254: The Cringy and UNHINGED Case of Nicholas Rossi: From Most Wanted to Most Embarrassing

He faked his own death, fled the country, and tried to reinvent himself—complete with an over-the-top British accent and a fake coma. But when authorities caught up with Nicholas Rossi, his elaborate lies unraveled in the most embarrassing way possible. How did a once-wanted fugitive become the star of one of the cringiest true crime sagas ever? Buckle up—this case is wilder than fictionJoin our True Crime Club for access to BTS, Bonus Content, Our Private Group Chat, Giveaways and More! Shop Our True Crime MerchFollow the podcast on: IG, Facebook and TikTokFor Business Inquiries: [email protected] AnnieToday’s Sponsors:Beam: Go to shopbeam.com/ANNIEELISE and use code ANNIEELISE at checkout for up to 40% off. Quince: Go to Quince.com/ae for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order. Episode Sources:BBCCBS NewsCNNFOX 13 NewsNBC NewsNBC 10 WJARThe Scottish SunSTV NewsWPRIWikipedia

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Annie Elise?

  Hey true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serial Asleep.

• 0:25Annie Elise?

  In January of 2022, 34-year-old Arthur Knight woke up after being in a three-month-long coma. He was initially placed into this medically-induced coma in Glasgow, Scotland, three months earlier because he had a very severe case of COVID-19. Because he was having such a struggle with this, they wanted to make sure that he could recover, therefore placing him in this coma. So when he woke up, he was just so excited to be awake, to see his wife Miranda, to be healthy, hoping he's now on the road to recovery. But what he wasn't expecting was to be surrounded by police officers around his hospital bed. Now, Arthur had absolutely no idea why the police were there to see him. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was a normal guy. I mean,

• 1:08Annie Elise?

  yes, he had a bit of a rough upbringing. He was from Dublin, Ireland, and he was orphaned at a very young age. But other than that, he didn't have much of a past. I mean, a speeding ticket here and there, but nothing that would warrant the police coming into his hospital room and surrounding his bed when he just woke up from this three-month-long coma. He looked at his wife Miranda, who he initially started dating back in 2011, they got married in 2020, and he had a look of confusion on his face. What was going on? Why were they here? Did they have the wrong person? I mean, surely he had to have done something terrible to warrant the police officers coming bedside at his hospital. But he hadn't done anything. And you know what? Maybe Arthur Knight really hadn't done anything wrong?

• 1:51Annie Elise?

  But the police insisted that this person lying there in that hospital bed, it wasn't Arthur at all. They said he was somebody else, someone who had been born in the United States and was wanted for rape and sexual assault. Now, if what the police were saying was true, then how did this person, whoever they were, become Arthur Knight? And also, how did he get into the UK? And how did he escape the police and go unnoticed for nearly five years? Hey, guys. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialishly with me, Annie Elise. Now, the reason I chose this case and wanted to talk to you about it is because it is truly the definition of a roller coaster. There are so many twists along the way. There's parts of these interviews, which, if you've seen them, you may know what I'm talking about.

• 2:36Annie Elise?

  If you haven't seen them, don't worry, I will play them for you. But parts of these interviews where I was literally hysterically laughing. I mean, I lose my mind at one point because it is just so funny, the audacity of some people and the theatrics and lengths that they will go to to try to convince somebody of something other than the truth. So this case involves this man who everybody thought was truly a good guy. He was well-liked. He had a great, strong community. He was married. He was educated at all the best places. And he was really trying to make a difference in the world. But as it turns out, the reality was much, much different. Because it turns out that he may have lied about everything.

• 3:18Annie Elise?

  And even more than that, may have been one of the worst predators that the police were hunting for years. But was that true? Or did the police have the wrong guy? So we are going to go through everything, and I promise you, even if you think you know this case, you don't know it. Because we did the deep dive so that you don't have to, and we are going to go over all the details. But, warning, buckle up. It's a wild one.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  I am not Andrea. I am not Nicholas Alain Verdi. And I do not know how to make this clear.

• 3:53Annie Elise?

  What do you say to people who say these are crocodile tears? He's putting on a show. This is all an act.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Oh, you could... Andrew, that's a low blow. That's a right low blow.

• 4:04Annie Elise?

  Nicholas Rossi was born on July 11th, 1987, and he lived right outside of Providence, Rhode Island. Now, it's worth noting that although he went by Nicholas Rossi, he was originally born as Nicholas Oliverdian. Unfortunately, Nicholas's parents separated when he was pretty young, and his dad, from what I've researched, was allegedly very abusive. And the abuse got so bad that Nicholas's mom ended up getting a restraining order against him, and she went into hiding with Nicholas and with his two younger siblings. His dad ended up spending most of Nicholas's childhood in jail for a variety of crimes, things like writing fraudulent checks, dealing drugs, even domestic assault. But eventually, Nicholas's mom ended up getting remarried, and then that's when Nicholas took the last name of his stepfather, Rossi.

• 4:49Annie Elise?

  Although I think it is worth mentioning that throughout his life, he would go back and forth a little bit. Sometimes he would use the last name Rossi, but then sometimes he would also use Oliverdian. Now, even with this new marriage, and even though things looked promising, unfortunately Nicholas's mom's marriage didn't last, and eventually the two of them divorced. So being single, his mom struggled and had a really hard time caring for Nicholas and for his two younger siblings. She was an alcoholic, she was abusive too, and obviously, the situation just was not the best living situation for children. So eventually, she just couldn't provide for herself and her children. And while it isn't entirely clear what happened to Nicholas's siblings, Nicholas ended up going into the foster care system.

• 5:31Annie Elise?

  So he bounced around from home to home, foster parent to foster parent. And unfortunately, his experience with his foster parents was very similar to what he had experienced with his real parents. He faced abuse, mistreatment, neglect. It just almost seemed like this vicious cycle. And since nothing was working out with the foster parents, Nicholas ended up being placed in a series of group homes. Then in 2003, Nicholas was sent to a place in Nebraska called Boys Town. And he said that this experience was truly terrible because, according to Nicholas, the other kids in Boys Town beat him up regularly. They taunted him, and they just overall made his life completely miserable. So because of that, once again, he moved. He packed up all his things and he moved to a different group home.

• 6:16Annie Elise?

  This one was in Florida and it was called Manatee Palm Youth Services. Now, this went on for years and years, just foster home to foster home to group home to group home. And at 18, he was now in Ohio, living with yet another foster family. But despite all this constant moving around, where you would think that it would really impact him and, and maybe even set him back a little bit, people described him as being a total genius. Even a computer was just so intelligent, so smart and just very bright and somebody with a bright future. So by his early twenties, Nicholas decided to go to Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. Here, he studied literature, sociology, and political science. Now, really quickly, I also do want to mention that back when Nicholas was just 14 years old

• 7:01Annie Elise?

  and living in Rhode Island, he did make a lot of political connections, which I know sounds a little bit crazy because he was only 14 years old. But he worked as a house page for the House of Representatives, which basically that position is like a teenager who helps with some of the clerical work, who helps with like running little errands here and there and doing things like that. So in doing that work, he met a lot of different lawmakers. He was exposed to different people in the political world and he just started making a lot of connections. So now, here he was in his early twenties, going to college, getting well educated. He already was what some called a brainiac. And in 2011, he decided to do something with all of his connections. And more so, he decided to do something to rectify all of his past childhood experience

• 7:45Annie Elise?

  and his horrible experience with DCYF, with foster homes, with group homes, with all of those things. So he decided to use all of his connections, all of his exposure and experience, and he decided to sue DCYF. Now, a lot of these connections that he had in the political world were actually who pushed him to take this leap and to sue DCYF. These lawmakers knew what Nicholas went through when he was in foster care. And so they felt like he would really be the great poster child for reform with DCYF. So Nicholas took to the media and he told his story to anybody who would listen. He was claiming some pretty horrific things. He was saying that while he was in foster care, he was abused and beaten daily, not only by his foster parents, but also the other foster kids.

• 8:28Annie Elise?

  He alleged that in 2002, DCYF couldn't even find him a home. So because of that, they ended up putting him in a program where he spent days in just this like sterile DCYF building. Where he slept nights in a homeless shelter. He wasn't allowed to go to school. And really, he just painted this picture of truly a terrible life. He said this life was so terrible, too, because kids would steal his stuff. They would threaten him. They would assault him. And honestly, if all of this was true, it's really no wonder that Nicholas was trying to reform DCYF. Because no child should ever have to live in any of those conditions or go through any sort of torment like that.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Every day you were beaten?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Every day in Florida, every day in Nebraska, every day in Rhode Island.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Every day, Nicholas?

• 9:09Speaker 03

  I shook every day.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  The injuries, including bruises and sprains, are recorded in these medical documents. And Oliverian tells us lawmakers also noticed the wounds.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  I chose to fight for the rights of myself as a kid in DCYF care and fight for the rights of those who were actually beating me up.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Now he's behind three bills that are endorsed by several lawmakers. One would overhaul DCYF. Another would stop Rhode Island from sending children out of state. The measures, he says, would save money. But more importantly, he tells us, save children from what he and too many others survived.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Most of the social workers that I know mean well. But they are not given the resources. They are not given the time. They don't have the abilities to do what they need to do to get their job done. And that's unacceptable. It's horrific.

• 9:59Annie Elise?

  Now Nicholas also claimed that he knew a ton of what he called inside information about DCYF. And he said that that's the real reason that they sent him out of the state so many times. He said that they were scared that he was going to reveal way too much to the public. So because of that, they retaliated and they prohibited him from contacting any friends, family members, lawyers, or really anybody who could help him.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  At 10, we have a Target 12 Investigators exclusive.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  A former orphan who was in DCYF custody receives a medical bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  And tonight, he's talking to Eyewitness News. Target 12 investigator Walt Butto is in the newsroom with the exclusive interview.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Nicholas Alaverdean is a strong critic of DCYF. And he tells us this bill covers injuries sustained while he was supposed to be protected by DCYF.

• 10:50Speaker 06

  Hospital stays.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Alaverdean was shocked when he received a six-page medical bill and this letter asking for just under $207,000 for medical assistance. He tells us the bill covers an 11-year period, starting when he was placed in DCYF custody in 2002.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  And it shows that even though I paid in blood, I still have some worth to the state of Rhode Island as a dollar sign, apparently.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  So far, the Office of Health and Human Services is not answering our questions, or Alaverdean's, about whether or not every child in state custody is billed for medical assistance.

• 11:26Speaker 06

  I file it-

• 11:27Speaker 02

  The letter comes while Alaverdean is suing this long list of former and current state officials and the DCYF for how he was treated while in state care. He alleges he was physically and sexually assaulted while he was moved in and out of some 20 group homes in three states.

• 11:43Speaker 06

  Take your worst nightmare, multiply it by 5,000. There were rapes, there were beatings.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Alaverdean tells Target 12 he'll continue to push for changes in the law to force DCYF to keep Rhode Island children in Rhode Island group homes. But he has no plans to pay the $206,918.39 bill.

• 12:07Speaker 06

  And it's incredibly, incredibly despicable.

• 12:10Annie Elise?

  Except, as you can imagine, the Rhode Island DCYF denied all of it. They said Nicholas was a liar, there wasn't any abuse at all. Yet despite that, Nicholas still had a lot of lawmakers backing him, encouraging him to push for change. And he also gained a lot of media attention and public support. But despite having all these people's support, even with the well-known government officials, Nicholas wasn't totally successful with his lawsuit. However, the two of them did end up reaching a settlement agreement, and the details about the agreement are a little bit unclear. There are some reports that DCYF paid Nicholas $70,000, while others say that the lawsuit ended up being dismissed because DCYF waived-

• 12:50Annie Elise?

  A large amount of medical debt that Nicholas had, some amount like upwards of $200,000. So unclear, but settled nonetheless. And still throughout the whole process, DCYF denied all of Nicholas's allegations. And we've seen in many other cases that I've covered that child welfare agencies do drop the ball sometimes, I mean, in terrible ways that bring so much harm to children. But the more that people started looking into Nicholas and Nicholas's claims, the more that they wondered how truthful he was with his allegations. And also in a lot of other things. Because as it turns out, Nicholas wasn't just this innocent whiz kid who had everything and everyone working against him and he was just this perpetual victim. But Nicholas was known to be a very difficult kid.

• 13:35Annie Elise?

  When he was suing DCYF, he made it sound like he was the one who had to move around so much because the reason stemming and rooted in him having so much abuse, all these other people just hurting him, inflicting harm on him, stealing from him, just again, a perpetual victim. But as it turns out, the reason that Nicholas had to move around so much was because his behavior caused a lot of problems. At an early age, Nicholas was diagnosed with behavior and mental health issues. And he was always hitting his mom, his siblings, his grandma, even kids at school. And whenever somebody tried to intervene and help and solve this problem, he would just yell at them. Sometimes he would even spit at them. So he was just a lot to handle. And his behavior escalated and got so bad that he ended up being placed in a psychiatric

• 14:19Annie Elise?

  unit at a hospital. And while he was there, the doctors diagnosed him with attention deficit disorder and also narcissistic personality disorder. But then, like we were seeing with so many cycles before, his behavior just continued to escalate. It got worse, it got worse, it got so bad, he was threatening and physically attacking staff and other people at the hospital. So because of that, he ended up being thrown out. So in that instance, he went right back home. But then he started causing issues all over again. And he ended up causing so much discord in his home that DCYF took him away from his home because he was the one creating an unsafe living environment for his siblings. And this was all before his mother surrendered him to the foster care system.

• 15:02Annie Elise?

  So clearly a very heavy pattern of this that stems back to a very young age. Now, remember how I mentioned that people did refer to Nicholas as this computer whiz, this genius? Well, apparently, some of that was true to a certain degree. Because Nicholas knew how smart he was, and he also knew how to use that to his advantage. He was a known liar, he was a known manipulator, and he would threaten people to do whatever it was that he wanted them to do. For example, when he was working as a page in the state house as a teenager, he ended up growing close with one of Rhode Island's representatives named Brian Coogan. Brian slowly got to know Nicholas, and he was familiar with the fact that he had had a, you know, somewhat turbulent home life, to say the least.

• 15:46Annie Elise?

  So Brian felt really bad for Nicholas. And he was impressed with all the work that Nicholas did as the house page. He was hardworking, he was, you know, attentive, he would get things done despite all that he was going through, and Brian really admired that. So when Nicholas came to Brian and asked him if he would adopt him, Brian really wanted to say yes. And in fact, he even started the adoption process. But then, he stopped, almost as soon as he began. Because a judge warned Brian that adopting Nicholas just would not be a good idea. Brian was already married, he already had kids of his own, and the judge said that by bringing Nicholas into his home, it would completely turn things upside down. Yet Brian was under the impression that Nicholas was the one getting beat up constantly

• 16:30Annie Elise?

  while he was in the foster care system. However, it turned out that that wasn't true. And the judge, of course, couldn't give exact details of what Nicholas had done, but he did say that he had evidence that Nicholas wasn't the one getting beaten up. Instead, he was the one doing the beating. And the judge further said that Nicholas would just really try to undermine Brian any chance that he got, that he would completely ruin his family and, even worse, potentially put them in danger. So, wanting to keep his family safe, Brian stopped the adoption process. So at this point, Nicholas is feeling hopeless. Nobody's taking him in, things aren't going his way, he can't find someone to manipulate, to get on his side. And in 2008, when he was attending that community college in Ohio, he started really

• 17:13Annie Elise?

  grappling with this, feeling really lonely. He was new to the area, he didn't have a lot of friends, so he decided to go on MySpace to meet people, which MySpace is more of like the archaic version of Facebook, for those of you who are younger and never used it. But while on MySpace, he met a woman named Mary Grabinski. They started talking online and they became fast friends. Now with this new friendship, Mary had a boyfriend and Nicholas really wasn't interested in a relationship. So they really were truly just friends. Then one day in the winter of 2008, they went out for lunch together and it was their first time meeting in person. And Mary was so surprised at how charming, how charismatic Nicholas was. They just hit it off. They had a really great time.

• 17:55Annie Elise?

  Nicholas even offered to walk Mary to class that she had later that afternoon. So they leave this lunch spot and start walking to class, which her class was in a basement building on campus. And everything seemed great. They had had such a wonderful afternoon, such a wonderful lunch. But once they got into that basement, things took a turn, a very dark turn. Because Nicholas started getting very aggressive with Mary, which totally shocked her. I mean, she was thought he was so charming, so nice, so charismatic. He seemed so normal. But while they were in the stairwell, Nicholas pushed her up against a wall and he forced his hands up her shirt. She told him to stop and to get off of her multiple times, but he didn't stop. And she couldn't push him off. She wasn't strong enough.

• 18:36Annie Elise?

  Now, at one point, a few students started coming down the stairs, but once they saw what was going on, they just turned around and left. They didn't want to get involved. I mean, maybe they thought that they accidentally came across this couple and that these college kids who were just like going at it and it was consensual. I don't really know. But for whatever reason, they turned around. So because of that, Nicholas just continued assaulting Mary. He pulled her pants down, he started touching himself. And eventually, while he was, you know, jerking himself off, he ended up finishing on her. After that, he pulled up his pants, turned around, and he just left, almost like nothing even happened. Just like casual, calm, just pulled his pants up and then just walked away, like nothing, like literally, like nothing ever happened.

• 19:17Annie Elise?

  Mary, on the other hand, she just stood there, frozen in the stairwell in complete shock. She felt numb. She didn't know how to respond. She didn't know what to do, so she just kind of went into autopilot and went to class. She was just going through the motions. And then when she finally left class, when class was over, guess who was standing there waiting for her? Nicholas. Saw Mary, he told her he was sorry, as though some simple apology would suffice for what he had just done. And he begged her not to go to the police. But Mary wasn't having it. She was pissed. She felt violated. So after he left, she did the exact opposite of what he asked, and she went to the police.

• 20:07Annie Elise?

  Now initially, the police told Mary that there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the case. That wasn't till they got Nicholas's side of the story. Because when they talked to Nicholas, Nicholas told a completely different version of what happened. He said that Mary was the aggressor, that she was the one who attacked him. However, the police didn't believe his story. His story was a huge red flag to them because just weeks before, Nicholas had actually made the exact same claim about a different woman. It turns out that 15 days before Mary put in her report with the police, another woman had filed a police report. This woman stated that Nicholas also assaulted her. Now, her report was not only very similar to Mary's, but when the police went to go talk with Nicholas about it, he again claimed that this

• 20:52Annie Elise?

  woman had been the aggressor. So now, with two very similar stories from two completely different women, the police were looking more closely at Mary's case, taking it more seriously. So Nicholas was charged with sexual imposition and public indecency. He was found guilty, but he didn't have to serve any jail time. All he had to do was pay a fine and then register on the sex registry for the next 15 years, which to me feels like a very big slap on the wrist. You're not doing any time, you're just paying a fine and getting your name on the registry? Like, what is that about? Especially when you have a track record of this, right? Now, even though there wasn't a lot of justice, in my opinion, at least there was some sort of resolution. But Nicholas wasn't having it. Nicholas ended up filing a motion for

• 21:36Annie Elise?

  a retrial based on something that he found on Mary's MySpace page. Because on her MySpace page, she had posted about how she lied about everything that she said, everything she alleged that Nicholas did to her. But Mary said, "No, she didn't say that. That post wasn't hers." Now, the only proof that Nicholas had was a screenshot of this alleged post. The actual post couldn't be found on Mary's MySpace page. And eventually, at a hearing in February of 2011, a computer forensic expert testified that he was 90% sure that this post was fake. She never made this post. It was doctored. It was fabricated. So that testimony ended up getting Nicholas's motion for a retrial completely dismissed. But Nicholas was still angry. He still wasn't done with Mary.

• 22:20Annie Elise?

  So after he was found guilty, he started an internet tirade against her. He started becoming really big in these online men's groups and all of these incel groups, which I gotta say is like a huge red flag in and of itself. He was posting frequently, especially on this website called "A Voice for Men", which, try to tell me something worse than that. Sorry for any guys listening. But like, a collection of like angry men who hate women, who are posting on all these websites and like fueling each other on this? Like, it's so pathetic that I wanna laugh if it weren't so truly dangerous because of what comes out of these groups. I mean, we saw it with Elliot Rogers. We are seeing it possibly now. We have seen it with a bunch of incels. I mean, it's, it can get very scary because they're all just like rage baiting and encouraging each other to do this horrible thing, stuff.

• 23:04Annie Elise?

  So anyway, I know I digressed for a minute. I apologize. But he was constantly writing posts, just completely smearing Mary's name. He would post pictures of her. He would post her address, like really just trying to get this whole hate train against Mary. Now, some of the articles that he would write were titled, "When Criminal Justice Is Criminal: The Nicholas Alavenderian Story", "Mary Grobeski's Big Lie", "Proof of Mary's Big Lie", even one that was titled, "Evidence of the Sex-Crazed Psychotic Mary As Seen on Facebook", just like, not letting it go and really trying to drag this poor girl through the mud. And get this, by this point, it was a couple of years after Nicholas had assaulted Mary. She had gotten married. She had moved on. She was trying to live her life.

• 23:49Annie Elise?

  But Nicholas was... was just tormenting her and obviously her husband was not down with what was going on so he ended up posting something online where he just called Nicholas crazy saying this guy is a freaking lunatic he is a loser he is an incel probably like get out of here don't believe a thing this guy is saying but this post upset Nicholas so much that he ended up trying to sue Mary for libel luckily though that case was thrown out and Nicholas was the one who ended up paying all of Mary's legal fees which you can imagine only infuriated him even more now throughout this whole process he ended up being kicked out of his college due to his status as an offender on the registry which big surprise because we know that he's litigious we know that he loves litigation so he even tried

• 24:33Annie Elise?

  to sue the college over this yet that case was dismissed too so then after that Nicholas wrote yet another article this one was called my personal 9/11 and in this article he recounted everything that had happened and he said whole ordeal it ruined his life it ruined his goals his aspirations and he really compared Mary's actions to the actions of the people who were responsible for 9/11 9/11 as in the terrorist attack and he is comparing Mary his victim to those people I mean make it make sense right to me it just seems like again a pattern of him thinking that he can sue everybody that everybody's it's everybody else's fault he's the victim in everything to me it seems like it's clearly obvious

• 25:15Annie Elise?

  that there is like an increased level of narcissism here it's just when people are this unhinged and unwell it becomes very scary because you don't know what they are truly capable of and while all of this was going on Nicholas ended up moving back to Rhode Island and just to give you a little bit of the sense of timeline because I know I've jumped around a little bit this was when he first started his whole pursuit against DCYF when he moved back to Rhode Island after this whole Mary thing he also got married in late 2010 which I gotta say that marriage was his first marriage and then as I mentioned at the top of this episode he got married again in 2020 and there are very few details about Nicholas's first marriage who he married where how they met what her name was I mean

• 25:58Annie Elise?

  she really may not have known about Nicholas's past at all so no you know shade to her but what we do know is that this marriage did not have a great start just days after he got married on November 11th 2010 the Rhode Island police received calls about very loud domestic disturbances yelling raised voices coming from the apartment that Nicholas shared with his wife When the police arrived, they heard the voices of a man and a woman who were arguing inside the apartment. They knocked and a woman answered the door. And when the police saw Nicholas's wife, they were immediately concerned because her appearance raised a lot of red flags. She had bruises on her neck, her arms, her right eye was completely swollen, and it looked like she had been beaten pretty severely.

• 26:41Annie Elise?

  But when Nicholas saw the police, he started apologizing to his wife. He asked her to come back inside, trying to like backpedal on everything. But his wife ignored him and she told the police that they had gotten into an argument. That Nicholas grabbed her, threw her to the ground, and that when she tried to get out from under him, he hit her in the face. So Nicholas was arrested, and he was very uncooperative with the police. He was put into the back of the police car, and as they started driving to the station, Nicholas just kept hitting his head against the bars. You know, the bars that separate the front from the back in a police car? He just kinda like kept rocking back and forth, hitting his head against them, like throwing this like complete crazy tantrum. And it got so bad that the police officers ended up having to pepper spray him to get him to stop. I mean, a lunatic.

• 27:26Annie Elise?

  In the end, Nicholas was charged with domestic assault, and he pled no contest. He didn't have to serve any jail time, and his wife ended up filing a restraining order against him and also started the divorce process. However, before the divorce could be finalized, Nicholas kept calling his wife and kept threatening her, which was obviously, hello, a huge violation of that restraining order that was put in place. And he only ever stopped when the police told him that they were gonna have to arrest him if he didn't stop contacting her. Which, I mean, this guy is clearly like a walking red flag, right? I don't understand why they didn't already arrest him. I don't know why he wasn't held before. It just doesn't make any sense. But nevertheless, he now, I guess, was spooked by the police because he did not want to serve jail time. So he did stop harassing her.

• 28:10Annie Elise?

  And the divorce was finalized in May of 2011. Now, I kind of mentioned already that he jumped around a lot. He went from state to state, not only when he was in foster care and group homes, but kinda throughout his life. Because now, four years after this divorce, Nicholas was back living in Ohio again. He eventually became involved in the Mormon And there, he met a woman named Catherine Heckendorf. Catherine really liked Nicholas. He seemed sweet, they got along well. Again, he seemed to have like a lot of charisma to him. And before meeting Nicholas, Catherine had been in a very abusive relationship. She was still healing from that relationship. And Nicholas, he seemed kind of like her knight in shining armor. He seemed very understanding of all of that. He acted very supportive of Catherine.

• 28:54Annie Elise?

  They would get coffee together, dinner together, I mean, pretty frequently too. And they eventually started dating. Nicholas had told her about his past work with the House of Representatives, his advocacy work, his time in college. He also talked about how he graduated from Harvard. And he just came across as this really smart and charming guy. And Catherine felt like there was a lot of mystery around Nicholas too, but like in a good way, good mystery. In a way where she felt like she wanted to know more, she wanted to know more about him. Now, obviously Catherine was completely unaware of Nicholas's past. And she also had no idea that he was on the registry. I mean, it wasn't something that he ever was gonna bring up. She was also totally unaware why his last marriage had ended. She knew that he had been married, yes, because Nicholas had told her that himself.

• 29:39Annie Elise?

  But he had said that the divorce was because he and his ex just simply grew apart. That's where he left it. He didn't say anything else. Now, even though Catherine liked Nicholas, initially, she wasn't too sure about getting more serious with him. Nicholas had started bringing up marriage though very early into their relationship, and Catherine just was not on board. Yet Nicholas just kept badgering her about it. And one day, while they were watching TV, he even just randomly proposed, as if he was like, just like not reading the room, my guy. And Catherine still wasn't very sure about it. Yet she also always wanted to be a wife, so she was really struggling with what to do. So basically, after all of the months of him badgering her, she broke down. She gave in to Nicholas, and she said that she would marry him.

• 30:22Annie Elise?

  And Nicholas did not want to wait. He wanted to get married right away. Probably because he didn't want her to change her mind. So literally, the very next day, just six months after they met, they went to a courthouse and they got married. This was October of 2015. But then, on the night of their wedding- Nicholas beat Catherine for the very first time. It was almost like a switch had just flipped. Or like the second that Nicholas got Catherine legally attached to him as his wife, she was like his property and he was able to show who he truly was. And like I said, Catherine wasn't even too sure about marrying Nicholas in the first place. Maybe she knew deep down that something about him was off, but now it was all coming to the surface. And married life just continued to get worse for Catherine.

• 31:07Annie Elise?

  Nicholas started controlling every single aspect of her life, who she was friends with, where she went, what she wore. I mean, literally everything. He wouldn't even let her talk to her own family. Just classic narcissistic controlling behavior that we have seen time and time again, right? Catherine tried to call the police a few times, but Nicholas usually took her phone away before she could even get through. However, one time she was able to call the police. And this was just a couple of months after they had gotten married. Nicholas had hit her again. Now this time, when the police came to their home, they informed Catherine that Nicholas was on the registry. They warned her that he was this very dangerous man and they were expressing genuine concern for her safety. They also arrested Nicholas and they made it clear

• 31:52Annie Elise?

  that they were very frightened of what Nicholas might do next or how his behavior may escalate. So they urged Catherine to consider leaving him, to be cautious. They even suggested that she think about getting a restraining order so that she could protect herself. But Catherine stayed. She even ended up bailing Nicholas out. And some of you might find that detail confusing, but people don't always act their normal selves if they're in an abusive relationship or in an abusive environment. Catherine was just hoping that things would get better, that he would change, that it would maybe be some sort of wake up call now that he was finally arrested. Would that be the case? Things didn't get better. They actually got worse. Catherine was forced to stay at home nearly 24/7. She couldn't leave the house. She couldn't have a job.

• 32:36Annie Elise?

  She couldn't spend time with friends. I mean, she couldn't see her family, nothing. And as I said, Nicholas at this point was controlling not only all aspects of her social life, but also what she wore. And in a lot of these cases that we've talked about. Talked about generally when men are controlling what their partner is wearing, it's because they want them to look more conservative, more covered up. They don't want them to show too many things. But Nicholas was kind of the opposite. He started forcing her to wear these really short skirts and these tights and this almost uniform type looking outfit. He even started wearing three-piece suits around the house because he thought that it made him look more sophisticated. So to Catherine, Nicholas really seemed more hyper-focused about appearances than anything else.

• 33:20Annie Elise?

  I mean, everything just seemed to be a show for him. Around this same time, Nicholas also started a nonprofit called Community Progress Institute. The goal of this nonprofit was to revitalize the downtown area in Dayton, Ohio. This is where they of course lived. But despite how smart Nicholas thought that he was, he just was not a good businessman. Now typically nonprofits rely on a network of very generous people and different organizations that believe in their cause, right? I mean, these supporters donate money, they help fund everything from day-to-day operations to their big picture goals. But Nicholas didn't have a large donor base. And it's unclear just how many people actually even contributed to his cause. But whatever the number, it clearly was not enough to keep things afloat.

• 34:03Annie Elise?

  So with fundraising falling short, Nicholas had to get creative. He had to find another solution to bring in money. And that solution was Catherine. Nicholas just happened to discover that Catherine had a personal savings account with quite a bit of money in it. And I think we can all probably see where this is going, right? We know the direction of where this is going to lead. But Nicholas ended up forcing Catherine to give him $10,000, threatening her, saying if she didn't allow him to take this money, he was going to hurt her. And this became a reoccurring mess. The nonprofit just kept running out of money and Nicholas would then pressure Catherine into bailing him out. And this kept happening over and over and over again until finally Catherine ended up

• 34:45Annie Elise?

  draining her bank account over $60,000. So at some point too in all of this, I mean Catherine couldn't help but wonder. Is Nicholas really as smart as I thought? Is he really the guy that I thought he was? Remember, they got married after only six months. Like, it was almost like reality was setting in for her. And then at that point, too, she finally uncovered the truth. It turns out that Nicholas didn't graduate from Harvard like he had claimed. Not at all. All he did was take a few classes at the online Harvard Extension School. But that didn't even last because the program ended up booting him out once they found out that he was on the registry. And on top of that, Nicholas wasn't even using the money that Catherine gave him for this nonprofit. He was using all of it to buy expensive suits, fancy food,

• 35:29Annie Elise?

  and all these other super unnecessary but very expensive things. So, I mean, no wonder this nonprofit wasn't working out. He was using all of the money to fund his lifestyle or his portrayal of whatever lifestyle he wanted. And their marriage was just getting worse by the day. Nicholas would get upset with Catherine over the smallest things. And whenever he was upset, he would take his anger out on her. He would hit her, push her, restrain her, tell her how dumb she was daily. He even held a knife to her throat. Sometimes he would even turn the knife on himself, saying, if she didn't listen to him, that he would slit his own throat. I mean, talk about massive manipulation, right? And he was also very, very aggressive when it came to sex.

• 36:12Annie Elise?

  Catherine, understandably so, didn't want to have sex with him. Don't blame her at all. She would tell him no. But Nicholas would not take no for an answer. He would rape her multiple times, over and over again. And sometimes he would also get so upset whenever she told him no, that he would lock her inside their bathroom and would not let her to come out. And the longest that he ever locked her inside that bathroom? Was two whole days. So finally, this was the final straw for Catherine. Things were not going to get better. And she knew that she could not live like this anymore. But she also knew that it was going to be very difficult to get a divorce from Nicholas because she knew that he would put up a fight and he would make her life miserable. So anytime that Nicholas would go off on one of his little tirades and tangents,

• 36:55Annie Elise?

  just yelling at her, berating her, she started secretly recording him. And then when he would cross over into the inevitable line of... Physical abuse, she caught that on camera too. So now, finally armed with a mountain of evidence, Catherine finally broke free and she successfully divorced Nicholas. This was just seven months after their nightmare marriage began. And the judge in this divorce case was absolutely stunned by what Catherine brought to court. I mean, Nicholas, of course, pulled every stunt that he possibly could to try and delay this process, including just not showing up to the court dates that were scheduled and set. But the judge wasn't playing into him. He wasn't having any of it, not buying into the excuses, the delays, none of it.

• 37:38Annie Elise?

  And he slammed Nicholas for gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty. He also ordered him to pay back all of the money that he had borrowed from Catherine. And in addition to that, cover all of her legal fees, which, you know, just pissed him off. I mean, you would hope that that would have been the end of it, right? But we know Nicholas, and he very predictably did not follow the rules. Even with that restraining order against him, he broke into Catherine's house and he stole a ton of stuff from her. The court ordered him to pay her even more after that, but surprise, surprise, he never paid her a dime. But then, just like that, Nicholas vanished. He packed up, he left Ohio, and he moved back to Rhode Island for a little bit. But then shortly after that, he just disappeared, which Catherine wasn't going to chase him for the money.

• 38:22Annie Elise?

  She was too scared to deal with him anymore, which honestly, she didn't even care about the money. Nicholas was finally out of her life for good. And for Catherine, that was worth way more than any amount of money. But then, in 2020, things took a very dramatic turn for Nicholas.

• 38:52Annie Elise?

  For much of his life, Nicholas had sort of become this public figure. I mean, beginning back in 2010, when he even started his legal battles against DCYF, and then continuing all the way through 2016 and 2017, when he was focused on launching his nonprofit back over in Ohio. He just had this kind of like larger-than-life persona. He liked being out in the But by 2020, he had largely faded from the spotlight. The attention that once had followed him just completely evaporated, disappeared. But that all then changed in January of 2020, when Nicholas dropped a truly shocking life update on his personal website. He claimed that he had been diagnosed with late-stage non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,

• 39:36Annie Elise?

  and he said he only had weeks left to live. However, posting it online, it was not enough for Nicholas. He went all out. He was bombarding reporters. He was sending news updates to articles. He was insisting that every single media outlet that he could find cover his illness. It was like he wanted to be back in the spotlight. He wanted to talk about this. Now, as I said, at one point Nicholas was sort of a public figure. So maybe it was important to some of these news organizations to report on his illness. But overall, he was also just known to be kind of persistent and very annoying until people did whatever he wanted them to do. So either way, Nicholas would not give up emailing reporters until they covered his story, until they covered his terminal illness.

• 40:20Annie Elise?

  So to get him off their backs, they decided to let the world know that Nicholas was sick. Now, as you can imagine, and I'm sure if you saw this on, come across your television or your phone or whatever news feed you get your stuff from, a lot of people were confused as to why Nicholas's illness was being reported. I mean, after all, people get sick every single day. But it seemed like he was really going out of his way to make sure that everybody knew about it. And in hindsight, it almost felt like he was planting seeds for something bigger, like he was setting the stage for the grand finale, the big show, what was about to happen. And surely, just one month later, on February 29th, news broke that Nicholas had died. After those nonprofit efforts in Ohio,

• 41:03Annie Elise?

  he seemed to have just kind of vanished from the public eye. Most people assumed that after being in the spotlight for so long, he probably just now wanted to live a quieter, more peaceful life, you know, away from the attention. But it turns out that before the reports of his death, Nicholas didn't disappear from the public eye by choice. He had left the country entirely. He had moved to the United Kingdom. He had built a new life. He even got married, again. This time to a woman named Louise. And Louise was the one who ended up delivering the news of Nicholas's death to the reporters. According to her, Nicholas had left the U.S. around 2018, a year or two after divorcing Catherine and after leaving Ohio. He claimed that the reason that he left the United States

• 41:45Annie Elise?

  was because he was facing all of those threats about what he knew about DCYF, you know, the inside information. And he said he had to move because of that for his personal safety. Louise also explained that his health had been in decline for quite some time, alleging that he had been dealing with heart issues. These heart issues led to multiple heart attacks. This was well before the cancer diagnosis, so then that layered on top of it just, of course, made things even worse. So it wasn't really a case of this healthy man just suddenly getting sick and passing away. It was something that he had been dealing with for quite some time. And he, of course, was, you know, trying to protect his own safety because of what he knew and the inside information he had against DCYF. So the reporters who were in contact with Louise had plenty of questions,

• 42:29Annie Elise?

  and they were not holding back with these questions. They were asking, you know, where had Nicholas fled to? What exactly had happened to his body? Could she provide a death certificate? Louise, however, seemed to dodge more questions than answer them. Some reporters were told that Nicholas had been living in Britain, while others heard Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Canada. I mean, the details, they just kept changing. And whether there was a reason for the shifting story or simply because he couldn't keep his story straight, it remains a mystery. Now Louise could not provide a death certificate, but she did say Nicholas died in her arms. She watched him take his last breath. He was then cremated, and his remains were going to be scattered at sea because he loved the ocean so much. That's where he really wanted his final send-off to be.

• 43:13Annie Elise?

  She also sent pages upon pages of just emails to reporters, to everybody who would listen, singing Nicholas's praises, painting him as this tragic, misunderstood hero.

• 43:24Annie Elise?

  Guy who was so smart, so intellectual, just wanted to help to do the nonprofits and he really was just so misunderstood and in the end had a terminal illness and died. And according to Louise, everyone in Nicholas' life had failed him. The police, the judges, the foster parents, everyone. And according to her, he had been the real victim in all of this and during assault and betrayal at every single turn in his life. And to Louise, Nicholas was practically a saint. In one particularly dramatic email of hers, she wrote, "He lived a warrior's life, a fighter in spirit, but a peacemaker in practice." Which I gotta say, given the very serious allegations against him, this whole like statement was very rich, to say the least.

• 44:09Annie Elise?

  And the amount of emails that she was sending to reporters was truly crazy, like full-blown unhinged. It was basically her full-time job. And she emailed Rhode Island legislators so many times insisting that they pass a law protecting children in foster care and that they named the law after Nicholas, just like relentlessly battering them with this. But the lawmakers were like, "Hey, we understand that Nicholas was involved in politics years ago, but it's also been a really long time." So I mean, they weren't really into the idea of passing this law and naming it after Nicholas. I mean, what did he have to do with anything? But Louise countered that and she insisted that after moving to the UK, Nicholas continued working in politics to help save children, to help foster children particularly.

• 44:52Annie Elise?

  But of course, wouldn't you know it, she couldn't really provide any proof to back up that claim. So then she was kind of like, "Okay, okay, okay. Well, if you won't name a law after him, can you at least put together a condolence resolution for him?" Which you might be wondering, which I was too when I heard that, what the heck is a condolence resolution? Well, basically, it's a way for government officials to show that they care when a prominent person passes away. It's a symbolic gesture, more than anything, where they express their sorrow while also giving a nod to the person's contributions to society. So think of it kind of as like a very formal version of a "we're sorry for your loss." Yet, it has a little bit extra recognition that's thrown in there for good measure. And the Rhode Island House of Representatives actually can

• 45:34Annie Elise?

  However, something just felt off because none of the information that Luis was providing seemed credible. Luis also said that she and Nicholas were married with children, but she wouldn't provide any information about their wedding. She couldn't even say what the names of their children were. And the thing that makes this even weirder, if you can believe it, is that Luis couldn't even provide proof of who she was. Nobody who knew Nicholas was aware that he ever had gotten married again. They had never heard of Luis, ever, and Luis didn't provide her full name, her photo, nothing to really show that she was who she said she was and that she was actually married to Nicholas. And on top of that, people started suspecting and thinking that Luis sounded an awful lot like Nicholas.

• 46:19Annie Elise?

  The writing styles were suspiciously similar. But is that a red flag? Or did they just talk the same way because they were married and she was trying to really, you know, continue his legacy? Who knows? But after her efforts with the Rhode Island House of Representatives completely failed, Luis decided to start contacting multiple churches. She was asking them to hold a large memorial mass for Nicholas, just like a big show, a big mass production. No pun intended. Now, many of them said no, though it's unclear if they had refused because something felt off or because Nicholas was on the registry and had been a convicted offender and they didn't want to, you know, glorify that in the church. But for whatever reason, finally, months after Nicholas's death, one priest in Rhode Island agreed to this. So Luis was completely thrilled.

• 47:03Annie Elise?

  She called the priest. She was gushing about how wonderful Nicholas was. She was rattling off this long list of demands for the memorial, too. But the call was just odd. Luis's voice, it was high pitched with this like bizarre, almost fake sounding British accent, almost like somebody was using a voice changer. And the priest could not shake the feeling that something was off here. And it didn't take long for his suspicions to be confirmed. Shortly after his phone call with Luis, the priest received another phone call, but this time it was from the Rhode Island Police Department. And they told him, "Stop. Cancel the memorial." Because according to them, Nicholas was not dead. And the priest... was absolutely stunned hearing this information. I mean, who wouldn't be?

• 47:47Annie Elise?

  But he, of course, did what the police requested, and he canceled the memorial service. However, when he called Luis to break the news to her, he didn't have the heart to give her the real reason. So he decided to kind of like whip up some fake little excuse. And not surprisingly, Luis did not take that very well. She fired off a ton of angry emails to the priest, and each one was angrier than the last. And then Luis started calling all these other churches, trying to arrange for a new memorial. But the police were already one step ahead. They had already contacted all of the local churches, warning them Nicholas isn't really dead. The message was clear. If Luis calls, do not fall for her sob story. Don't even think about it. Now, when Luis caught wind that the police doubted Nicholas's death,

• 48:32Annie Elise?

  she ended up turning her anger toward them. She bombarded them with phone calls, ranting about how disrespectful it was to tarnish Nicholas's memory, that these are all outrageous rumors, that they're totally like killing his legacy. And she got so dramatic, and she even insisted again that she witnessed this death for herself. She saw it. She saw him take his last breath. Why weren't they believing her? But the Rhode Island police were not buying it. They actually knew that Nicholas had moved out of the United States a few years before his, you know, quote, "death", and they had had some pretty suspicious interactions with him right before his death. See, around 2018, Rhode Island police discovered that Nicholas hadn't updated his address in the registry.

• 49:14Annie Elise?

  And this was, of course, against the law. So for that, they issued an arrest warrant for him. But they couldn't find him. Nicholas somehow had caught wind that they were looking for him, so he ended up calling them himself. He told them he moved out of the United States. He was now living in the UK. Therefore, he didn't have to tell them his new address. He insisted that he only had to update his address in the registry if he was living in the United States. And Nicholas wasn't wrong. He even got a lawyer involved, and there was a lot of back and forth. The Rhode Island police even called the US Marshals, who confirmed that in 2018, Nicholas purchased a one-way ticket to Ireland and he never returned. So in the end, it was determined that Nicholas was right. Because he lived out of the country,

• 49:58Annie Elise?

  he did not have to update his address in the registry. And it was shortly after this entire incident that Nicholas died. But the whole thing was just super fishy, right? And when the Rhode Island officials caught wind of his death and also heard that his widow was making this whole spectacle out of it, they decided to dig a little bit deeper. They even ended up reaching out to Interpol to see if they could find some evidence of him passing away. But surprise, surprise? They could not find a single shred of evidence. So that's when they started calling the churches, warning them Nicholas wasn't actually dead. You guys need to hold off on any memorial services. This is all a scam. And here's the thing, the police weren't the only people who were skeptical about this. A lot of people had their doubts.

• 50:41Annie Elise?

  In fact, a lot of people suspected the whole thing was just this huge elaborate stunt and that Nicholas was alive and well behind the entire thing. And this was mainly because he wasn't exactly known for his honesty or humility. Over the years, he had built this reputation as a master manipulator, somebody who wasn't afraid to twist the truth. So when his death was announced and his obituary started kind of making the rounds, circling around, people didn't just grieve, they started raising their eyebrows. I mean, this whole obituary, it was just so excessively flattering and it sounded just like Nicholas. So much so that people suspected he may have even written it himself. So that paired with the vague details surrounding his death,

• 51:26Annie Elise?

  it just made the situation very odd. And this is where things do get a little bit twisted and a little bit hard to follow. But the Rhode Island police weren't the only people who were looking into the validity of Nicholas's death. It turns out that multiple people, all independent of one another, all had reached the same conclusion that Nicholas was likely still alive. And get this, shortly after that situation was Not updating his address and all of that stuff. The thing that he had with the Rhode Island police, you know, before his quote "death." Nicholas had had one last request for his lawyer. He wanted to see if there were any warrants out there for his arrest. Which this was a pretty strange request, especially coming from somebody who was always talking about how innocent they were.

• 52:10Annie Elise?

  But nevertheless, his lawyer looked into it and sure enough, he found that yes, there was another warrant out for Nicholas's arrest. And this time, it was from the FBI. The FBI had been investigating Nicholas for credit card fraud. Allegedly Nicholas had opened about 22 credit cards in the name of his former foster parent, John Lang. And he had racked up almost 200 grand in charges on those cards. So the FBI was trying to pin down Nicholas's exact location. They knew that he was somewhere in the UK, but they couldn't track down exactly where he was. And they believed that Nicholas was intentionally trying to hide his location by purposefully hiding his IP address. I mean, remember, he was good with computers after all.

• 52:54Annie Elise?

  And then coincidentally, shortly after Nicholas learned that the FBI had a warrant out for him, he just up and mysteriously died, was vanished, wiped off the planet. But like so many other people, the FBI did not believe that his death was real. And in fact, they found that his bank accounts were still active after his death. His IP address was also the one that was associated with all those emails that Luis was sending, all those huge, long-winded emails to reporters. It was an IP address that they knew that Nicholas had used. And then, as if things could not get even more complicated or confusing, a few months after Nicholas's death, the FBI received a call from the authorities in Utah. And it turns out that they had also been investigating Nicholas.

• 53:39Annie Elise?

  They too had issued a warrant for his arrest in the fall of 2020. And while they were looking for him, that that's when they stumbled across that obituary saying that he died. But they also saw a bunch of the rumors that were swirling around online, saying that he actually wasn't dead. So the Utah authorities decided to call the FBI to see what was going on. And what they found out was truly horrifying.

• 54:15Annie Elise?

  So now we're going to Utah where they had their own independent investigation into Nicholas on their own and we're gonna go back a couple of years to 2018 because police in Utah started testing old rape kits and since Nicholas was a convicted sex offender, his DNA was of course in the system and there was a kit from 2008 that came back as a match to him. Now as I mentioned earlier, when he was younger Nicholas bounced around from place to place and in 2008, he would have been roughly 20 years old and he also lived in Utah for a short while and in September of that year, a woman went to a local hospital and said that she was assaulted by her ex-boyfriend Nicholas. Nicholas and this woman had met on MySpace and eventually they started

• 54:59Annie Elise?

  a relationship in the summer of 2008. However, this relationship was short-lived thanks to Nicholas' temper, his abusive behavior and the fact that he even stole money from her. So she broke it off, but in September Nicholas apparently lured her to his apartment. He claimed he wanted to repay her for all of the money that he had stolen from her. She of course didn't really want to see Nicholas, but she did want her money back. So she went reluctantly and instead of giving her back the money as he promised to do, Nicholas attacked her and raped her and then he blocked her from leaving. However, I've gotta say, she was terrified but extremely brave because in a quick moment when he got distracted by a text message, she seized that opportunity and she

• 55:41Annie Elise?

  escaped. She got out of his apartment and she ran directly to the hospital. Once she arrived, she was given a SANE exam and the police were called. However, when the police questioned Nicholas about this attack, he like so many times in his past, just completely flipped the script and he made her be the aggressor in his version of the story. It almost sounded identical to what happened with Mary and to that other unknown woman before Mary, which remember, he also met Mary off MySpace, which is where he met this woman. Now, they didn't have all of those pieces together at the time. They didn't know all of this. So because of the conflicting stories, the case was Stalled and Nicholas's DNA was never taken.

• 56:21Annie Elise?

  So because of that, this woman's rape kit just sat there untouched for years until 10 years later in 2018. And while the Utah police were now like hot on Nicholas's trail, they also came across a ton of different dirt on him. Because it turns out that Nicholas's past was littered with allegations of assault, rape, abuse. I mean, this stretched across multiple states. The police uncovered numerous old reports going all the way back from 2007 to 2019. And these are all in addition to the cases that we've already talked about. And just to give you a little bit of insight into a few of these cases and some of the examples of what he was doing.

• 57:04Annie Elise?

  In July of 2010 in Rhode Island, one woman had reported that she and Nicholas had just been casually dating. But then, things took a very dark turn when he brought her to his house. He took her phone, he essentially trapped her inside the house, and he started insisting in a really creepy way that she come like, sit on his lap, kiss him, and he even took it further threatening to kill himself if she didn't comply. Now, she managed to escape after screaming at him, but police later questioned Nicholas after she filed the report. And his excuse to the police was that he had just started treatment for depression, which according to him, it made his emotions go all over the place. And apparently, for the police, that was good enough.

• 57:44Annie Elise?

  That was believable because any investigation into him was halted, which is truly appalling and like unacceptable. Then, in December of 2010, so just a few months later, another woman filed a police report against Nicholas. She said that Nicholas had invited her over to his apartment so that they could have dinner. They had dinner together, but then Nicholas tried to have sex with her afterwards. She didn't want to, she rejected his advances, and that of course upset him. So he then locked her in his apartment and prevented her from leaving, and then he forced himself on her. Now, as if this wasn't bad enough, he also made her give him $200, and then he forced her to take like a video recording, a video of herself saying she wasn't going to pursue any legal action again.

• 58:28Annie Elise?

  The money that she gave him was because he would need therapy due to her violent actions and that she suffered from having a sex addiction. Like what a complete lunatic this guy was. And in Rhode Island alone, there were six different allegations of assault against him. However, many of the women who filed these complaints ended up dropping the charges or dropping the complaints because they were just too scared of Nicholas. I mean, look at what he did to Mary. He basically tried to like do this whole internet smear campaign against her, ruining her life. One of his old roommates also had a restraining order against him because Nicholas had physically assaulted him when they lived together. I mean, he stole a lot of his things too. It was just like, he was this repetitive habitual predator in more ways than one.

• 59:12Annie Elise?

  It wasn't exclusive to women. It wasn't exclusive to sexual assault. It was physical abuse, it was theft, it was just a variety of things, just a true sense of like narcissistic entitlement. So now that all of these dirty secrets are being exposed and people are cross-sharing information, a lot of people totally independent of one another were all coming to the same conclusion. Nicholas was still alive. And get this, it got so extreme that even the people at Wikipedia stepped in because Nicholas had a Wikipedia page for himself because of the nonprofit work, his work in politics, all of those things. So people who worked at like a sub-page of Wikipedia, I think it's called like Wikipedia Accrazi or like something like that, I don't know how to pronounce it.

• 59:56Annie Elise?

  But they started noticing that Nicholas's Wikipedia page was being updated after he supposedly died. And it was being updated by an account that was owned by Nicholas. And it didn't just stop there. Whoever was updating this account also was trying to replace the real picture of Nicholas and trying to replace it with like some photo of some random guy. And as all these rumors continued spreading that he faked his own death, somebody just kept deleting any mention of Nicholas alleging that he faked his own death, just wiping this account clean, just scrubbing it and changing the photo and like starting to really manipulate what this page was all about. So now we're back in early 2022 and the FBI is on the case.

• 1:00:38Annie Elise?

  And they were 99% sure that Nicholas had faked his own death and then he had fled the United States. So they notified international agencies all about Nicholas. They even gave an old mugshot and they gave pictures of his identifiable tattoos. Then Interpol circulated those pictures around hospitals all throughout the UK. Because remember, that's where Nicholas's last known location was. And now with COVID being a huge issue, because it was at this time, they knew that he might seek care at a hospital. Which is exactly what he did. Or remember what Arthur Knight did. Hospitals had been receiving notice about Nicholas, this Nicholas guy that they were trying to look for, all while Arthur was in that coma.

• 1:01:19Annie Elise?

  So after receiving the pictures of Nicholas, hospital staff in Glasgow, Scotland, thought that this man in these photos looked suspiciously like one of their patients named Arthur. Then they saw the pictures of the tattoos, and that is what sealed the deal. Because Arthur Knight had the exact same tattoos in the exact same locations, the same ones that Nicholas Rossi had. So the hospital called the police and the police confirmed that Arthur was Nicholas. And that is right when Arthur woke up from his coma, had police surrounding him, and then was arrested. Which at this point, you're probably thinking, wow, that was a freaking wild ride, but I'm glad that his cover is blown, I'm glad he was finally arrested. Now there's no way out, like the jig is up.

• 1:02:03Annie Elise?

  But of course, in true Nicholas Rossi's style, he was not gonna go down without a fight. So he doubled down on the lie and he insisted, he was not Nicholas Rossi, he was Arthur Knight. He was an Irish orphan who supposedly had lived in the UK his entire life, there's no way that he was Nicholas Rossi. And get this, it gets even better, because Arthur, and I'm saying that with air quotes if you can see me, but Arthur went so far as to claim that the hospital staff is the one who tattooed him while he was in that coma. Because naturally, right? That's what hospitals do. They tattoo their patients to frame them for crimes that they didn't commit. I mean, get a grip. Like, you are such a loser, I can't. But according to him, it once again was all part of this huge nefarious plot.

• 1:02:49Annie Elise?

  That was masterminded by none other than David Levett. The Utah District County Attorney who had a hand in that testing of that old rape kit that was connected to Nicholas. Now, Arthur was alleging, "He just wants to frame me. He just wants to get his guy. So he had the hospital tattoo me so I look like Nicholas. I'm not him." According to Arthur, David was desperately trying to win his reelection, and he knew that by solving some old rape cases, that would really do the trick. So naturally, again, he just decided to frame some random guy from the UK. Arthur even claimed that David was a known human trafficker, that he was a child sex abuser, a cannibal, even a murderer. I mean, he literally threw in every possible allegation that he could, trying to like smear this guy.

• 1:03:34Annie Elise?

  And talk about the most wild conspiracy theory ever. I mean, it just does not make any sense. And this is where things really, in this case, get so comical for me. And you're gonna hear some of these interviews because if you're like me, especially if you're watching the video version, you're gonna be like, "What in the actual fuck is happening? Like, what is happening?" It's like, it just takes this case from like, Lifetime movie roller coaster crazy to like Sharknado crazy, okay? Where it's like, it's just not even believable, but it's real life. That is what makes this so insane. So nevertheless, "Arthur," Arthur air quotes, "was arrested, but he was released on bail."

• 1:04:14Annie Elise?

  And while he was battling the legal system to avoid extradition back to the United States, Arthur went on a huge media campaign with his wife Miranda, and I mean, huge. Which, remember, we talked about Miranda a little bit, who he claimed to have married back in 2011 and said that they had dated for so long. However, it was later uncovered that they actually got married in 2020, just one week after the announcement of Nicholas's death, which, what a coincidence, right? The two of them lived in an apartment near Glasgow University, where Arthur told the neighbors he was a theology professor. And surprise, surprise, he wasn't. But as Arthur and Miranda went on their media campaign tour, he kept insisting he wasn't Nicholas, that this was all a smear job,

• 1:04:59Annie Elise?

  and that he had never even stepped foot on US soil, ever. I mean, it was wild. Yet, all the while, he couldn't provide any proof that he was this alleged Irish orphan who was born in the UK. He couldn't present a birth certificate, he couldn't provide any proof, and he said, "That's just because I moved around so much. I lost it all years ago. That's why. I'm a victim in all of this." Now, I gotta say, Arthur had quite a noticeable appearance. I mean, he looked a little different from Nicholas, to be fair. I will give him that. For one, he was in a wheelchair, and he also wore an oxygen mask all of the time, which he claimed was a necessity due to the complications from COVID. He also sported this, like, short slicked-back hair, these big glasses,

• 1:05:41Annie Elise?

  and he always wore these very elaborate suits and this, like, large gold jewelry. However, midway through his media tour, he decided to grow a long beard, claiming it was all part of his conversion to Judaism now. But honestly, everything about his appearance just kind of screamed like, "I'm hiding something. I'm trying to change my identity." And get this, he also started saying that he was born with the name Nicholas, but that he then later changed it due to bad memories that were associated with that name. All the while, while still insisting he was an Irish orphan, which, if you're trying to pretend you're Arthur, and that you're this kid who was born in the UK, you're an Irish orphan, you have all of these health issues, all these things, why are you now coming to the table and saying, "Well, my real legal name was Nicholas, coincidentally"? Like,

• 1:06:26Annie Elise?

  you are just so freaking stupid. So as you can imagine, many people also debated whether or not this Arthur-Nicholas guy really needed that oxygen mask that he wore. Because he wore this mask so often, and it wasn't even connected to an oxygen tank. And even if there was an oxygen tank on some occasions, it wasn't even turned on most of the time. People also suspected that he, of course, didn't need this wheelchair either, that this was all just part of his elaborate, like, new identity. Some people even claimed that they saw him walk perfectly fine without the chair. Now here's where we get to the interviews because during these interviews, some journalists would even confront him with all of these accusations, saying, you know, what do you

• 1:07:10Annie Elise?

  say to the allegations that you can't even stand up? And he would try to stand up, showing that he did need the wheelchair, just to like fall back in his wheelchair, which he did stand up. Like, he would hoist himself up out of the wheelchair, being like, "I can't even stand! I can't even stand! Look at this!" And then he would like fall down, but I'm like, "Bro, you were standing. You were standing just now. Like, what do you mean?" It's honestly laughable. It was really like he was putting on a show, just not a convincing one. And his accent also on top of it was honestly just as bad as mine just was. It sounded so forced, so unnatural, that it was almost painful to listen to. And if you ask me, it sounded completely fake. And I'm not the only one that thought so. Plenty of people picked up on this phony accent.

• 1:07:53Annie Elise?

  But here's where we get to the good stuff, guys, because don't just take my word for it. Listen for yourself and let me know what you think.

• 1:07:59Speaker 07

  Out on bail, awaiting his next extradition hearing. Who are you?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  I am Arthur Knight, and this is my wife, Miranda Knight. And unfortunately, there are those who would change differently.

• 1:08:14Speaker 07

  Are you Nicholas Rossi?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:16Speaker 07

  Are you Nicholas Alabertian?

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely not.

• 1:08:19Speaker 07

  Are you Nicholas Brown?

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:24Speaker 07

  When asked why he changed his name from Nicholas to Arthur, he replied because it was associated with bad childhood experiences in Northern Ireland. Miranda, who claims she married her husband in Bristol two years ago, says she was there when Police Scotland arrested her husband in hospital as he recovered from Covid. Arrivals to court for bail hearings were in a wheelchair. An oxygen mask remained on throughout this interview at their Glasgow home.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  I nearly died!

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  I nearly died and we are terrified. How can I be a flight risk if I can't even stand?

• 1:09:04Speaker 07

  The electric wheelchair is not a prop. There's no faking of this illness.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  This is a case of mistaken identity.

• 1:09:13Speaker 07

  You say you've never been to the United States?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Never in my life.

• 1:09:16Speaker 07

  They claimed in court you were identified from tattoos.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  That is not true. There is no evidence whatsoever that there are tattoos and I'll turn that to news reporter, news reporter.

• 1:09:33Speaker 07

  In this interview with a US network, he did agree to roll up one sleeve.

• 1:09:39Speaker 08

  It was up further, right?

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Oh, oh.

• 1:09:40Speaker 08

  And have you had any tattoos removed?

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:44Speaker 07

  The man wanted in America to face a rape charge is known to have multiple tattoos.

• 1:09:50Speaker 09

  He's done quite a masterful job of hiding himself from the law.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  Prosecutors in Utah say Nicholas Rossi, also known as Aliberdian, is believed to have used at least sixteen different aliases.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Sixteen aliases? No, typos.

• 1:10:05Speaker 07

  These are very serious charges that this man faces. They claim this man faked his own death to evade those charges. Did you fake your own death?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  I'm, uh, huh.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Sharon, I'm sitting having a conversation. I've never been dead to anyone.

• 1:10:24Speaker 07

  After so many years, I know him inside out. I know my husband does not have tendencies as a rapist.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  He is going to be needing a very large team on the pitch to try to say that I am a rapist because not only are we terrified because this is a vicious lie, but we are also incredibly disgusted by the fact that we now have to live our lives in a secretive way because my wife can't even walk down the pavement to get a pint of milk.

• 1:10:59Annie Elise?

  And it continues.

• 1:11:00Speaker 07

  Some people would say you're saying it a secretive way, but you're now speaking to various media outlets including us. Why, what is the purpose then of this interview?

• 1:11:08Annie Elise?

  The truth needs to be known. So underneath the beard, the glasses, the oxygen mask, there was a man who looked suspiciously a lot like Nicholas Rossi. And remember, since the hospital had identified him because of his tattoos, many journalists were asking him to see the tattoos. Now, most of the time, he absolutely just refused to lift up his sleeves. He didn't want to show his arms. But in one interview, he did lift up his sleeve, slightly, just a little bit where it showed his forearms. And what was crazy is the spot where Nicholas Rossi had a tattoo, Arthur's arm was completely blank. There was no tattoo. He even rubbed his arm to show that there was no makeup covering it. So, I mean, it sounded pretty convincing, right?

• 1:11:49Annie Elise?

  Which, normally, yes, it would, but Nicholas's ex-wife Catherine came forward and she said that Nicholas had been in the process of removing his forearm tattoos for years, even while they were still married. And then, a closer look at Arthur's forearms, and it showed that he had the scars that are typically associated with tattoo removal. Now, at one point during this whole media circus, and him trying to prove that he's Arthur, he's not Nicholas, he even agreed to get on a video interview call with Brian Coogan. And Brian is that same guy, that adult who had debated adopting 14-year-old Nicholas Rossi years and years ago. So during this interview, Brian mentioned a scar that Nicholas had above one of his eyebrows. And sure enough, Arthur confirmed, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I have the same scar, but it's all

• 1:12:33Annie Elise?

  just a coincidence." And then, when the conversation about Nicholas's tattoos came up, Arthur became very, very quiet, just wouldn't show his arms, wouldn't say anything, and then he abruptly ended the call.

• 1:12:46Speaker 10

  Nicholas Alavertian. I will bet $50,000 cash on it, and I'll put the cash up. That is Nicholas Alavertian. And the more that he says it's not him, and the more that he tries to play a game, the more, um, I want to come to Scotland. I have five boys, he's almost like a sixth, my sixth child. You know, you know when your child's lying to you?

• 1:13:13Speaker 10

  I mean, his own father, stepfather came home and said, that's him.

• 1:13:16Speaker 11

  You're sure that's him? Well, that's my son. There he is, right there. I know my son. I just know my son. That's definitely Nicky. He's older, but it's him.

• 1:13:25Speaker 10

  It's a game of chess that Nick's playing. And at the end, he's gonna be checkmate out, guaranteed.

• 1:13:30Annie Elise?

  The media campaign was so public, so insane, and Arthur was so dramatic during these interviews that, again, it was to the point of just being laughable. He would fall over, and I gotta say, as I'm playing this, I'm trying to clear up the audio as best as I can, but they are a little bit difficult to hear because he's wearing an oxygen mask during these interviews. But I've seen a comparison online, for those of you who are listening to audio only and can't watch the videos, and people describe him as looking a lot like Cartman from South Park. The little short, big, round head, big, round body guy that kinda like can't really walk. It's so fucked up, but it's so accurate. And I'm sorry, it is. I mean, this guy deserves to be shamed.

• 1:14:13Annie Elise?

  I encourage you to watch these videos, though, after listening to the audio, because they are insane. This is one where he like falls over being like, "Look, I can't stand up. I can't stand up." Yet, he's standing up, and then his wife, whoever this person is, like pushes him back down in the wheelchair to be like, "Bro, quit it. You're like, the jig is up. You gotta fuck down." Like, it's unbelievable. But listen to this.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  We were once a normal family, but thanks to the media, our lives have been interrupted. And we'd like privacy, and I would like to go back to being a normal husband. But I can't, because I can't breathe. I can't walk. People say that's an act. Let me try to stand up. Let me try to stand up. Exactly. Exactly.

• 1:15:00Speaker 12

  What do you say to someone who believes that you are Nicholas Oliverian?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  I am not, aren't you? I am not Nicholas Oliverian. I do not know how to make this clear.

• 1:15:16Speaker 12

  What do you say to people who say these are crocodile tears? He's putting on a show. This is all an act?

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Oh, you go. That's a right blue, that's a right blue, blue.

• 1:15:27Annie Elise?

  It was such a media frenzy, guys, and it caught so many people's attention that even more and more people started coming out of the woodwork to talk about their experiences with Nicholas, or better yet, with Arthur. And it turns out that even Arthur, this new concocted personality, also had multiple sexual allegations against him in the UK. Just more evidence of the similarities between Nicholas and Arthur. Then, a Canadian woman came forward with another story about Arthur. Apparently, in the spring of 2020, she was looking for somebody to help her promote her vegan lifestyle brand. And she found Arthur on a freelance website, and she was really impressed by his resume. He claimed he was a Harvard grad, which, remember, side note, this contradicts his claim that he never stepped

• 1:16:12Annie Elise?

  foot on US soil. He claimed that he had a lot of experience in PR and in marketing, and that he was also, get this, an international lawyer. Which, I gotta say, that is a very impressive resume, if it were real. So she hired Arthur, who ended up, of course, doing literally nothing, like, zero zilch, nothing. She paid him, but he always had excuses as to why he wasn't producing results. Either he was in the hospital, his wife was in the hospital, his dog was in the hospital, his other dog was in the hospital, all until he ran out of people to be in the hospital. Now, at one point, she actually thought that Arthur was trying to steal her business, because he was asking her for a lot of personal information. Her banking information, her passport information, and eventually, she

• 1:16:55Annie Elise?

  just cut off all communication with him and with any business access that he had, because she didn't trust him. She ended up paying him in total $40,000 over the course of their working relationship, and he produced nothing for her. But after she cut him off, Arthur did the exact same thing that Nicholas had done to Mary. He went right on his personal website, and he started smearing her name. He started saying her company was a fraud, she was a terrible boss, her products weren't even vegan, just trying to destroy her credibility.

• 1:17:26Speaker 13

  In January 2020 is when we started. And by the end of the month, I was not very happy. He seemed passionate, he seemed like he was determined. But then one day, I just had enough, and I text him, because I didn't want to tell him verbally on the phone, because he was very aggressive sometimes. And then that's when he started to show me his smear campaign that he had prepared. I lost a lot of money, not just the 40 grand, but... You know, hundreds of thousands because I had to do damage control. I don't think I'm gonna ever see that money. Like, I spoke to criminal lawyers over here, and they're like, "Don't even bother." You know, he conned somebody, and then he uses that money to conn the next person. I just, you know, I'd be very happy, though, just to see him stay, remain behind bars.

• 1:18:09Annie Elise?

  And then more women came forward, saying both Arthur and Nicholas had assaulted them. It didn't matter if it was the United States or the UK. I mean, the allegations were just pouring in. And while all of this was going on, Scottish law enforcement was working to extradite Arthur to the United States. Arthur wasn't making it easy, though. He would miss court hearings, he would constantly fire lawyers, he would claim he couldn't make the hearings because he was too sick. And in the summer of 2022, he ended up being admitted to the hospital before one of his hearings. However, he was arrested at that hospital after he threatened and attacked the hospital staff. He was fined 400 euros, and multiple doctors testified that Arthur was faking all of his illnesses.

• 1:18:49Annie Elise?

  Also, that he didn't have any sort of problem that would cause him to use oxygen or need a wheelchair. So, following this incident, he was placed in jail. And in the summer of 2022, a judge required him to submit his DNA and fingerprints so that he could prove his identity. And in November of 2022, in a surprise to absolutely no one, it was released that Arthur's fingerprints and Arthur's DNA matched that of Nicholas Rossi. Arthur Knight was, in fact, Nicholas. I mean, this guy, I mean, I gotta give him credit, right? Like, he's got a lot of balls on him to, like, pull this off or try to even pull this off. I never would have the strength or willpower to do that.

• 1:19:30Annie Elise?

  But still, another year passed until Nicholas was finally extradited back to the United States. This was in December of 2023. He was being tried for two rape cases in Utah, and he was booked into a Utah County jail in January of 2024. And even though his literal DNA was a match for Nicholas, this guy still tried to say that he wasn't Nicholas. He was Arthur. He's the victim. He's framed. It's not him.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  My name is Arthur Knight Brain. My date of birth is 22nd of the 11th, 1986.

• 1:20:06Speaker 14

  Okay, I don't.

• 1:20:10Speaker 15

  I think we're having a problem with understanding who this person is.

• 1:20:16Speaker 14

  I don't, this is not number thirty-six.

• 1:20:21Speaker 09

  Your Honor, we've got him as Nicholas Rossi, but he's saying his name is Arthur Knight Brown.

• 1:20:29Speaker 14

  Oh, that's one of the AKAs, it looks like.

• 1:20:33Speaker 09

  Is your birthday?

• 1:20:34Speaker 14

  We're having a really, really.

• 1:20:39Speaker 14

  Is it July eleventh, nineteen eighty-seven?

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  No, my lady, it's twenty-second of November, nineteen eighty-six.

• 1:20:49Speaker 14

  Twenty-second of November, nineteen eighty-six.

• 1:20:53Speaker 09

  Yes, ma'am.

• 1:20:54Speaker 16

  Your Honor, Temer Bosquez for the State. And this individual has been extradited, and he has not admitted his name or birthdate accurately. And so I don't think we're going to be successful on that today either. It's also known as.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Objection, my lady, that is complete per se.

• 1:21:15Annie Elise?

  And when he went to court, he even insisted that the judge call him Arthur, even throwing temper tantrums over it. But the judge was obviously like, uh, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to call you Arthur. You're literally Nicholas, so that's what I'm going to call you. And for a while Nicholas said that he was going to defend himself in court, which I honestly would have loved to see it because just like when Sarah Boone represented herself. Sometimes I love when these people try to represent themselves because it ends up being such a circus in the end that like, it sucks for the family that they even have to go through any of that and for the victims. But like, I love watching these people think that they're capable of doing that. Like, you're not an international lawyer in real life, Nicholas. Like, what do you think you're going to do? But ultimately, he ended up hiring a lawyer.

• 1:21:57Annie Elise?

  And shortly after he did that, he ended up giving up the big old charade that he was Arthur. And in, and in October of twenty twenty-four, he finally admitted he was Nicholas.

• 1:22:08Speaker 17

  The fugitive Rhode Islander who faked his death and claimed that he was someone else finally drops the act.

• 1:22:14Speaker 18

  Yeah, we're talking about Nicholas Alavertian again, admitting in court today. He is indeed the man at the center of a years-long international saga. The IT's Brian Crandall has the surprising new developments that played out in court today. Brian?

• 1:22:26Speaker 08

  Dana Patrice Nicholas Alavertian was arrested nearly three years ago in Scotland, wanted on a rape charge in Utah. Now, he claims since then, it wasn't him, but that changed in a Utah courtroom today. Alavertian claims he wasn't trying to hide from the law, instead that he moved and changed his name because he faced threats in Rhode Island from state or elected officials, though he testified the threats were the year after he moved. They threatened to ruin my life, destroy my life, frequent threats to kill me. He also claims he was warned of threats by friends from his statehouse days, Representative Ray Hull and current East Providence Mayor Bob De Silva. De Silva had no comment about it today. Hull told me he remembers no such thing and that Alavertian was not in danger.

• 1:23:08Annie Elise?

  He claimed that he had been lying about his identity and moved to the UK, all because of the supposed death threats that were made against him because of his work with DCYF, which the judge was like, okay, if that's true, tell us the names of who's threatening you. But Nicholas refused to give any names and instead he said it would be, quote, "like giving a mouse cheese," whatever the hell that means, I don't know. But the prosecution brought up a great point. If he was so worried about these people finding out where he lived, then why did he go on such a huge media campaign in the UK? It doesn't really seem like he was trying to hide where he was. And I also can't help but wonder, if this Louise person, who was most likely Nicholas, right?

• 1:23:50Annie Elise?

  If she hadn't sent all of those emails trying to get these big recognition mass productions and the news outlets to talk about his death, I feel like he could have successfully faked his own death and he would be living free right now. I really truly believe that. But she just kept pushing, kept pushing, they kept wanting this, he kept wanting this media spectacle. And I think that, again, just kind of folds into the whole narcissistic personality. Even when he was trying to fake his own death to not have to pay the consequences for his past actions, he still wanted notoriety. He didn't want people to forget about him. He wanted to be raised as this hero and it's so sick and twisted but ultimately it's his narcissism that got him caught in all of this. I truly believe he could have flown way under the radar and still

• 1:24:35Annie Elise?

  could be living in the UK as this fake Arthur person. Truly, I do believe that. Now Nicholas is still married to Miranda and she claims that she had absolutely no idea about any of this. And she still sends him money and fully supports him, which many people think that she knew way more of what was going on. And a lot of people also think that she was the one who was Louise, that maybe he helped her with a lot of the emails, but that like she also was a part of that. Although that doesn't really make sense as to like the fake voice that sounded like a voice recorder. That sounds like it probably was more like Nicholas, but either way, people think that she did know a lot more than what she's letting on. So Nicholas has entered a plea of not guilty on both of the charges against him. He was also offered a plea deal at one

• 1:25:18Annie Elise?

  point, but he refused to accept it. So he's expected to go to trial later this year. And you better believe it, that if I'm not sitting front row, I will at the very least be covering this trial because this is going to be insane. I can only imagine the theatrics that he's like cooking up right now and preparing for. It's gonna be a wild one. I'm glad he's caught. If you again are listening to the audio version, you've got to go and look at these videos and watch the YouTube version because it is so unhinged and crazy. I need a new word for unhinged. What's a new one? Let's go to my thesaurus. You know, but you know, I like to do this. Okay. Siri, what's another word for unhinged?

• 1:25:58Speaker 19

  Synonyms for unhinged include deranged, demented, unbalanced, out of one's mind, and crazed.

• 1:26:05Annie Elise?

  I like that. I like demented and oh shoot, what was that other one? Demented and let me ask again. Siri, what's another word for unhinged?

• 1:26:15Speaker 19

  Synonyms for unhinged include

• 1:26:18Annie Elise?

  I like that. Demented and unbalanced. Maybe that'll be the title of this episode. Demented and unbalanced. The Nicholas Rossi Story.

• 1:26:28Annie Elise?

  I can't. This was a long one. I know it was. It was long for me too, guys, but this guy, this guy, I just like, I don't even know what to say about this guy. I really don't. It's like, you are such a twerpy, dweeby loser, and the fact that you assaulted so many women makes you like the scum of the earth. But then the fact that you like put on this whole performance, like, ugh, cringe. Like, if his wife does not have the ick, I don't know how that's even possible. I have the ick like a thousand times over. Alright, guys, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Serialistically with me. If you are not following the podcast yet, make sure you do so. Whatever podcast app you're listening on right now, it's totally free. Just go to the corner, hit follow show so that you

• 1:27:09Annie Elise?

  won't miss any future episodes. I also will be back with you on the mic first thing Thursday morning where we are going to break down everything happening this week in the true crime world. Alright, guys, until the next one. Be nice, don't kill people, don't fake your own death, don't assume a different identity, and just be a good human. Alright? Sounds easy enough, right? It should be easy enough. Alright, guys, I will talk with you soon. Bye.