3 | Requiem for an Undead Man

You are listening to, "I am not Nicholas," an audible original.

Episode 3, Requiem for an Undead Man.

“"Necch, it's good to talk to you. It's been too many years."”

It's January 2020, and it's been a while since Rhode Island's radio and TV stations have heard from local children's rights lobbyist, Nicholas Rossi. "What's suddenly he's back on the scene again?" "I understand that you're not well." "Well, Steve unfortunately, I've been diagnosed with non-hotsetchip-limphoma and unfortunately this

has come much too soon in my life."

The prognosis isn't good.

"And now I could be looking at the last few hundred days of my life." Rossi was once a regular on this show. Back when he was campaigning to write the wrongs of Rhode Island's department of children, youth and families, the DCYF.

“"So in your youth, you were placed in foster care and then placed out of state."”

Rossi reminisces about his campaign to stop young people in care, being sent to facilities, hundreds of miles away, out of state. He said that night looks as if he won't live to see the day they come to an end. "Now the state placements are unfortunately continuing to this day." Even night, diagnosed with a type of blood cancer, he's still pushing for a ban on children

being sent to homes outside Rhode Island. "I will work until my dying day to ensure that DCYF is improved." This must be one of the last times that Nicholas Rossi was heard in public, because two months later, this announcement appeared on his personal website. Nicholas's battle for life ended on February 29, 2020.

He was in his 32nd year. The obituary says Rossi died with his wife and their two children, and extended family at his bedside. It doesn't say where he died, it just says that his ashes were scattered at sea. Almost immediately the police suspect he's not really dead and nahe to his own.

They suspect he's this man. "It really is an unfortunate situation." Arthur Knight, a married man, who lives in Scotland. "The fine son sort of mystery man is running from the door and changing my identity." "I've been trying to get to the truth about his identity, but it's not exactly easy

as he's been seriously ill with COVID-19." His voice is weak, and he struggles to talk to me through an oxygen mask.

"I've never been to the States, nor would I be permitted to keep life on an airplane,

nor would I have multiple medical conditions." In case you can't make it right, that's him telling me he's never been to the US, and he says he wouldn't be permitted to fly because he has multiple medical conditions. When we catch up on the phone, it's obviously still an effort for him, and at times I do worry about putting too much of a strain on his health. "No, you need a, you need a, oh god, Arthur, you need a glove, you need a drinker, just a break, or do you want to stop this?"

If Arthur is going to avoid extradition to the US, he will have to prove he is not necklace Rossi. I am starting to have my dites about parts of Arthur's story, and getting to the truth isn't easy. Sorry, I'm not following you. So I push for another festive-ass meeting. "It would be good to see you again, to unpack this further." But I can't get him off the phone.

Arthur, I'm going to have to go because I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, which is a bit of a disaster.

“And then, 45 minutes into the call, just as my kids dinner is burning, Arthur finally gets to the point that I think he's been wanting to make.”

"We need them, much, Leah, support, at the moment that it is beginning to become a storm." Arthur has to prove to the court in Scotland that he is who he says he is, an innocent Irishman. If he can't do that, he'll be extradited to the United States to face a rape charge in Utah. We don't know much about the rape charge, but we do know the alleged attack took place in 2008. Nicholas Rossi recently became a suspect because the U.S. authorities say there is new evidence

A lot of it would help if we would pay him for the next interview.

I try to explain to him that this podcast has been made for audible by BBC Studios and that the BBC has strict editorial guidelines, one of which is that we don't usually pay criminals or their families to talk about their crimes, which is a problem in his case because the police say he's a fugitive

“and convicted criminal Nicholas Rossi. And that's what I want to interview him about.”

desperate to get off the phone. I'm a bit blunt with him. I mean, like it or not, I don't know you don't like it. You can say until the cause come home that you're Arthur Knight and you're nobody

else but Arthur Knight. But this is not copper-bottomed. And at the moment, at the moment it's not copper-bottomed.

And if you're in a position to copper-bottomed then things will be different. If in the public demeaned that it was absolute travesty in terms of a case of mistaken identity, well then yes, but you know this and this is why you're fighting it to the nail that there is a question mark over who you are and that's just the way it is and I'm really sorry because I don't make the decisions about who gets paid and what not. I can't imagine why the BBC would say

that we cannot pay a man. Okay. Wow. I understand why even a discussion about that.

Arthur, I'm really sorry I'm going to have to go. I can imagine things must be difficult for Arthur

and his wife Miranda but I don't want to make promises I can't keep. Arthur can't understand that. Don't you see how it's becoming? It has very, you tell it, tell it for us as a couple because we want to work with you. You tell stories to you to flee. She did you not think I listened towards you John. Of course I am. He was just trying to butter me up. He was trying to get in with me and I mean it was you tell stories beautifully it's like what? Arthur, I'm going to have

“the go. I'm really sorry. So what's the plan for meeting up? When does it, when does it suit?”

Jane, I am begging you. There has to be some aids of good faith in this discussion. My life and my story and yesterday get nothing from it when you are giving to be property from it. Arthur, I'm going to have to go because it's nearly 10 o'clock and I haven't fed my kids on that. I'm their dinner sort of half burnt. Okay, great. Listen, I'll send you text. Okay, thanks Arthur. Bye bye. I need to interview him again and to see his Irish driving license,

which he says will prove his identity. I don't quite understand why, if as he says he left Ireland at 14, why he has an Irish driving license and I'm not sure after this test day and counter that he'll agree to show it to me. So I decided to turn my attention to Rhode Island again, to Nicholas Rossi. I want to find out why the police think he isn't really dead. Nicholas Rossi's death was anointed in early 2020 just as the COVID pandemic was taking off.

According to the obituary posted on his website, his ashes were scattered at sea so there's no grief and there was no funeral in Rhode Island. Nobody seems to know about the wife and children mentioned in the obituary, but someone claiming to be his wife did try to arrange a memorial service for him. She called herself Louise and she telephoned a couple of local priests.

“So I get in touch with one of them. I believe she said she was in Switzerland, asking if I would”

celebrate a memorial mass for Nicholas. Father Healey tells me he thought this is a bit odd. He remembered Nicholas Rossi from way back. He came across him when Nicholas was working as a page at the Rhode Island state house, but he didn't really know him well and he wasn't a parishioner. So to get a phone call out of the blue from his widow saying that he thought the world of you, I mean, I wouldn't say it was a press, but I mean, it was curious. Okay, he thought the world

by widow Louise. And then she called back and said she'd be emailing me some of the things she

wanted done. And then there was a long list of music. They were very elaborate, classical pieces, you know, Beethoven and Bach, you know, Mozart's Requiem Mass. And you know, now I have an organist who probably could play a lot of this, but there was nobody going to hire a symphony

“orchestra, certainly not our Lady of Mercy Parish. So the only thing that struck you is a wee bit odd”

at the outset was the choice of music. Was it? Well, not only that, that he would contact me. I didn't really know him that well. And then I received another long email describing what I should say about Nicholas. There's been a Facebook invitation sent out to thousands of people in Rhode Island,

including present and former elected officials. They were trying to get several

elected officials to speak at the memorial mass. At the time, Father Healey thinks these islanded requests are just the eccentricities of a young grieving widow called Louise. And then a few days later, I received a call from a detective in the Real Estate Police telling me that I shouldn't celebrate the memorial mass. And I said, well, what's the problem with having memorial is not really dead. We believe he's fake to his own death. He's trying to

avoid getting extradited from Europe or we believe he's hiding into polls under him. But we've been investigating. I'm investigating, but there are other states and there are federal charges and that he was using a voice scramble mechanism calling from Europe, pretending to be the widow. Which makes a memorial mass pretty impossible? The only two things you really need to have a memorial mass already. You need a priest and you need a dead person. They have to be dead.

So in this case, it was just a priest. It's like an old joke. The priest goes into school to teach the kids and says, you know, if I sold everything out and gave all the money to the poor,

“would I be a saint? And they say, no, he said, well, what I have to do to be a saint?”

They said, you've got to be dead. It's the same as true. If you're going to have a memorial mass, a funeral mass, the person has to be dead. The detective tells Father Healey to cancel Nicholas's memorial mass. But you want to tip him off that they knew he was in Europe that I should make some excuse to cancel a memorial mass, which I infected. That's Anthony Malice. We're going to have to postpone. I've had a family emergency arise, which was a little white lie,

which I went to confession for. And that was the extent of it. And I got to leave me all back all that's too bad, but I can't really rearrange. I said, I'll try to get something and then I wrote back, I don't think we're going to be able to rearrange it and hold the memorial mass. And then I got several emails that were very angry. And widow Louise wasn't happy. And filled with rage.

“Really? And attacking and, you know, how can you do this? And who do you think you are?”

Wow. You know, you call yourself a priest kind of crazy. Just, I mean, everybody gets crazy emails, but this was, you know, I said, okay, and then everything I got I forwarded to the state to police detectives. Oh, I'm calling from Scotland. My name's Jane McSorley. My name is Jane McSorley. Do you have just a few minutes now? My name's Connor Rodon. I'm a detective with the state police in Rhode Island.

I ended up calling the priest. I'm trying to explain who I am of phone. And I'm laying on him. You know, I just don't want to ever come back that, hey, this guy's actually alive and you held

the mass one here. And Detective O'Donnell first came across Nicholas a couple of years earlier.

In 2018, he was working on the database of sex offenders in Providence. And one of the names was Nicholas Rossi, who was on the list due to his sexual assault, he committed a no-how. This was something else I needed to look into. Convicted sex offenders need to check in regularly to the police station, but Nicholas hadn't been seen for a while. So me and other members of the state police went to his last registered address and Providence to verify his address.

And ultimately found that he no longer lived there. It's a violation of our general law so we obtained an arrest warrant for failure register or notify of a change of address by a sex offender. This put Nicholas on Rhode Island's most wanted list. So that would go viral for social media, whatever outlets, you know, would cover that type of stuff. So that was on there for some time. And then eventually I got a phone call at my desk and it was Nick.

And that was the first time I ever spoke with Nick. Very charismatic,

“kind of sending as he spoke, let you know he was a lot smarter than you. He tried to educate me on”

what I learned in a law and that he had denounced his United States citizenship and he no longer lived in the United States. And so he disappears from Rhode Island and then supposedly dies in an undisclosed location. A beloved community leader who selflessness and lifelong contributions to the residents of Rhode Island have earned him the unwavering admiration and respect of many. This guy may not be like this hero. This fake death thing is all kicking off in March 2020

at the beginning of the pandemic while Detective McDonald can't get on with his usual work. So I had some time to work on it and I went down a rabbit hole of Nicholas Leverdean Rossi. A reminder, Nicholas Leverdean is Nicholas Rossi. And I started with just basic checks through law enforcement back in Rhode Island. He had committed some crimes that victims didn't really want to pursue.

And I'll robbery kiddapings, kidnapping, held a female against her will. These were just complaints from members of the public and as far as we know, none of these allegations resulted in a charge or a conviction. Then we started going down the, uh, the treasurer role of online searching. I had just opened source media. I identified at least two or three obituaries online. They were just too much.

If that makes sense. I've overmaned anonymous for obvious reasons, but the important thing is it's someone who fill his shoes and quickly. Nick was a certified genius according to his test scores and his department of children, youth and families records. The powers that being knew he was

“a threat, that's why they sent him hundreds of miles away. I mean, you strongly felt that the”

comments were being written by him. A hundred percent red flag after red flag after red flag. And the details of Nick be married with two kids seem pretty off. Doing the timeline in our head, Nick left the United States in 2017. And then here we are in 2020. It's three years. He's got wife kids. Okay. So Detective Udonnell definitely has his suspicions, but he has no proof.

So I started reaching out to some of the people that made comments on his website. He leaves many friends ranging from the world of politics to music, to business and beyond.

And countless others who filled the last third of his life with love, joy, excitement, and

wonder. They were associate affiliates friends, family, whatever you want to call them, put yourself in my shoes. I'm questioning the validity of somebody's death, and I'm calling people and talking to them, "Hey, I'm Connor down with the state police, you think he's dead." And then some of them were like, "Yeah, that, me tell you, some weird stuff's going on." Just like the priest I met, I spoke to some of Nicholas Rossi's relatives who had been contacted by this mysterious woman

called Louise, who claimed to be Nicholas's widow. They hadn't heard of her nor were they aware. He supposedly had children. This woman from overseas would call or what somehow correspond with me via email text, and the phone number was next number before he died. So we started taking information names. Nobody knew who this person was, who this female was, Louise, the widow, and then some of the people were telling me, "Yeah, it's kind of a pain to really communicate with this woman

because I'm like, "Hey, can I call you?" They're like, "This is my number, but I have to call you."

“You mean you have to call me like, "Ah, you know, well you," she would literally set up”

time block when she made phone calls, which was odd because to me that's not a real phone. We thought that they're, "Hey, this, the least person wasn't real." She sounded very automated. We thought it was nick the whole time. We wanted to know who was trying to plan to facilitate all this. The gushing online a bit you're very. Some of the comments that appeared. The coals from the woman with a strange voice claiming to be Nicholas Rossi's widow. Detective conrodonal is confident

of one thing. Next still definitely alive.

Well, it's cloudy this morning. I will never walk. I don't let it see.

What would you think if you got a phone call from this person? Would you think there was something odd? I've asked my colleague Barney to see if an app can change the pitch of his voice. There was the moment when the sun kind of speaks between the clouds and the red light comes in. It's very beautiful. The police in Rhode Island think that the person

Nicholas Rossi using a voice changing app. I'm a little skeptical about whether this would

really fool anyone. It's very easy to do. So this is probably how I normally sound. If it's useful, maybe I'll tell you a little bit about it's a free app which you can download. And voice, frankly, I'm a number of options here as well. I might become somewhat a bit younger. No, that is convincing actually. That is pretty good. Do you know what do you think yourself?

“Well, it was remarkable. I think it's how easy it is to do it.”

Yes. So this is just going through an online friend like Zoom.

I think it's quite convincing and I think given that you've got the whole thing of being on a phone as well, that, you know, it's the phone quality as well, which sort of would help with the whole disguise element. We play a rind with different voice ups. This was, was the original layer, I think we've dug out their gridded change in the pitch. So if you call someone from Skype, we can call them mobile number and you can spell like Alex. But we can't find an app that can

change accents. If those calls were made by Nicholas Rossi, then he must be pretty good at doing

“accents. I start to wonder if Nicholas Rossi is capable of filling people into thinking he's a”

woman called Louise with an English or a Swiss accent. Maybe he's also capable of playing the role of an innocent Irish man called Arthur Knight? I thought you were excused today from court. I attend all of Arthur Knight's regular extradition hearings in Edinburgh. He's still in a wheelchair and wearing his oxygen mask. I used to feel sorry for him being at the centre of this media storm.

But as I watch him know, I wonder if he's actually enjoying all the attention. Why are you coming today? Well, what did you come to mind? Arthur, I'm the journalist. I'm the one

asking the questions. He's a journalist. He talks like one of us. When I first met Arthur,

I saw him as this very unwell man who was out of his depth. No, he seems to be taking control of the situation. One day he invites me and the rest of the media to a press conference at a local hotel. He's annoyed when not many journalists follow him across the road to the hotel. In fact, it's just me and a couple of others. Arthur starts calling around journalists trying to convince them to come to his press conference. Are you recording and filming this yourself too, Arthur?

I have one mic and hopefully a camera. It's obvious that no one else is going to turn up. I urge Arthur

“to get started. So why have you called the press conference? Why are we here? What do you have to say?”

I'm prepared to give a statement about why I called his conference. But it's the same that I have to represent with this apologetic notion that the press will not listen to me. I think that the press will listen to what exactly they want to hear. But they will do it on their terms. Eventually Arthur gets started on a speech. It goes on for a while and ranges from the Magna Carter to the Lord Chief Justice. I am pleased that this nightmare is nearing its end.

So I invite you tomorrow at what a clock? Do you think the Milton in Glasgow? So you've just called this press conference today to tell us there's going to be a press conference tomorrow. I wonder whether it's worth attending, but then Arthur dangles something interesting in in front of us. He says he has hired a top lawyer from Utah to represent him. Utah is where he will face trial if he is extradited. Can you give us his name?

At the end of the day, you're not that man. You're Arthur Knight. So why are you going to this

they extended expense and hassle? It made no sense to me whatsoever that if he was this

“innocent Irish man Arthur Knight. Why was he so interested in Rossi and trying to defend him?”

Because if a corrupt prosecutor in Utah is bringing corrupt charges under

no truth whatsoever and there is an invalid legal process then that legal process must be stopped.

Yes, but that's a bite according to you and what you're thinking. That's a bite another man. That's not apparently you. You're Arthur Knight. Who are you defending?

“Are you defending Arthur Knight or are you defending Nicholas Rossi?”

You know I'm defending. I'm defending myself. I am Arthur Knight.

Apparently this wasn't the first time that Arthur had jumped to Nicholas Rossi's defense.

So this little bit next that I'm going to read out is from an article in from the Daily Telegraph newspaper. It goes like this. He Arthur, this week invited the Daily Telegraph to the Glasgow home he shares with his wife, Miranda Knight, promising proof he was a different person to Rossi. Also no one is Nicholas Oliverian who was anointed her died of cancer in February 2020.

Now this is the bit I think that's really interesting. In the article it goes on to say this. He also continued to defend Rossi vigorously against sex assault allegations. Despite saying he has no connections to him or not to know whether he was alive or dead. And that brings me to a really serious point. On one level the story of Nicholas Rossi's disappearance and his alleged reincarnation as Arthur Knight is a crazy caper. A sort of catch

me if you can type a story about a super smart guy on the run. But Nicholas Rossi is a convicted sex offender and the reason the police in the United States want to extradite him is he's charged with rape. I realize I need to find out more about the darker side of Nicholas Rossi.

“He contacted me through my space. So that's how I met him.”

I put the allegations made in this episode to Nicholas Rossi in a letter. He didn't reply.