The anatomy of a manhunt
It reads like a crime thriller but truth is stranger and more dramatic than f iction: the astonishing inside story of how US and Scots police tracked down an elusive fugitive who faked his death to dodge sex charges
‘Transatlantic manhunt led from state of Utah to Glasgow’
ARRIVING at the courtroom, he cut a remarkable figure: a dark-haired man speeding along in an electric wheelchair, wearing maroon pyjamas, with an oxygen mask clamped to his face, gesturing V for victory to the waiting photographers.
But even more extraordinary than his appearance is the bizarre case in which he is embroiled – a tangled drama which might be straight from the pages of a crime thriller and which, at its heart, is a dispute over identity. Who is this man?
To the US authorities, there is no doubt: he is 35-year-old Nicholas Rossi, a fugitive from justice who must be returned to America to face trial for multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault.
The man in the satin pyjamas at court in Edinburgh, however, is equally clear: he is Arthur Knight, wrongly accused, a victim of unjust persecution.
Over the coming weeks, expert witnesses and fingerprint analysis will be enlisted to help the Scottish courts resolve the case.
But in the meantime, The Scottish Mail on Sunday has obtained documents and photographs from the States which, although they may not conclusively prove the identity of the mystery man, still reveal the detailed case US prosecutors have built up against Rossi, including allegations of fraud, violence, sexual abuse and kidnapping. Also revealed is a masterclass in international detective work as police orchestrated a transatlantic manhunt that led from the state of Utah, through various other states, to Dublin, Bristol and finally to a Covid ward in a hospital in Glasgow.
US court documents provide details of how the search to find him took years and utilised modern detection techniques, including scanning databases for matches to the many aliases he used.
Such was the tenacity of the investigators involved, they refused to be put off even when evidence began mounting that the suspect was, in fact, dead.
And months of international detective work finally bore fruit thanks to old-fashioned ‘door-knocking’ by police officers in Scotland who gleaned the final, vital clue which led them straight to Rossi in a Covid ward in the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday can today reveal the operation to find him gained its first significant clue when an undercover FBI agent in Ohio, where Rossi had previously been investigated over allegations of sexual assault, made contact with him via email in 2019.
The suspect claimed to the agent that he was in Ireland, claiming he was staying there as it had no extradition treaty with the United States. In fact, Ireland does have a bilateral agreement with the US and the erroneous claim was only one example of the web of lies Rossi would try to spin in an attempt to evade justice.
Court documents obtained by this newspaper show Rossi was using an encrypted email service and a so-called Voice Over Internet Protocol phone number, which allows calls to be made over the worldwide web, in his contacts with the undercover agent.
As Rossi’s precise whereabouts remained unknown, efforts to locate him began to ramp up while the full extent of accusations, current and previous, surrounding him were compiled in the US.
As the investigation gained pace, another breakthrough came when a local police force in Utah, where he is wanted on rape charges, called in agents from the elite State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), the state’s plainclothed agency similar to the FBI.
Utah SBI managed to verify, via records held by the Department of Homeland Security, that Rossi had indeed boarded a flight out of the US to Dublin in June 2017. No return trip was logged.
However, despite the breakthrough, the case took an unexpected twist in February 2020, when an obituary was posted online, claiming Rossi had died from NonHodgkin’s lymphoma, with the reports picked up within weeks by mainstream news sources in the US. A group named the Nicholas Alahverdian Foundation – after Rossi’s birth name – started making requests to various government officials in Rhode Island, where he had grown up, for tributes to him.
US law enforcement suspected all was not as claimed, however, and that it was a ruse to substantiate the notion he was dead. They were unable to locate any hard evidence that he was deceased and continued
their pursuit of him undeterred. A major step forward was gained when SBI agents matched photographs of Rossi to those on a driver’s licence, under the name ‘Nicholas Brown’, on the database of drivers in Ireland.
Using this name, further tracing efforts disclosed an address in Bristol, in England, believed to be linked to Nicholas Brown.
Multiple images of Rossi, as well as his fingerprints, were then provided to Interpol as the investigation gained momentum.
Last August, the UK National Extradition Unit was able to locate multiple aliases associated with Nicholas Brown in the UK, including Nicholas Knight-Brown and Arthur Knight-Brown. Addresses also emerged, one of them in Glasgow, and Police Scotland were contacted for help. Officers went to a flat in the Woodlands area of the city’s West End, and made contact with a woman who identified herself as Miranda Brown. When officers showed her photographs of their suspect, she said she was his wife – and disclosed that he was in the QEUH suffering from Covid. Police went to the hospital that same day, where medical staff were able to confirm Rossi had been admitted as a patient under the name Arthur Knight and, in yet another twist, he was detained at the hospital as he
made attempts to discharge himself in a private ambulance.
One US law enforcement agency involved in the operation to find Rossi praised the multinational operation as ‘solid detective work’.
A spokesman for the Utah County Attorney, who is preparing current rape charges against Rossi, said: ‘Through the diligent efforts of SBI agents, and various investigators in other states and agencies, and in co-operation with the Utah County Attorney’s Office, Mr Rossi was discovered to be living under an assumed name in Scotland.
‘The Utah County Attorney’s Office is working with federal and international agencies to extradite Mr Rossi back to Utah.’
Details of the full case built by authorities in his homeland to back his extradition, revealed today, show Rossi has been investigated over cases ranging from sexual assaults and kidnapping, to domestic abuse and fraud spanning four US states.
A dossier compiled by the County Attorney in Utah, co-ordinating the case to get Rossi back to the US and put on trial, shows the range of crimes which authorities suspect him of, including the rape of two women in 2008, one of whom was his former girlfriend, aged 21 at the time.
The woman, who had first met him on social media and then in person two weeks later, had ended the relationship with Rossi – who she claimed assaulted and bit her – over money he owed her and his ‘growing aggression’.
He is said to have then raped her at his flat in Orem, Utah, after the woman was invited there on the ‘pretence’ Rossi was going to pay her money he owed her.
Investigations into his activities disclosed further allegations following a ‘similar pattern of offending’ and he was accused of a sexual assault in Ohio in the same year of an 18-year-old woman. The year previously, he had been investigated over a suspected rape in Utah of a woman aged 18.
Then, in 2010, he was investigated over an alleged kidnapping of a 21year-old woman in Rhode Island and the assault of a woman, also 21, in Massachusetts.
The same year, he wed in Rhode Island but, only seven days after the marriage, was accused of assault by his wife. They separated and he remarried five years later but was also accused of domestic abuse by his new wife, in Ohio.
Last week, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill signed off a new indictment for a second sexual offence allegation against Rossi, with the document warning he constitutes ‘a substantial danger to any other individual or to the community’. It followed the initial charge for rape which had sparked the extradition proceedings.
The man detained in Glasgow last year remains insistent he is not Rossi and that his name is Arthur Knight.
However, US court documents say fingerprints taken from the suspect in Scotland match those of wanted fugitive Rossi.
A spokesman for the district attorney said: ‘Nicholas Rossi is charged with rape, which is a firstdegree felony, and a no-bail warrant for the arrest of Nicholas Rossi has been issued. We are working with the Utah County Attorney’s Office and the US Attorney on the extradition of Nicholas Rossi from Scotland. The presumption of innocence applies. Nicholas Rossi remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.’
At Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, in an attempt to get the extradition process moving, the man alleged to be Rossi was ordered by prosecutors to provide his fingerprints again.
He observed proceedings from HMP Edinburgh via video link and appeared to have a black eye.
The suspect, who was in a wheelchair, was also this month charged with threatening two medics at the QEUH. Procurator fiscal Julie Clark said last week he had had his fingerprints taken in relation to that case, but it was the opinion of the Lord Advocate that a separate sample was needed for the extradition proceedings.
Sheriff Norman McFadyen made the order after the prosecutor said that establishing identity was the only issue.
Miss Clark said: ‘He continues to deny he is Nicholas Rossi and the Crown simply cannot establish his identity in the matter. That is why I am seeking a warrant.’
She said the US authorities had provided a full set of fingerprints of Rossi’s and obtaining the man’s prints would help settle the matter.
In another throw of the dice, Rossi attempted to have media reporting of the proceedings restricted. His attempt was thrown out by the sheriff, who explained the cases would be decided not by a jury but by a sheriff alone, who would not be influenced by media reporting.
Rossi has claimed repeatedly that he is suffering breathing difficulties as he continues his legal battle in Scotland. Medics here have said they can find no evidence of any such respiratory problems.
Next month, he is due to appear at court again, in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, in the latest attempts to deal with the two cases he now finds himself involved in here.
It may be that matters are concluded and he is sent on a plane back to the US for whatever fate awaits him there.
However, as the strange case of Nicholas Rossi has shown so far, often little is as it seems and, certainly, nothing can be taken for granted.