A chilling four-part documentary about a rapist who faked his own death to escape the FBI will hit our screens tonight (Monday, May 20). Imposter: The Man Who Came Back From The Dead begins on Channel 4 at 9pm, following the life of Arthur Knight – or Nicholas Rossi who he’s believed to be.
More confusingly, his real name is believed to be Nicholas Alahverdian. He was born on July 11, 1987, in Rhode Island, USA, but is known by police as Nicholas Rossi. Throughout his life it’s believed Rossi has used more than a dozen aliases.
Rossi is a convicted sex offender who faked his own death and moved to Scotland in an attempt to evade authorities. His one prior conviction is for sexually assaulting Mary Grebinski when she was a 19-year-old student in Ohio in 2008.
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He studied at Harvard shortly after this, but was removed from his course in 2012 after campus staff found out about his sex offender status. Rossi is currently facing two charges of rape in Utah, after being extradited back to the USA in January 2024.
He initially fled the US in 2017 after the FBI wanted to speak to him regarding rape offences. In 2020, he even went as far as holding a memorial service in his home town of Providence, Rhode Island in an attempt to fake his own death.
Rossi’s fortunes changed when he was taken to hospital in Glasgow in 2021 while being treated on a ventilator for Covid after being in a coma. He told police and medical staff he was Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan who became an academic.
However, it was found that his fingerprints and tattoos matched those of Nicholas Rossi, so the process of extraditing him to the US began. The documentary heavily features interviews with Rossi’s wife, Miranda Knight, who stood by him throughout the long extradition case and his 18 months on remand in a HMP Edinburgh, the Daily Record reports.
The pair married on February 22, 2020, at a church in her home city of Bristol. Seven days later, he faked his own death from cancer in Rhode Island, believing he was safe from the FBI, who were looking for him.
In the four-episode Channel 4 documentary Miranda, 43, claims she doesn’t recognise Rossi as her husband and maintains he is ‘Arthur Knight’. The programme also speaks to his ex wife Kathryn Heckendorn in Ohio who he allegedly violently abused and Mary Grebinski, who he was convicted of sexually assaulting in Ohio in 2008, as well as Canadian TV host and vegan food writer, Nafsika Antypas.
On May 14, Rossi was given permission to represent himself during his trial in Utah. It’s reported that the judge told him “conviction is likely” if he proceeds with representing himself, but the 36-year-old insisted it was his desire to do so. The Sun reports that Rossi will stay in Utah County Jail until the case calls again next month.
Imposter: The Man Who Came Back from the Dead begins on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday, May 20. To watch the trailer click here.
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
