Nicholas Rossi, wanted in rape case, claims he unknowingly had tattoos UK News

A man facing extradition to the United States in connection with a historic rape case claims he had tattoos unknowingly.

A 35-year-old man who says his name is Arthur Knight is giving evidence in Edinburgh Sheriff’s Court.

A court is trying to establish whether he is Nicholas Rossi, who is suspected of raping a woman in Utah in 2008 and later faking his own death.

Rossi’s Interpol red notice shows that he has many distinctive tattoos on both of his arms, including one of the red crosses on his angel wings.

Scottish police arrested him last October at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow after he was hospitalized for breathing difficulties.

Medical staff identified him based on a red notice.

“I was in a coma”

At a hearing on Tuesday, a man claiming to be Arthur Knight said he had been in a coma for 18 days before being arrested in Scotland, during which time he had tattoos.

“During the 18 days I was in the coma, I had no free will with my body. I never got a tattoo before I was in the hospital,” he told the court.

Counsel Paul Harvey asked for clarification on whether the tattoo appeared on the man’s body while he was in a coma.

Earlier evidence came from head nurse Ruth Keating, 58, who cared for a man she knew as Arthur Knight while in the hospital.

She told the court about his “characteristic” tattoos on both arms.

“It looks like the tattoo we saw in Arthur Knight,” Keating said of a particular photo of Rossi’s Interpol red notice, which shows a red cross tattoo on top of an angel’s wing.

Is this man a fugitive rape suspect who faked his own death, or a victim of misidentification?

The two police officers who arrested the man, PC Shannon McGill and PC Jamie Crombie, also said they recognized Rossi’s tattoo on the man’s arm as evidence.

Mr. Harvey relayed witness statements to the man and asked if they were correct about the tattoos on his body.

“It was done to make me look like this Nicolas Rossi,” the man said of the tattoo image released in court.

“All I can say is that when I woke up from my coma, I had tattoos on my body that weren’t identical to the ones shown on these screens.

accent switch

Harvey asked, “Did QEUH’s ICU staff, doctors and nurses do nothing to prevent someone from getting these tattoos on your body while you were in a coma?” I was.

The man recalled “the moment he woke up” that “the ward was very crowded” and spoke of an apparent water pollution problem in the building before the sheriff asked him to stop straying from the topic. He said he started

When asked during the hearing why his accent had changed from polite English to something else, he blamed oxygen deprivation.

The man further claimed that the accuser had tampered with the fingerprints used in the arrest warrant, and that the photo of the red notice had been “diverted.”

The man’s wife, Miranda Knight, 41, was also summoned to present evidence.

She told the court that the reason the man changed his name was because he had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since childhood.

Defense attorney Mungo Bovey KC asked her if there were any indications that her husband was Rossi, and she replied, “No.”

Sheriff Norman McFadden postponed the hearing until Wednesday morning.