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Tonight on Dateline. You tried to put me through hell, but I am still here. A dramatic turn in the case of a fugitive with multiple identities and more than a dozen accusers.
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He seemed very sympathetic and reassuring. He said he graduated Harvard. He went from charming to a monster in a heartbeat.
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Stop ignoring me! I wondered if he was going to kill me in that basement. Nicholas has quite an alleged spree of assaults.
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He does. He was a devil spawn. He really was. I learned that Nick was being sought by the FBI for fraud.
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He just kind of disappeared. He said, we believe he's faked his own death, that he's in Europe.
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Did you sexually assault anyone? Did you defraud anyone? No, no, no, no. Andrea, that's a no, no, that's a right, no, no.
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I felt like you kind of represented all the women in that moment. Right. The judge needs to know this is not a man you can trust.
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After a years-long manhunt, will an international con man, now back on U.S. soil, finally face justice?
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Man of Many Faces.
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Mary Grabinski arrived in Salt Lake City on a mission. One that began a long time ago.
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Does this feel a little bit like a full circle moment? It does. In 2008, she survived a sexual assault.
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Today, she'll see her attacker once again. And this time, she'll watch him face charges from another accuser.
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He's a danger. He's a menace. Mary's battle for justice led investigators to more women and sparked an international manhunt.
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He thrives on hurting people. Now she's hoping he'll finally be stopped. It's heartbreaking because I should have been the last one.
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It should have ended with me. Tonight, a surprising revelation from her attacker, someone Dateline has been tracking for years.
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Stop making me. Stop making me. To authorities, he's Nicholas Aliverdian, a convicted sex offender, a con man with multiple identities.
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But he told us he's an innocent Irish orphan named Arthur Knight, wrongly accused of horrific crimes.
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So are you saying that they've got the wrong guy? Andrea, I am not Nicholas Aliverdian.
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Are you crying, Arthur? Forgive me. I'm sorry. I can't walk. People say that's not. Let me try to stand up. Let me try to stand up.
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A lot has happened since that interview, and it's not over yet. How does Mr. Rossi plead to the crimes charged in the information?
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Not guilty, Your Honor. To understand how we got here, we need to go back in time to Rhode Island,
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the place where Nicholas Oliverdian, the man with many faces and names, was born.
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It was 1987, just outside of Providence. Gentle soul, smiling face. He'd run into my arms, always happy to see me.
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He was just a happy child. Michael Aliverdian is Nicholas's uncle. He says behind his nephew's smile was a childhood that was anything but idyllic.
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What was the family dynamic like with Nicholas when he was a child? There was turmoil in the family.
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My brother had some issues, so there were quite a few fights, arguments, that type of thing.
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Nicholas's father was a felon, convicted of writing fraudulent checks, dealing drugs, and domestic assault.
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The situation at home in Cranston, a suburb of Providence, became so dangerous, Michael says Nicholas's mother got a restraining order and went into hiding with Nicholas and his younger brother and sister.
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The couple eventually divorced. I'm sure that took its toll. on Nicholas and his siblings.
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And things only got worse. By the time Nicholas turned 12, his mother was unable to care for him,
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so he ended up in foster care, floating between different families and group homes.
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According to Nick, he was treated poorly. He was raped, assaulted. Tom Mooney writes for the Providence Journal
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and has been reporting on Nicholas for years. He's a consultant on this story. He says despite living through one trauma after the next, Nicholas was determined to make something of his life.
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A family court judge gave him that chance. Arrangements were made to give Nick a job at the statehouse as a statehouse page.
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Pages of teenage kids who do clerical work. It was the perfect fit for Nicholas, and he became a fixture at Rhode Island's seat of power.
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I was a rep from 2000 to 2004. I first met Nick across from the Rotunda, and he was about 14 years old, and he was a page.
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Former state representative Brian Coogan says the teenager impressed everyone with a tireless work ethic and a brilliant mind.
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He would read bills that most reps and senators wouldn't read. He'd read it from front to back.
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He was like a lawyer by trade. Nicholas spent long days at the statehouse wowing legislators
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before returning home to his other life. Nick was actually pretty much a ward of the state.
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Coogan was so taken with Nicholas and everything he'd been through that he briefly considered adopting him. That didn't work out. By 19 Nicholas aged out
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of the system and later went to college. Five years after that he was back at the
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Statehouse this time fighting to bring change to the foster care system That how he got attention from the media That how he got great support and sympathy from lawmakers
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We found one state rep who remembers Nicholas as a young, shining star on the Hill.
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If you see people with compassion that really want to advocate for something, that's Nick.
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In 2011, Representative Raymond Hull was newly elected when he was approached by Nicholas.
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He describes him as a young man with a tenacious spirit. determined to make a difference. I said, Nick, whatever I can do for you, how to help you. And
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I think I even sponsored a couple of bills for him to try to change the processes of DCYF.
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DCYF, the Department of Children, Youth and Families, the agency Nicholas claimed failed
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to protect him as a teenager. And I was subjected to torture, beatings, assault in various forms.
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Nicholas sued DCYF. They denied the allegations and the case was ultimately settled.
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The details of the settlement are sealed, but the stories Nicholas told people about his experience brought him sympathy and some powerful allies.
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Nicholas reconnected with his uncle, Michael Aliverdian. Michael says he was impressed at the man his nephew had become.
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I was amazed at his knowledge, his intelligence, what he was trying to do, which I thought was a great thing.
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He was trying to protect children. And he continued to do that for the next several years.
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But his crusade was about to be cut short. He contacted the press in Rhode Island with a tragic announcement.
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He had this terminal illness, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And less than two months later, the news was out.
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Nicholas Aliverdian was dead at the age of 32. Nicholas Aliverdian passed away from a long battle with cancer.
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But before long, new information about Nicholas would start making its way around Rhode Island,
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leaving everyone wondering how well they really knew him. Shortly afterwards, I got a call from the state police.
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Getting to the bottom of what happened to Nicholas would become a game of cat and mouse,
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spanning three countries, involving multiple law enforcement agencies. The FBI is investigating you.
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Me? You're being looked at for kidnapping, sexual assault, fraud. Incorrect. With a conclusion stranger than fiction.
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Did this case just keep getting crazier and crazier? It seems to get crazier by the minute.
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WPRO. Providence. Accumulation. Sad news to pass along. Nicholas Aliverdian passed away from a long battle with cancer.
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Nicholas Aliverdian was 32. His obituary, sent out by the office of Nicholas Aliverdian,
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ran in local papers in the Boston Globe. The piece lauded Nicholas as a beloved community leader,
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peacemaker, warrior, and Rhode Island legislators paid tribute to him. It's a House resolution expressing the passing of Nicholas Aliverdian.
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Very, very sad. May you rest in peace, Nicholas. His uncle was also sad, but proud.
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He accomplished something. Father Bernard Healy of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church got a call from a woman who said she was Nicholas's widow, a woman named Louise.
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She said she was in Switzerland. He had died. She asked if she could have a memorial mass here at Our Lady of Mercy.
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Is this something that you were happy to do for her? Yeah, it's a memorial mass. I said, we have memorial masses for anybody.
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So she sent Nicholas's bio for the priest to reference at the mass. And after reading that biography, you would think that he was a cross between Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela.
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At that point, Father Healy wasn't sure how to respond. Shortly afterwards, I got a call from the state police.
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We'd ask you not to have the mask because Nicholas is not dead. Oh, wow. They said, we believe he's faked his own death, that he's in Europe.
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Oh, my gosh. He faked his own death? But why would a respected man who'd become such a positive force for change try to fool everyone?
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Turns out he had a darker side, and it apparently emerged early in his life. I said, these kids need a father figure.
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David Rossi is Nicholas's adoptive father. Nicholas was eight when David married his mom in 1996.
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The two fell in love in a Rhode Island nightclub where David was an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator who mingled with his idol and sang his hit songs.
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So I sing it asleep after the love and love. She was waitressing, and she was absolutely beautiful.
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We got serious, we got married. That's when Nicholas Aliverdian became Nicholas Rossi.
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Even at a young age, David could tell he was a bright kid. Computer whiz, math whiz, just in general.
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Very high IQ, but he knew it, and he took advantage of it. He would threaten people.
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I'll get out of my computer, I'll ruin your life in five minutes. Along with those threats came physical violence by Nicholas.
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David remembers one morning before school when Nicholas wouldn't stop hitting his mother.
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He was swinging at her, swinging at me. I picked him up, put him on the bus in his underwear.
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The bus drove away. The school called us. But you know, you're at a point where you don't know what to do with this kid.
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He ruined every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, every birthday for him and his siblings.
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He was wicked. He was a devil spawn. He really was. David says it got to the point where Nicholas's behavior was so bad they had to institutionalize him several times.
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But nothing seemed to work. They threw him out of there. Nobody could handle him.
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David admits he eventually hit a breaking point. When Nicholas was 10 years old, the family took a trip to Disney World.
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He says Nicholas attacked his mother again He started hitting her When I tell you I snapped like that I couldn take him on I beat the hell out of him I put him in the hospital I lost it I ashamed of it
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I always will be. She had to pull me off him. He's a child, though, and you're an adult,
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and that's child abuse. I snapped all the years, all the years of the problem and the trouble.
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David was arrested for assault in Florida, but Nicholas's mom asked to have the charges dropped
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and the case went nowhere. Shortly after, David walked out on the family. That was about the time Nicholas ended up in foster care.
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It was a few years later when State Rep Brian Coogan considered adopting him. Did he straight up ask you,
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will you adopt me? Yes, he did. Nicholas was 14 when he called Brian one day from the courthouse crying.
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He said he was about to be shipped off to yet another group home if he wasn't adopted that very day.
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Brian raced over to the courthouse. The judge said, Do you know what's going on with this kid? I said, judge, he's being abused. He's got mocks on him, scratches, bruises.
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The judge says he had his whole file. He says, I can't show you this file, but trust me, everything he's telling you that's being done to him, he's actually doing to the other kids.
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Wow. Those are big allegations. Big, big. Since records involving children are sealed, the allegations made against Nicholas can't be verified.
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Cougan took the judge's advice and didn't adopt Nicholas and maybe dodged a bullet.
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Veteran reporter Tom Mooney thinks so. There are innumerable people who have come to his aid over the years who have wanted to help him, who he ultimately turns on.
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That sort of gets to that other side of Nick Galevarian. When Nick was 18, he moved to Ohio.
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He was about to age out of the foster care system when a couple from Dayton agreed to take him in.
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In 2008, at age 21, he began attending Sinclair Community College in Dayton. That's when he first met Mary Grabinski.
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I was 19 years old. I was in my first quarter of college. I was just starting life.
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She says Nicholas reached out to her on MySpace. He told me that he was new to the area and he wanted to have friends in the area.
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She told Nicholas she had a boyfriend and wasn't interested in anything romantic.
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He assured her it was not a problem. Soon after, they agreed to meet for lunch at the school cafeteria, and she brought along a friend.
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He was extremely friendly. We hit it off, and he was charming. He was so easy to talk to. He was a good listener. We had a good time.
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Afterward, Nick asked Mary if he could walk her to her next class. Since it was the middle of the day on a busy college campus, she thought, why not?
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Her classroom was in the basement. So when he took me into the basement, I didn't think anything weird of it.
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But in that basement, Mary encountered a terrifying version of Nicholas Aliverdian.
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There were a couple of times I wondered if he was going to kill me in that basement.
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In the winter of 2008 on an Ohio college campus, 21-year-old Nicholas Rossi walked Mary Grabinski to class.
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Once they reached the bottom of a stairwell, she says Nick suddenly turned on her.
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He pins me up against the wall, and he starts both hands going up my shirt. And what are you saying to him?
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I'm saying, hey, can you please get off me? I need to go to my class. Did he stop?
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No. He had his hands up my shirt. I just couldn't push him off me. She saw another student coming down the stairs, but Mary was too paralyzed to scream.
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Probably just thought we were horny teenagers and ran right out. Nicholas was undeterred.
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He went from, you know, touching my shirt to, you know, taking my pants off. And yeah.
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Oh, he's pulling your pants down. Yeah. He's touching himself. Oh, my gosh. What is going through your mind as all this is happening in front of you?
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I thought for sure he was going to rape me, but I did. There were a couple of times I wondered if, you know, he was going to kill me in that basement.
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What does he say when he is finished? Pretty much he finishes and I just went to my class.
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Too stunned to process what had happened. She says when her class was over, he was back.
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Nicholas was standing outside her classroom. When he saw her, he profusely apologized.
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He was begging me at that point not to press charges or to tell anybody what had happened.
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Mary ignored him and went straight to the campus police. After starting an investigation, they sent her to the local prosecutor's office.
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When I first talked to the prosecutors, they said that they didn't have enough evidence
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to pursue a case against him. They didn't want to do anything? No, not at first.
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It wasn't until they got a police report stating his version, saying that I was the aggressor.
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Probably their gut feeling, too, was looking at you and saying, really? Yeah. She's the aggressor? You said you were 90 pounds?
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Yeah, I was very thin back then, yeah. There was something about the way Nicholas attacked her
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that made her feel like he'd done this before. It almost felt ritualistic. I knew I was not his first, but I wanted to make sure I was the last.
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In fact, Mary learned that another woman in Ohio, just 15 days earlier, reported to police that Nicholas Rossi had sexually assaulted her.
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But she decided not to pursue it further. In Mary's case, he was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, which means sexual contact against a person's will.
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What did he take from you in that moment? pretty much my will to live but that was just the beginning for me
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yeah it didn't end there no Nicholas pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial Mary says that when she was victimized yet again The worst part was his defense coming at me and picking me and my story apart
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Talking about what happened to me wasn't hard. Having someone question who I am as a person, question my integrity, that was hard.
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But the attack on Mary's credibility didn't work. The judge believed her and convicted Nicholas on both charges.
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Mary says he showed up to his sentencing wearing a three-piece suit and holding something she'd never seen him with before.
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He brought a cane and came in with a limp, and neither of the other two hearings that we had did he pretend as if he was injured.
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You know, he walked fine. Did you think it was a show? I know for sure it was a show.
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And she thinks his show may have had an effect. Nicholas got no jail time. What did the judge sentence him to?
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He did sentence a fine. He had to attend a sex offender rehabilitation program. He had to register as a sex offender for 15 years.
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But that wasn't the last Mary would hear from Nicholas. A few months later, she got word that the judge was taking another look at the case.
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Nicholas claimed he had new evidence that would clear him. He has a fake MySpace blog that's supposed to be authored by me.
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It implied Mary lied and got Nick arrested because she didn't want her boyfriend to think she cheated on him with Nick.
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What did you say to the prosecutor? I said I didn't write that. The judge agreed the post was fake and closed the case.
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But Nicholas still wouldn't let it go. He tried to sue all the prosecutors involved.
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He ended up suing me. He was saying that because he had to register as a sex offender, it was hard for him to get dates.
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and employment opportunities. So now Mary had to defend herself again against the man who sexually assaulted her.
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She had to borrow money from her parents to hire an attorney. What emotions are you feeling?
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It's pretty much fear the whole time. Fear? Yeah. Fear that I, you know, the litigation could go his way
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and I have to pay him millions of dollars. All the while, Nick cyberstalked her,
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carrying out an online smear campaign on a men's rights website called A Voice for Men,
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posting pictures of her and her personal information. Eventually, the case was thrown out
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and Nicholas was ordered to pay Mary's legal fees. But amazingly, it wasn't over.
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My husband called him crazy on a blog. He found out and not soon after litigation came.
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And what happens this time? He loses the case and I get all my lawyer fees paid back.
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It was then that Nicholas moved back to Rhode Island and returned to the statehouse,
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apparently without anyone there knowing he had a criminal record. Instead, at 23 years old, Nicholas had a new polished look and a new crusade to change the foster care system.
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And like a young Jekyll and Hyde, according to police reports, he was also terrorizing women.
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Nicholas has quite an alleged spree of assaults here in Rhode Island. He does. There are five or six women who alleged that he had assaulted them or threatened them or kept them sort of kidnapped.
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The incidents occurred between March of 2010 and May of 2011. One of them involved someone close to Nicholas, his new wife.
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Nicholas had gotten married, and soon after, police responded to a domestic disturbance call at their apartment.
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The police come in and they notice that Nick's wife has some abrasions on her face,
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a redness on her neck, and they decide to arrest him at that point. When he gets into the cruiser, he's banging his head against the bars that are protecting the glass.
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The police officers had to use pepper spray to get him to calm down. Nicholas pleaded no contest to domestic abuse and received probation.
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The couple later divorced. As for several of his other alleged victims, they told Mooney they dropped their complaints.
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Do you think they were just scared of Nicholas? Oh, absolutely. Some of them have told me that was the reason they chose not to pursue any kind of criminal action against Nick
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is because they were terrified of him. His time in Rhode Island seemed to have run its course.
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He left the state again. Another reinvention was in the making. By 2015, he was 28 years old. He had a new woman in his sights, and she had no idea what was coming.
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I didn't know how I could continue, honestly, to survive. After his legal troubles in Rhode Island, Nicholas moved back to Dayton, Ohio.
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And straight out of his playbook, he appeared to dazzle local lawmakers. Here he is speaking at a city council meeting.
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I think the most important thing to remember here is that... He even started a non-profit to help revitalize downtown Dayton.
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This non-profit was called the Community Progress Institute. What was that about?
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Just to raise money to kind of bring back the life, the pizzazz, back to Dayton.
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Catherine Heckendorn had a front row seat to the new Nicholas, who had gone back to using his birth name, Aliverdian.
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She met him in 2015. He was 28 and had joined her church. He immediately piqued her interest.
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And I said, perfect, a church guy. Yeah. This is pretty safe. You can't get any safer than this.
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She found him to be kind and caring. Catherine had just been through a traumatic experience with another man and was feeling vulnerable.
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He seemed very sympathetic and reassuring that I should feel safe and comfortable and he'll take care of me.
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Did that make you feel good? It did. I think that's exactly what I was looking for.
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They started meeting for coffee and dinners. They talked about their lives. He said he'd been married once before, but it didn't work out.
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He told her he was a Harvard grad and shared his dreams about his nonprofit. She found herself falling for him.
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There was a mystery that I couldn't put my finger on, which kind of drew me to him.
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After dating for just a few months, to her surprise, he proposed. We're sitting on the couch watching some TV at his place, and he just turns to me and says,
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we should get married. I mean, were you shocked? I was very shocked. I knew everything in me was saying no.
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No, no, no, too soon. Something's off about this. He doesn't even really know me. I don't know him.
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Catherine told him she wasn't ready, but Nicholas persisted. I started to get annoyed and frustrated, but at the same time, I always wanted to be a wife. I always wanted to be a mom.
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And I think that desire for those things outweighed the fishiness and common sense.
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She finally gave in, and they married the very next day at City Hall. For Catherine, it was far from the dream wedding she'd always hoped for.
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And the day after they were married, Nick showed a dark side she'd never seen before.
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I don't remember what the argument was about, but it was the very next day where he lays his hands on me for the first time.
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Hits you? Yeah. Yes. What do you do? Do you run? Do you say something to him? Do you call the police?
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Um, try to run, try to call the police. He would always manage to get to my phone and take it, so I could never call for help.
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There was one incident at their house early in their marriage when she was able to call the police.
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So they showed up and arrested him for domestic violence. She says a detective told her something frightening, that her husband was a registered sex offender.
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And he had warned me that he's dangerous, that he does daily rounds on the house,
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and that he's afraid next time he drives by, I will be either chained up in the basement or dead.
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Despite that, she bailed him out and withdrew her complaint. She kept hoping things would get better.
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That was rough, because each time then I got this false hope that the stranger's going to go away and Nick's going to come back.
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But he became more and more controlling. Catherine says he wouldn't allow her to have a job
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and forced her to cook and clean and wear skirts with pantyhose. You know, take care of the house, make sure he had food when he got home.
00:27:03
She said image was everything to Nicholas. He always preferred like a bow tie. I think he was looking for something very like sophisticated
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and strong enough to make him stand out. Everything seemed to be a show, even Nick's non-profit.
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He told her he desperately needed an infusion of cash to keep it going. Catherine says she made the mistake of telling him she had a savings account,
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money her parents had put away for her from the time she was little. And he said that if I don't give him money, his business is going to collapse,
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and we won't be able to eat, and that'll be my fault. So I gave him about $10,000, and as time went on, he said, we need more.
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She says the nonprofit accomplished nothing, and she discovered his business wasn't the only thing that was fake.
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So was his Harvard degree. He'd only taken a course at the extension school. So he lied.
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He did. On top of that, he had a taste for the finer things. And Catherine says he was using her money to pay for his lifestyle.
00:28:09
I see him spending it on lavish, expensive meals, clothes, like first-class flights, five-star hotels.
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How much did you end up giving him? Close to $55,000. The more he lived it up, the more she lived in constant fear of his explosive temper.
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Sometimes when they'd argue, she says he would lock her in the bathroom. How long would he leave you in there for?
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The longest time was about two days. He always made it my fault. And after a while, I think I started believing that.
00:28:45
Yeah. She says the worst of it would come when she refused him in the bedroom. Even though we were married, he would rape me.
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Did you feel just like a prisoner? Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was possible to be cell alone.
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I didn't know how I could continue, honestly, to survive. Catherine knew she had to get out of the marriage, but she also knew Nicholas wouldn't make it easy.
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She needed proof he was abusing her. This is your big moment. You've got your phone ready to go.
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You're going to secretly record him. Yeah. What are you hiding from me? Give me your phone.
00:29:33
Stop ignoring me! After five months of marriage, Katherine Heckendorn made a decision.
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She had to leave her husband The polished church man was all an act and she was going to prove it You going to secretly record him to try to show the world the hell that you been living through
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Yeah. Can you play some of that for us today? Yeah. Give me your phone. Give me your phone.
00:30:16
Stop ignoring me! What are you doing? I'm getting out of this negative atmosphere.
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No! Stop it! No! No! No! Stop! I see you shaking right now. Did that take you back to that place?
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Yeah, very much so. She immediately sent the recording to her father for safekeeping.
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It would take two more months before she finally had the courage to walk out the door.
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She got on her knees and she prayed. Lord, let me know in a clear, distinct manner that I may act upon it.
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And immediately, get out. Go. So I grabbed my purse. She left everything else behind, even her beloved dogs.
00:31:13
Catherine needed to move quickly. So I get in my car and start driving. and through his GPS tracking, he discovers that and proceeds to pursue me.
00:31:25
He catches up to you and is chasing you? Yeah. Are you terrified? Yeah. I had run through a red light and kind of head-on kind of T-bone another car.
00:31:40
He's there? He sees this happen? Yeah, so as soon as he sees that I get in a car crash, he leaves.
00:31:46
He doesn't want to be around when the police show up. Luckily, no one was hurt. She went to her parents' house and the next day called a lawyer and filed for divorce.
00:31:58
How was Nicholas handling all this? Not good. You know, making threats, being irate with either me or my parents.
00:32:06
Getting a divorce finalized would be a challenge. Nicholas wouldn't show up to court.
00:32:11
And when the court officers tried to serve him the divorce papers, It appeared he was playing tricks.
00:32:17
One of the officers said, I'm pretty sure that was him wearing a disguise, you know, the hat, head down low.
00:32:24
He just kind of disappeared. They couldn't find him. They eventually tracked him down.
00:32:30
The judge ordered Nicholas to hand over the dogs and leave their house so Catherine could get her stuff.
00:32:35
I opened the door and there's a gun sitting on the sofa. A gun? Yeah, as if Nick put it there to say, I may not physically be here, but I will still make you miserable.
00:32:47
Catherine says despite her claims that Nicholas abused and sexually assaulted her, she was too afraid of him to take legal action.
00:32:53
But she soon learned powerful law enforcement agencies were investigating him for a different kind of crime.
00:32:59
Less than a month after I had left him, the Treasury or the FBI, or I think it was both, came knocking on my door.
00:33:09
wanting any information I could give them on Nick. Did they explain why they were there?
00:33:16
For fraud, and they did not go in details, just for fraud. Catherine found out later the feds were accusing Nicholas of stealing from his Ohio foster parents,
00:33:27
that couple who had taken him in when he was about to age out of the system. Catherine remembers them fondly.
00:33:33
We attended the same church here in Dayton, Ohio. You know, they're lovely people, great people.
00:33:40
And they seemed, you know, so caring towards Nick. Nicholas's foster father told Dateline he reported the fraud to local authorities.
00:33:49
According to one police report, 10 credit card accounts were opened fraudulently
00:33:54
with an estimated $200,000 in charges. I do believe he was starting to swindle them and take from them while we were still together.
00:34:04
As the FBI was looking into Nicholas for fraud, his name popped up somewhere else.
00:34:11
Turns out, after his failed marriage in Ohio, Nicholas had moved back to Rhode Island,
00:34:16
which is where Detective Connor O'Donnell was doing a routine check on registered sex offenders.
00:34:21
Nick's name came across my desk, just a regular compliance check. Nicholas was in the national system for that attack on Mary in the college basement.
00:34:31
Something in Nicholas's file caught the detective's attention. Nick had a warrant for his arrest, a technical violation on a domestic violence charge.
00:34:40
That was the incident involving his first wife. We went to his last known residence to ensure that he lived at that address, and we were going to arrest him on his outstanding warrant.
00:34:50
Was he there? No. He had moved, but the detective didn't know where. And that was a problem.
00:34:56
Because he was a registered sex offender, he was required to notify the state that he had a new address.
00:35:02
He hadn't done that. So a Rhode Island judge issued a new warrant for his arrest.
00:35:07
We put his picture and his warrant up on Rhode Island's Most Wanted. Did you get any leads once you put it up there?
00:35:13
It didn't take too long. We got a phone call from Nick. From Nick? Yeah. Detective Connor O'Donnell says when Nicholas Rossi found out he was on Rhode Island's most wanted list for not alerting police that he'd moved, he was furious.
00:35:39
claimed he had moved out of the country and then proceeded to lecture me about how
00:35:44
I didn't know the general laws in the state of Rhode Island and that by moving out of this
00:35:49
out of this country he didn't have to notify of a change of address what did you think of his tone
00:35:54
that it seems like he knew better than you he was arrogant egotistical the detective was now determined to find him He contacted the U Marshals who began a search
00:36:06
They checked his passport and confirmed Nicholas had left the country on a one-way ticket.
00:36:11
He had, in fact, left on an outbound flight out of an airport in New York to Ireland.
00:36:18
By 2018, Nicholas was 31 years old. He had two ex-wives with restraining orders against him, was a convicted sex offender, wanted by Rhode Island State Police, and the feds were apparently looking for him too.
00:36:32
Even though he'd left the country, his past had followed him. While overseas, he hired attorney Jeff Pine to handle the failure to register as a sex offender charge.
00:36:41
Which is a serious case, obviously. It's a felony. Nicholas had been right. He didn't have to register since he'd left the country.
00:36:50
So Pine was able to get the case dismissed. But still, he was careful when dealing with his client.
00:36:56
With Nicholas, you always have a shade of doubt about what he's telling you. So I had to be careful that I wasn't being manipulated.
00:37:05
Nicholas asked him to do one more thing, to see if there were any federal warrants with his name on them.
00:37:10
The attorney checked, found one, and called the FBI. I asked what's the nature of the charge, and they told me it was a significant credit card fraud, misappropriation of funds, obtaining money under false pretences, that kind of thing.
00:37:26
It was the case involving Nicholas's foster parents. The agent did confirm that there was a warrant for him.
00:37:32
A federal warrant. Yeah. But Nicholas was not about to turn himself in. This has become a game of cat and mouse between the alleged con man and federal law enforcement.
00:37:43
Yeah, they're going to have to expend a lot of resources and man hours to bring him to justice.
00:37:51
And Nicholas had no idea. Yet another law enforcement agency was joining the chase.
00:37:57
He is someone that needs to be put on trial for rape. In Utah, a county attorney named David Levitt was looking into old rape cases that had never been investigated.
00:38:06
We had sexual assault kits that had been sitting on police shelves for years. It infuriated him that women had filed complaints, subjected themselves to rape exams, but police never followed up.
00:38:19
When he took office in 2018, Levitt vowed to change that. So we engaged in a partnership between the United States Department of Justice and the state of Utah to test all of these old rape kits.
00:38:33
Did you start getting hits? We got a hit, and that hit was a hit for a registered sex offender in the state of Ohio.
00:38:43
That sex offender was none other than Nicholas Rossi. His DNA was in the system from that assault on fellow college student Mary Grabinski.
00:38:53
A detective from Utah reached out to Mary. And he just said, you know, we could potentially use your input on a case.
00:39:00
I said, by all means, you know, anything I can do to help. Mary was frustrated to learn the rape case in Utah happened just months after Nicholas attacked her.
00:39:09
But that case was never investigated. In 2008, the victim in this case said that she had been raped,
00:39:17
and she voluntarily went through the rape exam, and the police were called. The case died at the police station and was never sent to the county attorney's office.
00:39:26
So 11 years later, in 2019, an investigator reached out to the woman. Her story was eerily familiar.
00:39:33
She said she met Nicholas Rossi on MySpace. And that two weeks later, they met in person and they began a sexual relationship that lasted for a brief period of time.
00:39:45
At the same time, Nicholas Rossi was taking money from her with the promise that he would pay it back and never did.
00:39:52
So she said she went over to his apartment. She wanted her money back and she wanted to end the relationship.
00:39:57
He shut the door and began to just kind of put pressure on her to have sex. He took her clothes off and raped her.
00:40:07
David Levitt had heard enough. He charged Nicholas with rape. Now his investigators had to find him.
00:40:14
But arresting Nicholas Rossi wouldn't be so easy. No, it wouldn't be easy at all.
00:40:20
While trying to track him down, one of his investigators found Nicholas's obituary,
00:40:24
announcing he died of cancer. Is that the end of the case? Well, we didn't believe he was dead.
00:40:31
But how would investigators prove that? That's when we began following Rossi's trail,
00:40:37
which would lead us to a hotel in Scotland and that bizarre interview with the man who insisted he wasn't Nicholas.
00:40:44
What do you say to people who say this is all an act? Oh, no. That's a low blow. That's a right low blow.
00:40:56
Detectives from Utah and Rhode Island, along with the FBI, were closing in on Nicholas Rossi.
00:41:12
And then came the stunning news. He was dead at the age of 32. House resolution, expressing condolences on the passing of Nicholas Oliverdian.
00:41:21
If you look at the timeline, Nicholas Rossi or Nicholas Oliverdian's death occurred while we were in the midst of this investigation.
00:41:31
To prosecutor David Leavitt, that was no coincidence. So his team started digging.
00:41:37
They subpoenaed Nicholas's financial records and noticed transactions after the day Nick had supposedly died.
00:41:43
And they discovered activity on his social media accounts. Our investigators knew that he was not dead.
00:41:50
When Detective Connor O heard of Nicholas untimely death his BS radar also went off He been searching for Nicholas for two years O immediately started making calls We made numerous attempts through Interpol numerous countries for any proof of death
00:42:10
All were negative. Nothing came back. Then a Utah investigator reached out and told him Nicholas was still alive.
00:42:18
That was when the detective contacted Father Healy and told him to stop planning the memorial mass.
00:42:23
Nicholas wasn't dead. that he's a fugitive, wanted on financial and violent crimes.
00:42:30
Detective O'Donnell asked Father Healy to cancel the service, but keep the reason a secret.
00:42:36
I said, okay, I'll come up with some convenient excuse, which I did. You had to be a little untruthful to her.
00:42:43
Correct. I had to go to confession after all that, yes. He said when Louise, the woman claiming to be Nicholas's widow,
00:42:50
heard the mask was off, she did not take it well. I've got a lot of emails that were kind of full of rage, upset, and anger at me.
00:42:59
It was clear it was somebody who was very angry. You were bamboozled, Father. In a sense, yes.
00:43:04
It's the first time in my life, in my priesthood, that somebody has tried to have a funeral for somebody who's not dead.
00:43:12
The detective says he contacted other churches and learned Louise had been fishing for funerals all over town,
00:43:19
asking priests to hold a memorial mass for Nicholas. You had managed to shut them all down.
00:43:25
Yes. Wasn't easy, but yes. Remarkably, O'Donnell says Louise was also reaching out to the Rhode Island State Police,
00:43:32
trying to get Nick off their most wanted list. You would think that the communication with Nicholas or, you know, his world would stop once he died,
00:43:41
but that wasn't the case. It was not. We received numerous emails from the same email address that Nick had corresponded with me prior to his death.
00:43:51
from that same email address, but this time the signature was his widow. Did you feel like these emails might actually be coming from Nick?
00:44:02
100%. Based on the language, the tone, what you'd experienced before? The way that he wrote, the way that he spoke, the use of big words was 100% Nick.
00:44:12
The only thing that was different was instead of Nicholas Aliverdian, it was Luis.
00:44:16
Meanwhile, the FBI was apparently reaching out to anyone who might know Nicholas's whereabouts.
00:44:23
Brian Coogan was in his truck when his phone rang. didn't you know he died? And he said, he's not dead. And I sent him all the emails that I had,
00:44:54
all the phone numbers, the pictures before I hung up. I said, you know, agent, you're the FBI. How come you can't catch him? The agent said they'd been trying to locate
00:45:04
Nicholas through the internet with no luck. He says we would track him through an email
00:45:10
to his IP address. But he says the agent told him Nicholas the computer whiz sent them in circles, never in the location that matched the IP address.
00:45:21
He says, let me tell you, this kid is so good. One of the best I've ever seen. But in December 2021, about two years after Nicholas supposedly died, they finally caught a break.
00:45:34
Law enforcement sources say the computer genius had made a mistake. He'd given up his overseas address while online.
00:45:42
The trail led authorities to the intensive care unit at this Glasgow hospital. if they had the right man, of all things.
00:45:49
It was a severe case of COVID that now had him trapped. And that resulted in the Scottish authorities arresting him.
00:45:58
That is a crazy twist. It is. It's fortunate. Interpol shared mug shots, photos of his tattoos and fingerprints with local police
00:46:09
so they could make an on-the-spot ID. When the Scottish authorities looked at him in a hospital room in Scotland, they were satisfied that Nicholas Rossi was, in fact, the same person that is wanted in the state of Utah.
00:46:24
But not so fast. The man in the hospital insisted he was not Nicholas. He said his name was Arthur Knight, a law-abiding British businessman.
00:46:36
I am not a fugitive, nor am I a gunman. Could it be? Was he actually telling the truth?
00:46:44
I thought this man in front of me was Arthur Knight, and the authorities had made a mistake.
00:46:51
And I was like, good God. The man calling himself Arthur Knight was determined to prove he was not American fugitive Nicholas Rossi.
00:47:12
He insisted he was an Irish orphan and claimed to have an Irish driver's license.
00:47:17
To be accused of rape, it could happen to anyone. While out on bail, Arthur, with his wife Miranda by his side, organized a press tour from his flat in Glasgow.
00:47:27
He used a wheelchair and wore an oxygen mask, he said, because of the effects of COVID.
00:47:32
Are you that man? Are you Nicholas Rossi? I can veritably say that I have not ever once done any of the acts that you just described.
00:47:44
We came to Scotland to get to the bottom of this mystery. Was Arthur Knight the victim of a colossal case of mistaken identity?
00:47:52
Or was he trying to pull off his biggest con yet? We caught up with investigative reporter...
00:48:00
Jane McSorley. I've been a journalist over 30 years, and I have never met a man like him.
00:48:08
For her Audible podcast called I Am Not Nicholas, she got up close and personal with Arthur when he and his wife Miranda invited her over for dinner.
00:48:16
What is it like walking into their flat? It's a fairly small flat. I was welcomed very, very warmly by Miranda.
00:48:24
Arthur is there in a wheelchair, you know, with the mask and the oxygen tank and everything.
00:48:28
but he's dressed up to the nines. Are you the whole time looking at him, her, scanning the room for clues?
00:48:35
I was just engrossed by him, really, because, I mean, everybody's talking about this man.
00:48:40
Here I am, as close as I am now to you. You know, he was such a nice guy. I thought, how can he potentially be this Nicholas Rossi that alleged to be, you know, a rapist?
00:48:52
Jane knew there was one sure way to find out. After dining on Miranda's champagne chicken dinner,
00:48:58
she asked Arthur to roll up his sleeves to see if he had the same tattoos as Nicholas Rossi.
00:49:03
And it was after I'd been there at least a couple of hours. And straight away he agreed.
00:49:09
So I said, would you pull back your sleeves? Not only that, he pulled up mug shots that had Nicholas Rossi's tattooed arms on his big screen TV.
00:49:19
Is your heart kind of just pounding, you know, as you're waiting for this moment?
00:49:25
It felt like it was, it just felt like it was slow-mo. He rolled up his left sleeve as far as his elbow.
00:49:31
She couldn't believe what she was seeing or not seeing. I had my glasses on as well.
00:49:37
I mean, I was completely in awe of this left forearm that up on the screen was like completely tattooed.
00:49:45
And now in front of me had no tattoos and no scarring whatsoever of tattoo removal.
00:49:52
She even checked to make sure he hadn't covered them with makeup. It was quite a moment.
00:49:56
So I thought this man in front of me was Arthur Knight. And the authorities had made a mistake.
00:50:03
And I was like, good God. You know, because he's so adamant. That was just the beginning of Jane's reporting.
00:50:09
There was so much more to uncover. This was a rollercoaster for you. It was. The story is stranger than fiction, but that's what's great about it.
00:50:17
It was a rollercoaster for us too. Our reporting led us to a TV personality named Nafsika Antipas.
00:50:25
She'd done business with Arthur Knight. I was in shock, and actually I was kind of embarrassed that I went through that.
00:50:32
Although he used the name Nicholas Brown, he said his full name was... Timothy Arthur Nicholas Knight Brown.
00:50:38
In 2020, Nafsika was looking for help marketing her vegan cheese company called Nafsika's Garden.
00:50:45
Oh, wow. It's so good. and promoting the fourth season of her A&E television show, Plant Based by Nafsika.
00:50:53
She scanned through resumes on Upwork, an online marketplace for freelancers, and found Nicholas
00:50:58
Brown. She says he was highly rated on the site. Tell us about his resume. What was on it?
00:51:04
Harvard graduate, experience with PR, marketing, everything I was looking for, he had it on there, and he was an international lawyer, apparently.
00:51:13
I kind of thought he was the whole package. And I spoke to him and I hired him the same day.
00:51:20
Now Sika agreed to pay him a fee of around $7,000 a month. She was based in Montreal.
00:51:26
He claimed to be in Ireland, so they never met in person. Every time I would tell him, Nicholas, where is the work?
00:51:33
Show me what you've done so far. He would either come up with an excuse or he would like send me a picture of something like his dog.
00:51:42
It quickly became obvious the man she hired from Upwork was more like no work. She says he always had an excuse for why nothing was getting done.
00:51:51
So one time he was in the hospital, and then another month his wife was in the hospital.
00:51:56
I think she had appendicitis. Then his dog was in the hospital. At one point, he pitched an idea about creating a new company with Nefzika.
00:52:05
He and his wife Miranda would be on the board. So I asked him, I said, are you trying to take over all my companies?
00:52:11
What's happening here? He goes, no, no, no, no. I just want to oversee what's happening.
00:52:16
So she agreed, but she never gave him access to her bank accounts or credit cards.
00:52:21
She did, however, give him a copy of her passport. He said he needed it for the paperwork.
00:52:26
At first, I was going along with it because I said, OK, I'm going to see what he does,
00:52:32
see if he'll actually start working. But again, nothing. So after paying him nearly $30,000 over four months, with no work completed,
00:52:41
Nafsika cut him off. I terminated his access to my website, to his emails and his wife's emails.
00:52:50
You didn't give him any warning? That's it, no warning. He didn't take this well.
00:52:54
He got very aggressive, started sending a lot of messages, phoning. I wasn't answering my phone.
00:53:02
When she didn't respond, she says he sent threatening texts about a contract that she says never existed.
00:53:09
If she didn't pay him about $40,000 or a reasonable counteroffer, he would ruin her reputation.
00:53:15
He had created a fraud alert website using her passport photo like a mugshot and was planning to tell the world her company was a sham.
00:53:23
I was very, very nervous because I didn't know how this would affect my brand that I had just recently launched at the time.
00:53:33
And my family and, you know, how crazy is he? He's going to go after my kids. The threatening texts kept coming and coming.
00:53:43
Nafzika didn't give in to his scare tactics and told him he was officially fired.
00:53:47
As soon as I told him he's terminated, that's when everything went live. All of his smear tactics went live.
00:53:54
Yes. He had fake social media accounts where he was tweeting about me that my vegan cheese is fake It not really vegan I started calling the police in every country
00:54:05
I filed all those fraud reports. I hired a private investigator in Dublin to track him down.
00:54:13
But the private investigator found nothing. Two years later, Nafsika found out why.
00:54:19
She learned the man she'd been dealing with wasn't in Ireland, and he wasn't, Nicholas Brown.
00:54:24
the name she knew him by. He was living in Scotland, claiming to be Arthur Knight.
00:54:29
He's finally been arrested. Then she got another call. It said Utah FBI on her caller ID.
00:54:36
The agent asked for her help finding Nicholas. They tell me, tell me what you got and I'll tell
00:54:41
you what I have. And we swapped information. How badly do you want to bring this man down?
00:54:48
I want him behind bars big time because not only what he's done to me, but what he's done to so
00:54:53
many people. But justice was a long way off. After his arrest in the hospital, he appeared before a
00:55:00
judge and continued to insist he was Arthur Knight, not Nicholas Rossi, the American fugitive.
00:55:06
So now the judge had to rule first on his identity before deciding if he should be extradited.
00:55:11
Are you losing confidence, sir? Months went by with hearing after hearing, but no ruling from the judge. How can you possibly claim not to be Nicholas Rossi now?
00:55:19
Are you Arthur Knight or Nicholas Roche? That's when Dateline got the chance to sit down with him.
00:55:26
Did you sexually assault anyone? Did you kidnap anyone? Did you defraud anyone? In one of our most memorable interviews.
00:55:33
I can't read. I can't walk. People say that's not. Let me try to stand up. Let me try to stand up.
00:55:49
More than four months had passed since Arthur Knight's arrest in a Scottish hospital.
00:55:58
He was still out on bail, waiting for a judge to decide if he was telling the truth about his identity.
00:56:03
It was April 2022. Arthur, along with his wife Miranda, agreed to speak to us remotely.
00:56:09
I know you have a lot to say, which is great. I want to be as honest and truthful as possible.
00:56:16
It's very important that our story is heard. Arthur told us he began life as an orphan in Ireland.
00:56:24
He said he was adopted. I grew up all over Dublin, Belfast. He said he later moved to London and through grit and determination worked his way up the corporate ladder in communications.
00:56:35
He and Miranda said they met at a London art museum in 2011. We just struck up a conversation, you know, exchanged kind of contact detail, but I was not, you know.
00:56:51
With good friends at the time. They said they were friends at first. She was in a relationship and busy with her career.
00:56:59
So previously I was, you know, an executive and I've worked in account management.
00:57:04
But several years later, they said they met up again. Romance blossomed. We fell in love. We love each other very much, deeply in love.
00:57:15
And in February of 2020, the same month that Nicholas Aliverdian supposedly died,
00:57:20
Arthur and Miranda got married. Nicholas, Rosie, or Aliverdian or whatever had died. We were on our honeymoon.
00:57:29
Less than two years later, their world fell apart. It was December of 2021 when Arthur was hospitalized with COVID.
00:57:37
Miranda said a nurse told her he probably wouldn't make it. And I was literally in tears.
00:57:43
I was in shock. And the world just caving in for me. She said Arthur was in a medically induced coma and put on a ventilator.
00:57:51
After three months, though, he woke up. So Arthur makes it through this. But your whole world has been turned upside down.
00:57:59
I was with him in his room. And two police constables came into the room. and I looked up and I thought they had walked into the wrong room.
00:58:09
Would they tell you? They said that it would be sensible for me to actually leave the room
00:58:14
because of what was going to be said. And Arthur said, no, you know, my wife knows everything.
00:58:21
There's no secrets between us. Can you also tell us what happened in that room and why they told you they were there?
00:58:28
I just, you know, remember words of 2008, Utah, rape, America, and it all didn't make sense. She heard police calling Arthur Nicholas Rossi.
00:58:41
They said that international law enforcement agencies were trying to bring him back to the
00:58:45
United States. I made it clear I'm not Nicholas Fierce, but people choose to believe what they
00:58:51
want. Were you read your rights? Were you handcuffed? I was told I was under arrest for
00:58:57
rape in Utah, and that's all I was told. To try to clear up the question of his identity,
00:59:03
Is he Arthur or is he Nicholas? I asked if I could get a better look at him. Would you take your mask off for one second just to show us your face?
00:59:11
I can. When I catch my breath, yes. But can you just show us now? Well, I'm hypoxic, so I'm telling you, yes, I will.
00:59:22
But must I do it now? He never took it off. And he didn't have answers to a lot of our questions either.
00:59:29
Did you say you were adopted? I was, yes. At what age? I am not certain. He was also evasive when we asked him if we could see his birth certificate.
00:59:38
I'm just looking for ways, you know, that you can back up some of your, what you're saying, just to put people's minds at ease.
00:59:45
Well, which minds? We moved on to more pressing matters. The FBI is investigating you.
00:59:51
You being looked at for kidnapping sexual assault fraud in multiple states Incorrect David Leavitt has said those things The FBI have said nothing The FBI is investigating you though Me Yes they looking into you and how you might fit
01:00:07
into all of this. No, they are not. The FBI rarely comments on active investigations.
01:00:14
But remember, several people we interviewed told us the FBI contacted and questioned them,
01:00:19
including Nafsika Antipas. Nafsika, she was my client. When we asked Arthur about Nafsika,
01:00:26
he seemed rattled and denied her claims that he stole from her and failed to do any work.
01:00:31
Nafsika says that you scammed her out of tens of thousands of dollars. Correction, Nafsika paid me for work
01:00:38
that was performed. I did not scam her out of money. Nafsika says that you are a con man.
01:00:46
I'm sorry she feels that way but her text messages say the opposite she called us Jules
01:00:55
despite his denials our questions seem to hit a nerve what do you say to someone who believes that
01:01:03
you are Nicholas Oliverdian I am not Andrea I am not Nicholas Oliverdian I do not know how
01:01:13
to make this clear What do you say to people who say these are crocodile tears? He's putting on a show.
01:01:19
This is all an act. Oh, Eka. Andrea, that's a low blow. That's a right low blow.
01:01:27
Crocodile tears? Do you think I can? I don't believe that. Did you sexually assault anyone?
01:01:33
Did you kidnap anyone? Did you defraud anyone? What? No, no, no, no. His wife Miranda said he was 100% telling the truth.
01:01:46
And if he was a serial rapist, she would know. What would you say to anyone who says you're naive or how do you know this?
01:01:53
Are you not concerned? What do you say to those people? So what I would say that what I've read about Nicholas Rossi, allegedly he done all of these crimes, assaulted women, etc.
01:02:06
But you can't change a tendency of a person that rapes, that consistently rapes or sexual assaults.
01:02:14
My husband has never, ever done anything which has hurt me. You know, he hasn't, you know, assaulted me.
01:02:23
I do know the truth. I know he's innocent. I know he's not a rapist. 100%. Where does this go from here for Arthur, for the both of you? What's next?
01:02:34
I believe that, you know, we will fight this together and there will be a time where we will crack open a bottle of champagne and we will go back to our normal lives as a normal couple with our beautiful dogs and restart our lives.
01:02:49
What's the most important thing today that you want people to know, both of you?
01:02:53
We were once a normal family, but thanks to the media, our lives have been interrupted.
01:03:01
And we'd like privacy, and I would like to go back to being a normal husband. But I can't, because I can't breathe. I can't walk.
01:03:11
People say, that's an act. Let me try to stand up. Let me try to stand up. Exactly. Exactly. So let's, let's, let's, you're laughing now.
01:03:21
This is what people do to me. They call me a liar. They say this oxygen is a prop.
01:03:28
He told us this whole misunderstanding was the handiwork of David Levitt. David Levitt is a con man. David Levitt is a monster.
01:03:37
And he was about to go after Levitt with a vengeance. You've never been attacked like this, to this level.
01:03:45
No, I'll give him that. He took it to a new level. in the spring of 2022 arthur continued to seek media attention he called another press conference
01:04:06
this time to introduce his new defense attorney craig johnson who'd flown all the way from utah
01:04:12
to scotland do you believe arthur knight is arthur knight and that he is innocent of all the
01:04:18
allegations that are being leveled against him. I do, and I don't take that statement lightly.
01:04:24
Again, I wouldn't have flown out here 24 hours ago for this purpose to stand up for him if I didn't.
01:04:31
Johnson said Arthur reached out to him, probably not by coincidence, since Johnson once worked for
01:04:37
Utah County attorney David Leavitt. Johnson told us he left the prosecutor's office after a dispute
01:04:42
with Leavitt, but said that had nothing to do with him taking on Arthur Knight as a client.
01:04:47
Still, he was quick to criticize his former boss. There's been such a rush to judgment by Mr. Levitt in his office, coordinating with other authorities.
01:04:56
That is our concern. Johnson said David Levitt crossed the line, speaking so openly about the allegations of rape and fake identity against his client.
01:05:05
It's very concerning to me when the head law enforcement official in Utah County, my former boss, David Levitt,
01:05:10
has been making a lot of interviews and statements about my client, which frankly poisoned the jury pool.
01:05:17
Levitt disagrees, saying he's been careful not to discuss specifics of the case.
01:05:22
We pressed Johnson on why he was so sure Arthur Knight was telling the truth about his identity.
01:05:27
Has he shown you his face? Yes, I've seen his face without his mask. He said he'd also seen what Nicholas Rossi looked like.
01:05:35
And you believe when you see his face that that is not the same man? I don't believe it's the same man.
01:05:40
We decided to check with someone who knows Nicholas well. We asked Mary Grabinski if she thought Arthur was Nicholas.
01:05:47
Have you watched the videos, the interviews with him? I've seen a couple. He's bloated and grotesque, but that's him.
01:05:54
That's him. Do you believe that there any possibility that that man is really Arthur Knight No What is it when you look at it that you think nope that Nicholas
01:06:06
The hair, the teeth, and especially the fingers, the hands. I remember those hands.
01:06:13
According to the British press, he wasn't fooling anyone. Nicholas, you've completely failed to pull the wheel over the eyes.
01:06:19
You can take the hat. You know where you are now. But he continued to make his case, and he even tried a new tactic, sabotaging the reputation of the man who was responsible for his arrest, Utah prosecutor David Levitt.
01:06:33
We saw the press release. There's some breaking news. Yes, we learned is an ongoing federal investigation into David Levitt involving everything from money laundering to embezzlement to abuse to corruption.
01:06:53
Miranda, do you have any comments on that? Yes, I think it will be interesting to see how things play out with that.
01:06:59
Levitt says none of that is true. You've never been attacked like this, to this level.
01:07:05
No, Nicholas Rossi, I'll give him that. He took it to a new level. Levitt was not only working to extradite Rossi, he was also running for re-election.
01:07:15
And just days before the polls opened, he says his campaign was sabotaged by the man calling himself Arthur Knight.
01:07:22
He accused my wife and I of being human traffickers, of being cannibals, of being murderers.
01:07:28
Arthur posted this on his website. Breaking news, David Levitt is confirmed to be head of a criminal Utah cult.
01:07:35
This goes deep. This is like a thriller. We didn't think it was too thrilling for us.
01:07:40
Levitt had had enough and called his own press conference. That this all occurs less than one week before ballots drop in an election in which I am participating,
01:07:57
causes me tremendous concern. Arthur cited the Utah County Sheriff's Office as the source of his allegations.
01:08:08
The sheriff was a vocal critic of Levitt's and backed his opponent in the prosecutor's race.
01:08:13
The sheriff denied that he had been Arthur's source. Regardless, the story was out there.
01:08:19
How do you defend yourself against allegations like that when someone is putting them out there like they're fact?
01:08:27
Well, there's no way to defend yourself in this culture. Levitt lost his election and believes Nicholas Rossi was partly to blame.
01:08:34
He did cost me my job, but the reality is how many women will never be raped because of what we did?
01:08:41
Although Levitt was out of office, the case against Arthur Knight slash Nicholas Rossi kept going,
01:08:47
and he would continue to grab headlines. He said the tattoos were put on him when he was in a coma.
01:08:55
This was a jaw-dropper. Totally. And a Scottish judge would finally make a ruling on his identity.
01:09:16
Arthur Knight was back in the headlines. Instead of going to a court hearing, he checked himself into the hospital again for COVID complications.
01:09:24
Not long after, police were called to his room. He assaulted a doctor and a nurse.
01:09:29
Yeah, and they said at that point he actually got up off the gurney that he was on
01:09:34
and came at them, which raised some questions about his physical capacity. Arthur had flown into a rage when he was told he would be discharged.
01:09:45
Several articles quoted the female doctor who said, He was inches from our faces. We were utterly terrified.
01:09:52
We thought he was coming to harm us. And that was a good reason at that point to restrict his bail.
01:10:00
He was sent to jail, and after a quick trial, he was convicted of assault. But Arthur's biggest day in court was right around the corner.
01:10:08
Almost a year after he was first arrested, a judge was hearing arguments about Arthur's identity.
01:10:14
Was he a British businessman or an American fugitive? It was a whole journey. Reporter Jane McSorley was in the courtroom.
01:10:22
The advocate deputy was asking him the questions, and he asked him about the tattoos.
01:10:27
The Scottish prosecutor presented evidence showing that while Arthur's forearms were free of tattoos,
01:10:33
his upper arms did have them, and they were identical to Nicholas Rossi's. When Arthur took the stand, he had an explanation.
01:10:41
Well, he said in court that the tattoos were put on him when he was in a coma in the hospital in Glasgow.
01:10:52
Jaws dropped in the courtroom as he told the judge they were inked on his arms while he was unconscious.
01:10:58
The advocate deputy was just like about three meters away. And he turned around and his face was like it was like an emoji with a big open mouth.
01:11:04
It was like he couldn't believe what he'd heard and neither could all of us. In the old police photos, Nicholas Rossi had tattoos on his entire left arm.
01:11:15
Remember, Jane didn't see the upper part of his arm when she interviewed him, only his forearm, and it was free of tattoos.
01:11:22
Shortly after that visit, she learned why. One of his ex-wives had said that when they were together in 2015,
01:11:31
that he was going through the process of getting his tattoos removed. And what about a more traditional way of making an ID?
01:11:38
fingerprints they were also a match but Arthur tried to explain that away too he said they were
01:11:45
taken by a hospital worker without his knowledge and sent to Utah so prosecutor Levitt could claim
01:11:50
they were Rossi's I mean it was just it was just some moment you know the judge wasn't buying any of
01:11:57
it and announced his decision I am all right They satisfied on the balance of probabilities by the evidence of fingerprint, photographic and tattoo evidence that Mr. Knight is indeed Nicholas Rossi.
01:12:09
How did that feel when you heard that the judge had ruled that you are not Arthur Knight, you are Nicholas Rossi?
01:12:17
That was a really good moment for me. We celebrated because Nick is really good at lying.
01:12:23
So any time that somebody sees through and then being able to call out the truth was a huge win for me because the gig was up, right?
01:12:32
Is it the end of the road, sir? Finally, Nicholas Rossi could be extradited to the U.S.
01:12:38
But he filed appeal after appeal. And despite the judge's ruling, he never stopped claiming they had the wrong man.
01:12:44
Some suggesting Rossi has made a mockery of the justice system and created an international spectacle in the process.
01:12:52
Thank you. All the while, Nicholas's wife Miranda stood by his side, even after the judge's decision.
01:12:59
Was she lying? Jane believes so and says she has proof. While reporting for her podcast, Jane uncovered a recording of Louise, the woman who claimed to be Nicholas's widow.
01:13:10
Louise was the one trying to arrange his funeral. Basically, the priest was explaining that he had done his first funeral on Monday.
01:13:19
It was just an automatic, oh my God, that's Miranda. I mean, you know, I know my British accents.
01:13:25
No doubt in your mind? No doubt whatsoever. So you think Miranda's in on this? Oh yeah, she's in on it, up to her neck.
01:13:35
Miranda hasn't been charged with anything. She was a lot less chatty than during our interview
01:13:40
when we caught up with her at one of Nicholas's extradition hearings in Edinburgh.
01:13:44
Do you have anything to say today about the hearing? The legal battle to extradite Rossi continued for more than a year.
01:13:52
It finally ended in December 2023 when he lost his last appeal. Now it's over. Removed from this prison and put in a plane back to the States.
01:14:03
In the U.S., his legal troubles were just beginning and his behavior would be no less dramatic.
01:14:09
It feels like a circus almost at this point because it's just weird drama turn after weird drama turn.
01:14:17
And things were about to get even weirder. The con man had another revelation. Big, big twist in this case.
01:14:26
Well, huge. Yeah, I mean, it's a game changer. Nicholas Rossi is facing two rape charges in Utah.
01:14:46
One here in Salt Lake County and one in Utah County On January 5th 2024 deputies booked Nicholas Rossi into a Utah County jail The long saga to bring him to justice in the U
01:14:59
seemed to be entering its final phase for everyone but him. From the moment Nicholas Rossi stepped foot here in Utah,
01:15:06
he continued to insist he was Arthur Knight. He even asked a judge to require that all county jail staff address him by that name.
01:15:15
The judge denied that request. Then, months later, in a stunning turn of events, Nicholas had a revelation.
01:15:23
It all went down in a Utah courtroom. In a hearing about one of the 2008 rape charges, Rossi asked the judge to be let out on bail.
01:15:33
The prosecutor argued that was a bad idea. And read a letter from the alleged rape victim in the case.
01:15:41
He has a history of harassing and threatening his victims in the past, so this would be a legitimate fear.
01:15:47
I do have young children at home, and this would cause me and my husband to worry for their safety while causing our family unnecessary stress.
01:15:55
The lead detective took the stand and backed up the victim's fears. He testified about Nicholas Rossi's history of terrorizing women.
01:16:03
One in particular is Mary Grubinski. And about Nicholas's attempt to evade the law by faking his death, escaping to England, and assuming a new identity.
01:16:12
And to the best of your knowledge, when Mr. Rossi was returned to the United States, did additional DNA testing confirm that he was, in fact, Mr. Nicholas Rossi?
01:16:20
Yes, sir. Then, the moment we'd all been waiting for, the defense called Nicholas to the stand.
01:16:27
Mr. Knight, can you please say your name for the record? Arthur Knight. Okay. Mr. Knight, can you also tell us other names that you've gone by previously?
01:16:35
I was born with the name Nicholas Aliverdian in 1996. I had that surname changed by my stepfather when I became Rossi, and I reverted to using it in 2007.
01:16:53
After more than three years of deceiving the world about his identity, he admitted it was a big lie.
01:16:59
Not only that, he told the court he had a compelling reason. I was informed by two reliable sources that there were two credible threats against my life.
01:17:12
He said the death threats were due to his work in Rhode Island trying to reform the Department of Children, Youth and Families.
01:17:18
But when asked the names of the people allegedly threatening him. I don't want to give a mouse cheese.
01:17:24
What would giving their names, how would that give a mouse cheese? meaning it would stoke the fire that they've had to continue with their actions against me.
01:17:37
The judge cleared the courtroom so Rossi could reveal in secret who was after him When the proceedings reopened the prosecutor countered if Nicholas was so concerned about hiding his identity why did he create a media circus Did you think that going on public television was a good way to keep your identity quiet
01:17:55
Jackson, Judge. We asked former prosecutor Levitt to weigh in on Nicholas's revelation.
01:18:01
Big, big twist in this case. Well, huge. Yeah, I mean, it's a game changer. What do you make of this argument that he had to go by Arthur Knight because his life was in danger?
01:18:13
Well, I mean, I give the same amount of credence to that story as I do the allegation that I hired someone to put a tattoo on his arm in Scotland.
01:18:25
Levitt believes Rossi's admission is more legal strategy than change of heart. He says Nicholas had no chance of getting bail if he didn't admit his real identity.
01:18:34
If I'm claiming not to be the person I am, then that paints me as a flight risk, so I'm not going to get bail.
01:18:41
Regardless of his admission, the prosecutor argued Rossi should stay behind bars.
01:18:45
Somebody who has faked their own death, who denied that they were who they were for three years in a foreign country,
01:18:52
and then just have them come in here and say, well, yeah, I am that person, but I was hiding from two people who were threatened to kill me.
01:19:00
He is a flight risk. And so the state would ask that the court move his bail to no bond, Your Honor.
01:19:07
Thank you. The judge quickly made his ruling. The court finds that the state has met its burden of proof. I will order that Mr. Rossi be held without bail.
01:19:18
Rossi's legal proceedings continued. Two months later, he was back in a different Utah courtroom for the other rape charge.
01:19:25
That's when Mary came to Salt Lake City to see her attacker right where she thinks he belongs.
01:19:31
He's in custody. I've waited years to see him in custody, so it's going to be very sweet for me.
01:19:36
And she knows she's the reason he's there. Because had you not pushed and then him ending up on the registry,
01:19:44
that connection would not have been made to Utah. Right. It shows you how you have the power to change things.
01:19:51
For me, it's heartbreaking because I should have been the last one. there shouldn't have been Utah women.
01:19:57
It should have ended with me. She wanted the prosecution to know she was here to help.
01:20:02
While we were waiting for the hearing to start, I made myself known to the prosecution who I was,
01:20:07
my experience with Nick. They knew immediately who I was. But I let them know, if there's anything you need,
01:20:14
character witness, any kind of statements, to please let me know because I know Nick.
01:20:19
I know some of the worst parts of Nick. When it came time for the hearing to begin, instead of appearing in person, Rossi was
01:20:27
on video from jail Not what Mary expected but an experience she calls a win Seeing him behind bars with the Utah County emblem back behind was extremely satisfying and it made me happy to see him there because he can hurt anybody while he there
01:20:45
Rossi pleaded not guilty to both rape charges. His attorney said Nicholas and his wife Miranda are still happily married.
01:20:53
His wife lives in the United Kingdom. She is supporting and sending money when she can.
01:20:57
On December 3rd, Nicholas was offered a plea deal that would have covered both rape charges.
01:21:04
He decided not to accept it. He is expected to go to trial in 2025. As for David Levitt, even though the journey to prosecute Nicholas Rossi turned his life upside down,
01:21:17
the former prosecutor says he has no regrets. And now he has something else to occupy his time.
01:21:23
What did David Levitt do after leaving office? he bought this fixer-upper Scottish castle called Nocterry,
01:21:29
and it just happens to be 50 miles from where Nicholas Rossi was caught. Some people here in Scotland are calling this castle your FU castle.
01:21:41
Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. I had a choice to make. The choice was simple.
01:21:48
Do I save my political career or do I do my job and take the man down? Mary and Nick's ex-wife Catherine are relieved Rossi is behind bars,
01:21:59
and they hope he will stay locked up for a very long time. I've worked very hard to try and fight to feel safe and secure again.
01:22:09
And remember, not everybody is him. Not everybody is a monster. I mean, we're all different, but we all have a common thread between us, right?
01:22:19
That Nick changed our lives. It's been years. I still won't go to a restaurant with my back to the door.
01:22:25
You know, I'm always just kind of vigilant. Who's around me? But at the end of the day, I'm stronger than him.
01:22:32
I am better than him. Both Mary and Catherine are now married with children, working to put Nicholas in their rearview mirror.
01:22:40
What do you want to get across? What's the most important part of all of this? I want the courts to know that if he ever gets out,
01:22:52
he will do it again. He will find more victims. That is his way of life and that's all he knows.
01:23:01
And it's not okay for a person like that to be free. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:23:11
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:23:18
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. Thank you.