Listen Now: I Am Not Nicholas

I came across his story as I was scrolling the morning news back in January 2022. I immediately thought,

"This is unbelievable. A man had been arrested in a Glasgow COVID ward. Police were saying he was a fugitive called Nicholas Rossi, who is wanted for rape in Utah, but he was claiming to be an Irish orphan called Arthur Knight. I thought I really want to look into this and what you believe. I ended up following this story for over four and a half years. Here's a taste term. I wanted to ask if you knew the American man that lived here.

I was seeing this as months and months of work.

“Hello, my name is Jane Mcsourley. Did you have just a few minutes now?”

And it has become practically a year. You just don't know what's going to happen when somebody answers that door. Oh my god! Oh my god! He's not dead. No way. I knew he was still alive. I knew right away. It was very strange. It was very strange. He would lock me in the upstairs bathroom.

All I had was the running water. He has never hurt me. He never touched me. He doesn't abuse me.

The case of mistaken identity in the war on earth is going on. It really is an unfortunate situation. I cannot get my head around the magnitude of this. It is beginning to become a store. The top of my list when I start work on the story in January 2022 is I want to see this man, Arthur Knight.

Wow, he claims to be Arthur Knight, an innocent Irish man living in Glasgow.

“The U.S. authorities say he is really an American fugitive called Nicholas Rossi.”

I hear he's due to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court a few days later for a bail hearing. The court is just a ten minute bike ride away from my house and I'll be there. It was just the most unbelievable sight. I was outside the courtroom. Arthur Knight is wheeled in. He was in a wheelchair. And he had work in the pajamas on. He had a work in the matching dressing gown.

And he even had a work in the cloth covering his entire head. So you could not see his face. It was just like this bargain day mass on wheels. And yet socks on, it no slippers on.

So it was just that first image of him.

I would blow on a wet. I was with a group of journalists.

“And we're all looking at each other thinking what on earth is this story?”

What on earth is this man all about? So then we all get into the courtroom. He's got at least two paramedics there. There must have been prisoners there. And Miranda, his wife is there.

And the cloth is gone from his head. Clearly, Arthur Knight wasn't well. You know, he had COVID very badly. And he was in a lot of intensive care. He had a mask covering his nose on his mouth. He had oxygen going into his mask.

He's 34. He looks like he could be 64. He's small. He's rind. He's hunched over. He's got greasy, lank hair. He's got this beard that's peppered with gray. He's very pasty white. He's got these rind.

Black, John Lennon style glasses. He had complete disrespect for the court proceedings. He repeatedly, repeatedly interrupted. The prosecutor, his own lawyer, and shockingly, the sheriff. The sheriff, the judge, and it started from the outset.

He asks him, "Are you Nicholas Rossi?" And he said, "No, I'm Arthur Knight, and then he continued unabated." And he was told off by the sheriff, at least twice, if not three or four times. So that's how it started. But are you curious to know why it ends?

Follow, I am not Nicholas Honorable, or wherever you get your podcasts for series one. And series two, I am not Nicholas the trials. You can binge all episodes early and add free by joining audible on the audible app or Apple podcasts.