Nicholas Rossi, an American man who faked his death and fled to Scotland to escape a rape charge, has gone on trial.
Rossi posed as “Arthur Knight” while he fought efforts to extradite him back to the US.
Now, a Utah court has heard from a woman who says he held her down and “forced me to have sex with him”.
Read more: My experience interviewing Nicholas Rossi
Rossi, 38, is being tried on the first of two separate cases in which he’s accused of raping a woman in Utah in 2008.
He denies the charges against him.
A court in Salt Lake County heard from a woman who said she began a relationship with Rossi while she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury in 2008.
The woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said they began dating after she responded to a personal ad Rossi had placed on Craigslist, and they quickly became engaged.
She said her money paid for their dates and to cover Rossi’s rent.
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The relationship soured when Rossi started “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me”, she told the court.
On the day she claims she was raped, she said there was an incident in which Rossi pounded on her car and used his body to block her from pulling out of a garage.
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After she eventually let him in the car, she agreed to enter his house to talk but once inside, he pushed her onto his bed, held her down and “forced me to have sex with him”, she testified.
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The woman told how she lay still, paralysed by fear. Rossi’s lawyers sought to convince the jury the alleged victim’s motivation in accusing him of rape was resentment over their relationship more than a decade previously.
Rossi faked his death in 2020 and fled to the UK in an effort to escape criminal charges.
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He married Miranda Knight in Bristol and the pair moved to Glasgow.
US investigators were able to follow his digital footprint to his Glasgow address and police arrested him in hospital, where he was being treated for COVID.
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Medical staff at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital recognised him from his tattoos, images of which had been circulated on an Interpol red notice.
