year-old woman in Salt Lake County, both in 2008 — for which he faces the prospect of life in prison. He was finally deported on January 5 this year. Witnesses said he spent his final seconds on UK soil weeping and wrestling air marshals with his trousers around his ankles.

The day I met ‘the Gruffalo’

That it came to this was not a surprise to me. Back in 2022, shortly after he was released on bail in Scotland, Rossi had attempted to reel me into his fantasies, sending me an unsolicited email in a desperate attempt to control the narrative.

“This media circus is full of fabrications and untrue statements,” he wrote. “My wife and I would like to speak on the record in person.” He wanted it known that he was the victim of a “monstrous miscarriage of justice” and invited me to his Glasgow flat.

What was to follow was one of the most surreal encounters of my life. As we locked eyes in his living room he held up his mobile phone and solemnly beckoned me to come closer. I found myself staring at an image of Ardal O’Hanlon, the Irish actor who played Dougal McGuire, the gormless priest in the 1990s sitcom Father Ted.

“Met him in Bristol, lovely bloke,” he wheezed. “I’ve got one of Nicholas Lyndhurst here too, somewhere.”

We were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of two burly representatives of a mobility firm who informed him that the wheelchair he was renting had been soiled by a substance unknown and a charge had to be levied. His eyes flashed with rage.

“I will sue you and see you in court,” he barked, looking like a cross between Orson Welles and Henry VIII. The stand-off was resolved when Miranda, a smartly dressed 41-year-old with a West Country accent, appeared with a fistful of Royal Bank of Scotland notes, which she gave the visitors.

“I remained polite and calm in quite a stressful situation there,” he said smugly, after being decanted into a throne-like armchair by his wife. “And yet they say I am a beast and a violent man. They say I have 16 aliases and a fake accent. I’ll prove that wrong.” He did, however, admit to answering to one other name. “My wife calls me the Gruffalo, or Gruff,” he said with a grin. “It’s because my tummy is large.”

Miranda giggled as she likened her husband’s stocky build to the monster in the children’s book by Julia Donaldson. “I’m the swift fox with the red hair,” she beamed. “We went to see the stage play together.”

“Is there any need to be afraid of the Gruffalo?” I asked.

“He is actually the one that is being manipulated,” pointed out the man who allegedly evaded an FBI manhunt, his face reddening. “The real villain is the mouse.”

The metaphor having run its course, Miranda brought us back to reality. “There’s no way I believe that Arthur could ever do anything wrong to a woman,” she said. “I have known him since 2011 and he is kind, thoughtful and loving. I have kissed a few frogs and only want to get married once.”

The couple got married in Bristol in 2020, after which the accused began to use her maiden name, Knight. Her voice lowered to a whisper: “I wouldn’t choose somebody that was a rapist.”

As we talked, Oscar, the couple’s toy poodle, and Toby, their beagle, who I was told was celebrating his sixth birthday, darted around, barking and snapping at each other before the smaller dog sank his fangs into my leg, drawing blood. Once again Miranda intervened. “He’s had the snip but, if anything, it’s had the opposite effect,” she blurted by way of an apology.

Her husband then outlined a backstory so extraordinary it could have leapt from the quill of Charles Dickens. He claimed to be an Irish orphan who, at the tender age of 14, accompanied by friends, broke out of his austere Dublin orphanage and stowed aboard a ferry to England.

“When I came to London I was a bit of a Del Boy,” he said between gulps of air. “We would acquire discounted books and then sell them for a profit.” Could any of his fellow market traders verify his story? He shook his head. “Unfortunately they were ensnared by the lures of the streets,” he said.

My attempts to establish how he rose from East End barrow boy to Glaswegian academic were met with deflection, sophistry and rambling conspiracy theories. He told neighbours he lectured at Glasgow University, but the university later denied ever having anything to do with him.

• Who is rape suspect Nicholas Rossi, mystery man who ‘faked his own death’ and denied his identity?

He said his career as an academic tutor ended abruptly when he contracted Covid and was placed in a series of medically induced comas. “I endured dreams that were incredibly vivid and literally hellish,” he said, eyes bulging. “I saw a vision of the Devil himself.” He said he recovered only to find himself at the epicentre of a global manhunt.

Close to tears, Miranda, a devout Christian and one-time public relations executive, insisted she and her husband were trapped in purgatory. “Living on the inside of this is bewildering, like a living nightmare,” she said. “We were a very normal couple. We love our dogs, going to National Trust properties and having nice dinners at the Ivy [in Glasgow]. Back in 2012 at a work dinner I got presented with an award that said ‘Most likely to be famous’,” she added. “I didn’t expect it to come true in this way.”

Before I left, my host was keen to record a filmed message to his detractors. Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly with Me crackled from an antique record player as he insisted he would never submit to the indignity of deportation. “Not only am I not guilty but I have not been before a court of law to prove my innocence,” he raged. “I am not the person who the police seek.”

In the weeks that followed, he remained in contact. In calls and texts he fulminated against David Leavitt, the Utah county attorney orchestrating his extradition. “That dastardly man is determined to frame an innocent British subject,” he fumed. “As sure as the Queen is about to have a platinum jubilee I will prove that I am Arthur Knight.”

He spoke in hoarse home counties tones inflected with cod-Churchillian rhetoric, except when mentioning his Hibernian roots. Then he would say “aye” instead of yes, declare the weather to be “grand” and express a yearning for Barry’s Irish tea and smoky bacon Tayto crisps. He pronounced niche as “nitch”, the American way, and said sime-ul-taneous rather than simultaneous. I was not alone in my suspicions.

What the neighbours saw

Kenny Low, the manager of the nearby Arlington bar in Woodlands Road, became fascinated by the dandyish “posh boy” who gulped malt whisky at his bar and talked obsessively about JFK. “He introduced himself as Arthur Knight and said he was up here lecturing,” Low told me. “I remember one time he was sitting close by and I could see him salivating over my lunch. I asked him if he would like a coronation chicken wrap but he didn’t know what it was. Anybody in the UK should really know what coronation chicken is.”

Suspicious indeed — but not what you’d call a smoking gun. Yet there were more signs that Knight was not who he claimed to be. Anna, a neighbour, could not shake off a nagging sense of unease about the eccentric newcomer. “Arthur looked and sounded like a caricature of a posh Englishman with his little silk pocket squares and broad-brimmed hats,” she said. “He was friendly and polite, but there was something about him that gave me the creeps.”

She recalled him telling anyone who would listen that muscular atrophy had left him unable to walk, while severe scarring of his lungs meant he couldn’t breathe unaided. Yet, “one day I woke up at around five in the morning and looked out of the window. I saw Arthur waddling past, like he was trying to jog, without his wheelchair or oxygen mask.”

In TV interviews that were beamed around the world, the wanted man continued to portray himself as pathetic and gravely ill. He told broadcasters he was “too exhausted” to roll up his sleeves and, on one occasion, collapsed dramatically to prove that his legs no longer functioned.

A victim comes forward

One American viewer, Mary Grebinski, felt zero sympathy. She immediately recognised the man who had sexually assaulted her on a stairwell at Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio, in 2008. He had introduced himself as Nick Alahverdian via the social networking site MySpace and offered to walk her to her lecture after they met in the college cafeteria.

“He made it seem like he could be a good friend to me,” she told a Channel 4 documentary, of which I am an associate producer and which airs later this month. “But he pinned me up against a wall and put his hands down my pants. I said, ‘Please stop. Can I please leave? Let me leave,’ but he starts touching himself and unzipped his pants. He said, ‘Shut up, bitch, I’m almost done,’ and then ejaculated on the wall behind me. I was 19.”

Grebinski, now 35, said she ran away only to be confronted by her attacker later that day. “He said, ‘I’m so sorry, you are beautiful. I couldn’t help myself.’ He’s begging me not to tell.” She refused and reported him to the police. He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for 15 years after being convicted of sexual imposition and public indecency.

Rossi launched failed bids to overturn his conviction and, perversely, sue his victim for causing him “emotional distress”. He was lionised by America’s burgeoning men’s rights movement and set about castigating Grebinski in a 2014 essay entitled My Personal 9/11. “Her acts are tantamount to flying planes into my twin pillars of personal success and public service,” he wrote. “My goals and aspirations crumbled to the earth, amassing a huge heap of rubble.”

“This is not something a sane person would write,” Grebinski said. “There is no line that he will not cross.”

He remained free to carry out attacks on women in at least four states for a decade, according to the US justice department. In 2012 a 21-year-old woman told Orem police that she had been attacked by Rossi, who bruised and bit her and said it “turned him on” when she said “no” to sex. A string of similar complaints were raised against him, including allegations of domestic violence from two women who married him. Rossi was facing a charge of sexual battery but it has since been dropped by prosecutors.

Kathryn Heckendorn, now 34, met the man she came to know as Nick at a singles event put on by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ohio in the spring of 2015. “I thought he was educated, well off, smart and a go-getter,” she recalled for the documentary. “I was flattered. He was always eager to gift me flowers.” That October they were married — but her husband’s behaviour suddenly changed. “I had a black eye, a knife to my throat,” she said. “He took my phone and locked me in the bathroom — the longest time was about two days. He would rape me constantly.”

One day she went to tidy the basement in their home and, to her horror, found boxes containing details of dozens of women from different US states. “He had been tracking these women and their daily routines, like a stalker. It seemed like something you would see in a movie, like behaviour you would see from a psychopath.” His notebooks were “filled to the brim”. “I opened one and it talked about this girl from Idaho, her class schedule, that she has a boyfriend who doesn’t like Nick so don’t approach her when she’s with him.”

Heckendorn, who secretly recorded her husband’s abusive conduct on her phone, fled and was granted a protection order. He was ordered to vacate their home and duly removed his belongings, but left a gun behind. “That was Nick saying, ‘I still have control. You haven’t gotten rid of me,’” Heckendorn said. “Nicholas Rossi is a monster — people need to know how dangerous he is.”

The truth about Rossi’s origins

In reality, Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in Providence, Rhode Island, in July 1987 to Diana and Jack Alahverdian, the latter a drug addict, now deceased, who allegedly slit the family dog’s throat in front of his young son. In 1996 Nicholas changed his surname to that of his stepfather, David Rossi, a chain-smoking Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator who struggled to control his stepson. The troubled boy ended up in care.

“I figured he was a psychopath like the biological father,” Rossi senior, speaking from his home town of Johnston, Rhode Island, said. “The kid was the devil’s spawn.”

The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Nicholas Rossi boarded American Airlines flight 290 to Dublin on June 4, 2017. He then travelled to London and Essex, where he lived briefly under his birth name, Nick Alahverdian, with Michelle Minnaar, now 43, a food blogger whom he had bombarded with romantic messages. She alleges he began demanding money, inserted a tracking device on her phone and took control of who she could see and what she could wear, before raping her. “Nicholas is an evil parasite,” said Minnaar, who waived her right to anonymity to accuse him.

Rossi was arrested in connection with the alleged rape, which is said to have taken place in Chelmsford, but had not been charged at the time of his extradition. Essex police says its investigation remains active.

By 2020 he was going by the name Nicholas Brown and married Miranda Knight on February 22. A week later, a press release announcing Rossi’s death from non-Hodgkin lymphoma was issued to American news outlets. The story was reported by several newspapers after being circulated by the Associated Press agency, and it was broadcast on TV and radio bulletins by NBC News. It is believed to have been penned by Rossi himself.

Father Healey, the pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Church in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, agreed to host a memorial Mass after being contacted by a woman with an English accent who claimed to be Rossi’s widow “Louise”. Miranda, one of whose middle names is Louisa, has denied allegations that it was her. The Mass was cancelled after the police informed the priest it was a sham. At the time the FBI was seeking Rossi for an alleged $200,000 credit card fraud committed on a former foster carer.

After gaining permission to access his iCloud account, which revealed pictures of him and his wife enjoying lavish meals at restaurants and visiting historic Scottish properties, US authorities discovered he was alive, calling himself Arthur and living in the grey drizzle of Scotland’s largest city.

In May 2022, two months after our first meeting, “Arthur” phoned me in a state of breathless excitement. “I am going to give you a world exclusive,” he purred. “You must put it on the front page of The Times.” His “story of the century” was a wild allegation that Leavitt, the Utah prosecutor who was spearheading efforts to extradite him, was the head of a satanic paedophile ring. Of course, he was unable to produce any evidence to substantiate his claims.

Days later he posted an article on his own website, Zeus News, claiming Leavitt and his wife, Chelom, a sex therapist and academic, were “primary suspects in a ritual sex abuse ring”. The following day Leavitt held a press conference where, fighting back tears, he disclosed that he and his spouse had been falsely accused of orchestrating the “cannibalising and murder of small children”. Leavitt, now 60, accused the Utah County Sheriff’s Office of conspiring with a convicted sex offender to destroy his chances of winning re-election to his post in a ballot that was just weeks away.

I phoned the Sheriff’s Office, which had publicly endorsed Leavitt’s electoral rival, and got through to a senior officer. “Ain’t that a coincidence,” he told me. “I’ve already been speaking to an investigative journalist from your part of the world. He’s given us credible information about allegations of ritualised abuse. It’s a guy called Arthur Knight — you know him?”

He gave an audible gulp when I told him his source was a suspected fugitive and alleged rapist who had faked his own death and was wanted by the FBI.

Leavitt called for an investigation into “misuse of taxpayer and county resources” but the Sheriff’s Office doubled down and denied incompetence or wrongdoing. The mud, meanwhile, appeared to have stuck and Leavitt lost by a landslide. But before he left office he was able to link a DNA profile from an unresolved Utah rape case from 2008 to samples kept from Rossi’s sexual assault of Grebinski. “Mary Grebinski is an absolute hero,” Leavitt said. “We wouldn’t have a case in Utah without her. I felt euphoric that I had taken a truly dangerous man off the street.”

Rossi’s masks are stripped away

Court hearings in Edinburgh, aimed at establishing the suspect’s identity, brought plot twists that surpassed those in any drama staged at the city’s Fringe festival. The man claiming to be Arthur Knight angrily dismissed a succession of lawyers, hurled insults at the judge and defended himself while dressed in a dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. “The game is afoot,” he bellowed through his oxygen mask outside court, flashing a V-for-victory sign.

He claimed to have converted from Catholicism to Orthodox Judaism while on remand and gave evidence while wearing a kippah skullcap and a black lawyer’s robe that he insisted was a Hasidic Jewish frock coat.

During a brief adjournment a member of Rossi’s legal team marched towards me. “My client, Mr Knight, would like to call you as a witness,” she said. “He assures me you’ll be willing to give evidence that you have seen his arms and can confirm he has no tattoos.” I assured her I could not and would not be able to do this. Minutes later “Arthur” rolled into view, his shoulders heaving as he wept uncontrollably. He swiftly composed himself and under oath conceded that he does have tattoos closely resembling those in the Interpol notice. But he claimed they had been inked on his arms by persons unknown while he was unconscious in hospital, as part of a grand conspiracy to frame him. He then called William King, a fellow prisoner and a serial child abuser, to speak on his behalf.

Unsurprisingly, Sheriff Norman McFadyen, the presiding judge, dismissed his testimony and declared the man in the wheelchair to be a liar and a fantasist, ruling that he was indeed Rossi.

While awaiting his extradition ruling in HMP Edinburgh, Rossi granted me a valedictory interview, expressing contrition for the actions of a man he swore he’d never met. “Even though I am not Rossi I want to apologise to anyone impacted by his actions. To anyone affected I offer the greatest of sympathies from the bottom of my very, very broken heart. I stand with the victims.”

He claimed to have been traumatised after witnessing the London Tube bombings in 2005. “I will never forget the smell that day,” he said, preposterously — there is no evidence he was there. Realising his time was fast running out his voice became forlorn. “If I do have to go to the US I am unsure how likely I am to survive. That is why I want to ask now for forgiveness.”

“Have you ever raped a woman?” I asked.

“Sorry. I… I can’t hear you,” he stammered. I repeated the question. “Absolutely not. No. No. No! But because my name has now forever been inextricably linked to these absolutely repulsive deeds I cannot give anything but help in the healing process.”

Awaiting trial in jail in Utah, he continues to insist he is Arthur Knight and an innocent man. Miranda moved away from Glasgow but is standing by her husband.

• Extradited rape suspect Nicholas Rossi makes first US court appearance

Leavitt, Rossi’s erstwhile nemesis, is now living in retirement in Knockderry Castle on the west coast of Scotland. He and his wife and children moved in last year, fulfilling a lifelong dream to own and restore a historic Scottish property, after securing it for more than £1 million.

Leavitt has a message for Miranda. “Your real enemy is Nicholas Rossi, who has used you as a tool to get what he wants,” he says. “When you come to that realisation, that’s when your life can begin.” He adds: “No fewer than 12 police forces investigated Nicholas Rossi and let him go. The real heroes are the women who had the courage to tell the world what happened to them. They risked their safety and security and their anonymity so that other people would be protected. We owe it all to them.”
Imposter: The Man Who Came Back from the Dead begins on Channel 4 at 9pm on May 20