2 | Local Hero

You are listening to "I am not Nicolas". An audible original episode 2, local hero.

“It's the morning after my dinner with Arthur Knight, the man who the police say is”

US fugitive Nicolas Rossi. I've spent the night half a week trying to make sense of the previous evening, and I'm on the phone with my executive producer talking it through with her. "I am in this. How are you doing?" "I'm really confused. How are you?" "I'm extremely confused. But I am thinking the authorities have made a terrible mistake. Before I went to Arthur Miranda's home, I was 99% sure that he was Nicolas

Leverdy and stroke Nicolas Rossi, and that he wasn't Arthur Knight. When I left last night when I walked out of his flat, it was the complete reverse. I was 99% sure that he was Arthur Knight. A complete reverse of my thoughts, and he is not faking his illness. I am absolutely convinced. He is a very ill-man and you cannot put that on in terms of how he was. He is so unwell. So, you know, that was in

the always in the back of my mind when it was after 11 o'clock and I thought I've been here

for like over four hours. But I just realized I have a junior care to this month, and then we made arrangements, and for me to come back next week. You know, I'm beginning to think that this whole story just makes less sense as the days go on. And then I was talking to my family this morning over breakfast, and actually it was my son that turned around and said to me, "Well, maybe Nicholas Rossy. Maybe he is actually dead. You know, maybe the whole thing about faking his death

isn't true that he is actually dead." "I mean, it sounds bit crazy, but do you think it's possible that he was one of two identical traits, one of which went to marry him?" "I don't know, I didn't think of that one." "I feel they trust me, and I do trust them, and I, and I, I'm very grateful that

“they've taken me in on this to work on this podcast. They said this is the only thing that they'll”

do podcast-wise." "Well, he's a dry story, sounds fascinating, so whatever the truth is.

Okay, well, I'm going to go now." "Let me stop this." "My mission was what is this story all about? Is this the case of an American fugitive who's fled to Glasgow? Or is it the case of this random Irish man called Arthur Knight, two to the innocent, who's been caught up in this unbelievable case of mistake and identity? Arthur Knight the Irish man, he's still appeared to be pretty on well, you know, with the oxygen mask. So the next day, I had to put Arthur Knight to one side.

"Let's look at Nicholas Rossy." "Did you ever meet him?" "I get to work calling people in America to find out more about the man who the police there say is a fugitive with multiple aliases." "The name and question is Nicholas Rossy." "Nicklers was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, where he appeared frequently in the media as a campaigner for the rights of vulnerable children." "For legislation that is going to be introduced again as a general assembly." "I find old articles

and interviews he gave." "We are going to change the system to ensure that these are system of the Earth of Rhode Island children." "So I start ringing some of the reporters who interviewed him back in the day." "As anybody been in contact with you from the UK." "Which is high I find myself talking with Dan McGowan." "Would have been 2010 or 2011 when I met him? He was doing child advocacy work at the state house." "Darn I work for the world famous Boston Globe. But he started out as a

local journalist in Providence, Rhode Island, which is when he had his first encounter with Nicholas

“Rossy." "I'm strangely remember it very well. I was just beginning my career as a reporter.”

I wasn't even getting paid to write at that point yet. And so how did I make money? I was a bartender at a local establishment sort of place everybody knows here called Greg." "I do the blue turns up Nick and he holds in on this young hungry political reporter exactly the same age as him." "I remember it was a Saturday night. I'd say nine kind of clock and I remember he was very talkative right away. You could just kind of hear he was one of those loud talkers and because I

happened to have a real interest in politics, somehow politics came up and so I kind of jumped in and said something and he asked me my name and I told him my name's Dan McGowan and at the time I was writing for a blog called Rhode Island's Future and he knew the byline. He said, "Oh my god, you know,

you'd read everything I'd ever written." "Neclus became a useful source for this budding local reporter."

“"I found him to be, I guess slightly charismatic. He was clearly well informed about what was”

happening in Rhode Island. He knew his politics. He knew the players and the people." "There are photographs online of Nicholas in his hayday as a political campaigner back in the 2010s. Still in his 20s then, he's wearing a white shirt, a suit and tie. He slimmed with short dark hair and dark rimmed spectacles. Standing beside a lectern, even a speech, he looks every inch the proto-politician. "For the kids out there who need a voice who want a better system of

care for tomorrow." Nicholas Rossi became interested in politics at a very early age. At the

age of 14, he was able to secure a position in the Steadhouse in Providence, Rhode Island as a

page, which is a bit like a golfer for the politicians. "And that gave him a test for life in politics.

“And then he became a campaigner from improvement in the child welfare system. His precucious”

rise to a job in the Steadhouses all the more remarkable when you hear what he has to say about the rest of his life at that time." "My mother was a lovely woman, but she did not understand the importance of very basic things." "This is an extract from a book that Nicholas wrote called Ignobo Inferno. It's just a short self-published e-book. It's a white Nicholas's childhood. "We've got an actor to read out extracts from it. Here he's talking about the moment he won

that job at the Steadhouse. And what happened when he needed to get the uniform of carkey treysers and a blue blazer?" "Mom, I said, I need this blazer. My job depends on it. I was 14. I didn't have the money to go to Nordstrom to get the blazer on my own." "His mother, however, was according to the book, struggling to cope after relationship problems and the loss of a couple of close family members. Nicholas paints a picture of a sort of double life during this period,

makes in it with Rhode Island's grit and good at the Steadhouse. Then returning to a home, with bad cupboards and an empty fridge. Fortunately for Nicholas, the politicians he was working for realize something wasn't right." "Belomakers would invite me to stay after committee hearings. Where catered food would wait in the committee anterooms and the house lounge. I would be invited to eat as much as I wanted and take some of my briefcases for the morning where breakfast was

“ready." "This is just Nicholas' side of the story, of course. His mother might remember things”

differently, but what's not in dispute is that in his early teens, Nicholas was taken into care. He describes another lesson that goes from bad to worse. He says he was put into what's called the night-to-night program. That meant he had no permanent foster placement. He was just sent to whichever temporary shelter had a bad that night. He says he experienced a polling treatment in these centers, and he blew the whistle to the local media. "I suffered abuse neglect on a 90

basis." Nicholas Rossi says in his book that he gave up his job as a page at the Steadhouse to campaign about the conditions for children in care. A survivor tells the story of kid dumping. "By Bob Kerr, Providence Journal Bulletin, November 24th, 2002. He's 15, smart and articulate, and almost painfully polite." "His story made the headlines locally." "He's forced to live his life

in bits and pieces. Never knowing how long he will be living or going to school in the same place."

"I can't help suspecting that what happens next seems to be a kind of revenge meter-eyed on Nicholas by the flawed, local child welfare department. He gets a stable placement at last, but it's over 1,400 miles away. Nicholas is banished from Providence, where he has a large extended family, and the political and media connections to ensure his voice will be heard. According to Nicholas's autobiography, he sent to a village called "Boys Time" on the

ice skirts of Omaha, Nebraska. It's a village built to highs children and care, hundreds live in what the management calls "a family style environment." "Boys time is still going strong, but Nicholas says in his book that he was sent to other homes, and at those places, he was mistreated." "I'm not sure where those other homes were," he says one wasn't Florida. He talks in his book about being given "moodle" train drugs as part of a treatment plan and not

and life changes dramatically. "I'm admitted to Harvard University. My classmates are amazing.

“My professors were everything I had waited for throughout my childhood. Cambridge was an amazing”

place, and I was thriving." In his early 20s, Nicholas Rossi returned to his home city of Providence, Rhode Island, determined to write the wrongs of his time and care. "Claims of violence and local and out-of-state group homes are pushing a victim's effort to provoke the overhaul of the Department of Children Youth and Families forward." He decides to sue the Rhode Island Department for Children Youth and Families, the DCYF, for exposing him, to abuse and care. "In each of the facilities

that I lived in, there were meetings and sites, and, nightmare, and some special activities."

According to Nicholas, the Rhode Island government tried to get the case through a night of court,

but a federal court said Nicholas had the right to pursue it. Nicholas said he felt the local Department of Children Youth and Families was trying to punish him for going public. "Every since I began to sound the alarm on the state of the Department of Children Youth and Families, they have been acting to ensure that I keep my mouth shut." Reporter Dan McGuyen remembers rumors of an out-of-court settlement for Rossi,

but the Rhode Island Department of Children Youth and Families says it has no documented evidence of substantiated abuse of Nicholas Rossi, and, in nice, there's a wider problem. In fact, they claim they don't even know what Rossi's specific allegations are, but would be happy to investigate them. Whatever the truth, Nick became the go-to guy for a quote on any story about children

“in care. He had, I think, outsized level of influence on the news side because he was such an easy quote.”

He wanted to be in print. He wanted to be on television. He wanted to be on radio. Children and adolescents when they are sent so far from home, it's not conducive to the health of the child or the mental little being of the child and it needs to stop. If you're trying to reform the child welfare system in Rhode Island, and that's a perpetual news story. He says he was out punching back for the other kids.

Every day you were beaten. Every day in Florida, every day in Nebraska, every day in Rhode Island. Every day in Ecuador. Every day. He just happened to be a really good face to tell the story. I look back at the photographs of Nicholas from this time and compare them to Arthur Knight. The man, the police believe, is Nicholas Rossi in disguise.

“Knight, they both have dark hair and they like to wear smart suits. But apart from that,”

it's difficult to tell. Nicholas from Rhode Island looks fit and slim. Arthur in Scotland is overweight and slumped in a wheelchair. It's difficult to see Arthur's face because it's covered all the time with his clear plastic oxygen mask. The mask and the constant hissing of his oxygen tank also makes it difficult to hear Arthur's voice clearly. It's walls and months of hell really.

But I can hear it well enough to know it is very different than the voice of Nicholas Rossi. What do you think? This is Nicholas. And I'm, you know, it's scary. It's a scary situation. And this is Arthur. There's terrifying dreams, nightmares.

Nicholas? Since I was 14, I worked as a legislative unit that Rhode Island has to represent it.

Arthur. I've never been to this stage. No. I would I be permitted to ride on an airplane

because I have multiple medical condition. Now, Nicholas clearly has an American accent, as you'd expect. Arthur's accent, though, is consistent with his story of growing up in Ireland and moving to England as a teenager. He doesn't have a strong Irish accent like me. I'd say it's an English accent with some Irish undertones. There are little Irishisms. I, for yes.

And then there's grand. That means good. I wish I could sit here and say everything is grand. I say that one all the time. No, I'm grand. Journalists in the U.S have been trying to find relatives of Nicholas Rossi in Rhode Island might be able to say definitively whether Arthur is really there, Nick.

Nicholas's stepfather tells journalists that's my, Nicky, when she won a photograph of Arthur.

And then an uncle, who was a bit closer to Nick, goes on TV and says he's not totally convinced

“either way that Arthur Knight is his nephew.”

So there are doubts in Rhode Island, or by worth of the police, have got the right man. I decide I need to go and visit Arthur again to find out more about his backstory. Something that can help improve. He's not Nicholas Rossi. Not too bad. So Miranda welcomes me very warmly. I had to wait quite a while in the living room for him to come out from his bedroom

and then he wheels himself out and he decides that we're going to do the interview in his office. And he's going to record it himself. He's got the whole sort of recording machine. He's got the proper mics, the mics, the whole shabang. One, two, three. Just, what do you want me to sit?

Yeah, great. Okay. So we did it in his office. We sat around the table.

Arthur and Miranda were facing each other and I was just there at the side. Oh, this is good. This is good. So I'll just turn this. And then I asked him about his life in Ireland. Were you born in Belfast then? Well, we don't know.

And that's part of my mystery. So why don't you know where you were born? Because I didn't have a birth certificate.

“But, you know, you must remember where your childhood was in Northern Ireland?”

It was spent everywhere. Everywhere, where in Northern Ireland and the south of Ireland.

It was spent everywhere between the ages.

Does I can remember? What's your date of birth? It's 22nd of the year, 1986. Okay. I mean, where can you recall living? I can recall Dublin, people talking to strangers on street corners.

And not today, where they're just sterling on friends. I can remember the more street. More street market. Hi. Yeah. And I can remember all of the streets and the old ladies screaming.

Now, I just a reminder that Arthur is in his mid 30s. He's a millennial. And from the way he's talking, you'd think he grew up in the days of horse and cart. I'm sitting here interviewing him and wondering what on earth is going on. It's almost like his memories come from a 1970s tourist board effort. Hi, you're telling me about your memories from Ireland and growing up.

Those are all very generic sort of descriptions, you know.

“In terms of your childhood, were you with foster parents?”

Were you in a home? There was a combination, moving from place to place on a fortnightly basis sometimes. Newry number of the names of any of the homes that you were in. It's a good heart, it's a nice. No, but what's sacred heartwork?

It's a good heart in Dublin. Okay. It's a nice in Dublin. And there were these places just with generic sounding names. It wasn't a big, intensively named.

These places, so people would forget them. You know, I'm listening to him talking about these so-called homes he was in in Dublin. I'm just thinking this is a mirror image of Nicholas Rossi who was in the night of homes in Rhode Island. I just thought it was a wee bit odd. It really is an unfortunate situation.

But parallels being used against me as if I'm some sort of a mystery man who is running from the law and changing my identity. So talked to me about why you left Ireland? It was age 14 in Denmark, 2000. I mean, 14 is really very young.

Well, I turned 15 and I'm on to my two months later. Just a little math check. If Arthur was born in November 1986, he'd be 13 in September 2000. Arthur goes on to tell me, "Hi, he and some friends from the care system." Took a stena line fairy from Ireland to Hollyhead in North Wales,

with no money in their pockets. We beg your man at stena. We have a ticket, there were lights without needing to get to a funeral. And that's, we got in it. The man checking tickets took pity on them and they went aboard.

No. Well, we didn't happen since that's what I meant.

Well, money but we did have enough to keep us going for at least three weeks, maybe, but for a night. Arthur says that he and his friends get a train from Hollyhead to Wolverhampton, and then on to London the next day. And I thought, "Well, if I can't be successful in London then, I won't be successful anywhere."

He says he works as a paddler, selling things at markets in central London. "I saw books, I saw a corkory." It's like something out of Dickens. Improved orphan escapes to London and makes his riches peddling tea pots on pickadilly circus.

Arthur says things were starting to go well for him.

"I was becoming independent for a dawn in the 7th of July,

“2,7 there was an explosion on the underground. And, are you a member falling to the floor?”

Looking out, wearing screens, blazing my eyes, and breaking up." Arthur is talking about the 7/7 bombings of the London Underground. The biggest terrorist attack on UK soil in recent times. Four bombings went off simultaneously on underground tube trains and a bus. Hundreds of people were injured and 52 people were killed.

Were you actually in one of the tubes that was targeted or hit or were you at? "I was waiting for a train."

It's 2007, so you were 21, is that right?

"Yes." So, was that not 2005? "No, it was. It was 2000, right?" "Yeah." "It was 270,000." "Yeah, no, it was 2005. It was July."

"I said I wasn't 21." "Yeah, you were 19, around 19." "No, I'm not great with it, but I feel like if I was caught up in an international terrorist attack,

“I would remember what year it happened and how it all died was."”

"That's caught on with this man." "Does his life story sign like something out of a book?" "Because well, it's all fictional." "But then Arthur says." "This goes along with my memory problems, because I have athletic flaws and seizures and injured my head."

"So you've had problems with memory loss for some time?" "I wish I could remember everything the way that I could before, that may I can't because as I've grown older, I seem to lost more than me." "I don't know what to make of Arthur, is he a very sick man who's struggling to make sense of the world, or is his amnesia just a very convenient cover story that kind used by scriptwriters

to excuse an improbable plot twist?"

“"And yet, if Arthur really is Nicholas, why wouldn't he try and be more convincing?"”

"You know, it wouldn't be hard to formulate a better cover story. There seemed to be so many odd-landish details and things that puzzle me. He describes himself as an academic, but I can't find him on any university website. Is he maybe just a freelance tutor?" "I've got so many more questions to ask, but they will have to wait until another time, because

before I go, I really must have one last step at getting some concrete verification from Arthur. That could show, he is who he says he is. "Have you got your Irish driving license, could I have a look?" Arthur goes looking for his driving license, but strangely he can't seem to find it. "No, I know you can't get an Irish driving license at the age of 14, it's 17.

So I thought maybe he might have gone back at some stage and got his Irish driving license, but there were a number of things that weren't allowed for me. I could've got the accent." "I can recall Dublin. Dublin." "He's got this sort of posh English accent and then every nine then. Dublin."

"It's just this in four-starish accent that's coming into play for a few sort of words. So I just thought, "Good God." "I will solve the mystery of Arthur's Irish life later, but before I do that,

and why his memorial mass in Rhode Island had to be cancelled."

“"All that really needs to happen to have a memorial mass you need a priest,”

and you need a dead person. They have to be dead."

"So in this case, it was just a priest?" "No." [BLANK_AUDIO]