Nicholas Rossi: New audio emerges in case of wanted man

New audio has been uncovered in an investigation into a man who denies being a fugitive from justice.

A judge in Scotland recently decided a man arrested in hospital is Nicholas Rossi, who is wanted on rape charges in the US.

The man and his wife Miranda say he is actually Arthur Knight, not Mr Rossi.

But a true crime podcast has found a recording of a phone call made to arrange a memorial for Mr Rossi, and the voice on it sounds like Mrs Knight.

When played the audio Mrs Knight, who is from Bristol, declined to comment to the producers of podcast 'I Am Not Nicholas'.

Authorities in the US say Mr Rossi was also known as Nicholas Alahverdian in the state of Rhode Island, where he was involved in local politics.

In December 2019, Mr Rossi told US media he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had only weeks to live. Several news outlets in Rhode Island then reported he had died in February 2020.

But on 13 December 2021 a man, who had been admitted to Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital with Covid-19, was detained under an international arrest warrant on behalf of prosecutors in Utah.

At a further court hearing in Scotland in February 2022, the prosecution said police and hospital staff had identified the man as Mr Rossi from tattoos on his body.

The man, who has been living in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight and says he is married to Miranda, whom he married in Bristol, and has nothing to do with Mr Rossi.

He claimed he was an Irish orphan who fled to England as a teenager.

Mr Rossi has been charged with two rapes and one sexual assault in Utah.

US authorities suspect Mr Rossi faked his own death, and an online obituary for him appeared in early 2020.

Shortly after the obituary appeared, a woman claiming to be his widow and calling herself Louise, phoned journalists, politicians and priests in Rhode Island while trying to organise newspaper tributes and a memorial service for him.

However, police believe that this was also part of Mr Rossi's scheme to fake his own death.

Investigative journalist Jane MacSorley has obtained a recording of one of the calls and the voice is remarkably similar to that of Miranda Knight.

Ms MacSorley was actually invited to interview Mr and Mrs Knight over dinner after his initial arrest in Scotland.

She said she initially found them "very pleasant" and "charming" and wondered if police might have made a mistake, before she then started having doubts.

"There was a lot about Arthur's story that didn't add up for me - I'm Irish and his story of a childhood in Irish orphanages was just incredibly vague. And his accent didn't strike me as authentic either," she said.

"So I thought from pretty early on that he was Nicholas Rossi. But I wasn't sure whether his wife Miranda was in on it or not. I thought maybe she was. But she also seemed really genuine."

Early on in the investigation Ms MacSorley asked Mrs Knight whether she had made the calls of widow "Louise", but Mrs Knight said the suggestion was "laughable".

When Ms MacSorley later obtained a recording of a call made by "Louise", she was struck by the similarity of the voice to that of Mrs Knight.

"Everyone I spoke to in the US thought it was Nicholas Rossi using a voice-changing app. But eventually my producer and I got hold of a recording of one of the calls and we thought straight away, it sounds incredibly like Miranda," she said.

The recording was played to Mrs Knight, who has always maintained she has no reason to suspect her husband really is Mr Rossi, but she declined to comment.

The full podcast series I Am Not Nicholas was produced by BBC Studios for Audible.

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