Fugitive sex offender Nicholas Rossi accused of faking his death to avoid rape charges is found guilty of sexual assault in Utah

A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

A jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand.

The verdict came hours after Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf.

He will be sentenced in the case on Oct. 20 and is set to stand trial in September for another rape charge in Utah County.

An obituary published online claimed Rossi had died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff in Glasgow recognized his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

He was extradited to Utah in January 2024 after losing an extradition appeal in which he claimed he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed.