Jury finds Nicholas Rossi guilty of rape

By Ashley Imlay

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    SALT LAKE CITY (KSL) — Jurors late Wednesday found Nicholas Rossi guilty of rape, a first-degree felony, just two days after his trial started in Salt Lake City.

Sentencing is set for Oct. 20.

Rossi, 38, is scheduled for another trial in September in Utah County where he is accused of raping a 21-year-old woman in Orem. He faces an identical charge in that case, based on alleged actions in 2008.

“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place. We appreciate her patience as we worked to bring the defendant back to Salt Lake County so that this trial could take place and she could get justice. It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a statement late Wednesday.

He thanked prosecutors, the victim advocate and others for their “years of dedication” to the case “and their outstanding work that helped bring about this verdict.”

Gill urged other sexual assault survivors to tell their stories. “When you are ready, we ask that you come forward and report it. If it isn’t reported, it can’t be investigated. If it isn’t investigated, it can’t be prosecuted, and if it isn’t prosecuted, justice cannot be served.”

Rossi was identified through a DNA rape kit in 2018 and charged in 2020. While receiving care for COVID-19 in a UK hospital, he was identified by investigators.

The victim, a dance teacher, testified Monday about her memory of a 2008 relationship that she says ended in rape.

The woman said she met Rossi through a personal Craigslist ad, leading to a relationship that lasted about a month before she decided she was done with him. Initially, she said, he was “very nice” and talked about how they would go to the Gateway in Salt Lake City or out to dinner.

The woman identified Rossi by a tattoo on his arm and said they had consensual sex three separate times. She said after the two got engaged, spontaneously buying rings on Black Friday, Rossi “became very emotionally and verbally abusive.”

He would tell her what to wear and would get angry when she said he could not drive her car, she testified. Eventually, he made a comment while at the mall that led her to put her engagement ring in her purse and walk back to her car.

She testified that Rossi arrived when she had locked herself in her car and was yelling and screaming outside her car, blocking her in.

“I’d never seen such rage in his eyes,” she said.

The woman said she saw the same rage in his eyes when he forced her to have sex with him a few hours later, after she drove him home and he insisted she come inside. She said it was after she told him their relationship was over, and he did not kiss her or do anything to check if she would be OK with sex. She testified that she was numb, frozen and scared.

“I didn’t know what else he was capable of doing,” she said. “If someone can do that, what else can they do?”

She only reported her story to the police in 2022 after seeing a news article about Rossi related to another case.

Rossi, who authorities say faked his own death to avoid prosecution, was extradited to Utah from Scotland last year to face charges of raping two women in 2008 — the woman who testified Monday and a 21-year-old woman in Orem.

His story took a bizarre twist when it was reported that in 2022, a man named Arthur Knight was arrested at a Glasgow hospital after being in the intensive care unit for a month while he was treated for COVID-19. What followed was a lengthy legal battle with Rossi claiming he was really Knight, an Irish orphan who had never been to Utah, and it was a case of mistaken identity.

He eventually lost his court fight after DNA testing and distinctive tattoos were used to positively identify him as Rossi.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by KSL’s editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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