As the mask slipped during the saga of the US escape

I first met Nicholas Rossi – or Arthur Knight, as he insisted on being summoned – in February 2022 in the corridor in the Sheriff’s court Edinburgh.

He was there to fight extradition in the US, where he was accused of rape.

Sitting in an electrical wheelchair, dressed in a three -component suit and engaged in a wide hat, a bizarre voice behind the oxygen mask spoke to the one who listens that it was all a terrible misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, his hands were subjected to the calling card of reporters.

Rossi’s departure on this day set a tone because she became a familiar stage – a stool in front of the cameras, during which he tilted a wheelchair on the sidewalk, trying to maneuver in a taxi.

Later this evening, an unknown number flashed on my mobile phone and I heard the same quick voice.

“Hi, Stephen, is Arthur … Do you have a minute?”

And so the exercise in the facts from the fiction began, which lasts three years, which I studied in the new podcast within the strange but true criminal series for the sounds of the BBC.

Name Nicholas Rossi He first came to broader attention in December 2021 when he was arrested in the cabbage department of Glasgow.

Employees recognized their noise and characteristic interpol tattoos.

The problem for the US authorities was that the man they sought to reach the blind, he became a victim of a misconception.

He claimed that he Arthur Keit, an orphan who was born in Ireland, which was never in America – and said he could prove it.

A couple of weeks after our first phone, Arthur sat across from the BBC studio, his wife Mirand nearby, telling his fairy tale behind the cameras.

He said he grew up in the care in Dublin and fled to London as a teens. There he sold books with his friends on Camden Market as Del Boy from comedy only fools and horses.

Years later he married Miranda in Bristol before they moved to Glasgow. He showed me a certificate of marriage – accompanied by a special license of the Anglican Church because “I would not lie to the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

What he couldn’t create is a birth certificate. Either passport.

He was vague in his articles and couldn’t say what happened to his old friends.

Sometimes the conversation arose as wildly as his accent – from the allegations he survived the London bombing (he was wrong) to the story of the meeting with the associate of Del Boy Rodney.

He repeatedly denied to be Nicholas Rossi, but when I asked about tattoos, he said he was “too tired” to show me my hands.

It was a surreal, unconvincing performance, which was observed through the Atlantic by many people who recognized the protagonist.

“I would know these hands anywhere,” Mary Grebinsky told me.

She was a college student in 2008 when Nicholas Rossi had sexual attack on her class. He was convicted and placed in a register of sex criminals.

In Daitan, Ohio-city, where this attack took place, I also spoke with his ex-wife Rossi.

Catherine Henkenor said she bought him an Arthur’s red silk pajamas and was shot outside the trial.

Their unhappy marriage lasted eight months. The judge, who gave his divorce in 2016, said that Rossi was guilty of “rude neglect of duty and cruelty” of his abusive behavior.

Such conversations helped fill the blanks.

Nicholas Rossi was born in Nicholas Alahverdiana in 1987. Rossi was named after his stepfather, who at the time was the premiere of Aylendo Engelbert Hamperdinka.

In adolescence, he spent time for care and, through years, enjoyed the degree of local glory as a campaign to protect children.

When reports of the death of Alahverton appeared in 2020, politicians paid tribute to the floor of the state of the state.

According to the internet, his last words were: “Do not be afraid and run to the enjoyment of the sun.”

But it has not been a long time to start unraveling this deception.

The priest, who was asked to hold a memorial Mass, was warned not to go forward because Nicholas did not die. “

Instead, the authorities suspected that Rossi was somewhere in the UK, escaped, finding that the FBI was investigating allegedly loan fraud.

It was his online footage that led the police to the bed at the hospital in the glazor-parole when the fugitive was restored from the true experience of death in the form of Covid.

At one of his early hearing, the sheriff commented that the promotion of the case should not be “rocket science”.

But the legal process stretched and continued – largely due to Rossi’s upbringing.

There were clumsy monologues of the courtroom, dubious medical episodes and theatrical explosions, which were often directed to his lawyers as a prelude to dismissal.

Sitting in a public gallery was rarely dim. Rossi’s statement that a corrupt hospital employee by Patrick Tattooed him when he was in a coma was one of the most memorable exchanges.

In the end, the sheriff’s conclusion was that Arthur’s charad was “implausible” and “fancy”.

And yet Rossi adhered to his story – even when his extradition was approved, and the judges of the Supreme Court abandoned his appeal.

He adhered to his history when Marshals gathered it on a private plane, and when the prison guards booked him in jeta prison.

He adhered to his history in the courtroom of Utah until he suddenly did it.

Last October, I was setting up on the usual hearing on the Internet when, without warning, the chic English person disappeared.

Speaking in an understandable American accent, he told the judge that Nicolas Alahverton was born before his name had changed to Rossi.

When he claimed he hid his personality to avoid “death threats”, I was curious why he chose this particular moment to slip the mask.

The saga continues, but the novelty is worn.

The intrigue and the farce were deprived of serious allegations.

In August, Nicholas Rossi should face the first of two separate rape trials. He denies all the charges.