For the second time in two months, a man accused of faking his own death and fleeing to the United Kingdom to avoid sexual allegations will stand trial on those charges in a Utah courtroom.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in Utah County, where Nicholas Alahverdian, 38, is accused of raping an ex-girlfriend on Sept. 13, 2008. Opening arguments could begin later in the week.
The case comes one month after Alahverdian, who has been identified and charged by authorities in Utah as Nicholas Rossi, was convicted of raping his former fiancé in Salt Lake County in December 2008.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in that case next month.
Alahverdian, a former advocate for foster youth in Rhode Island, pleaded not guilty in both cases. In media interviews, he denied sexually assaulting anyone.
In the case now being tried, the accuser said she dated Alahverdian briefly after meeting him on MySpace in the summer of 2008, a probable cause statement shows. The woman, identified in court papers as K.P., said she ended the relationship after Alahverdian became increasingly aggressive and failed to repay her money he’d borrowed.
On Sept. 13 of that year, she went to Alahverdian’s home believing he’d pay her back, according to the statement. Instead, the statement alleges, he raped her.
The woman had a sexual assault kit completed the next day, but because of a backlog in testing, Alahverdian was not identified as a suspect until a decade later, authorities have said.
Alahverdian was charged with rape in connection with the allegations in 2020 — the same year an obituary claimed that Alahverdian died at age 32 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Two years later, authorities in Utah announced they were seeking to extradite a man living in the United Kingdom believed to be Alahverdian. He’d fled the United States to avoid prosecution, according to the state’s Department of Public Safety, and was living in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.
In an interview with “Dateline” at the time, he appeared in a wheelchair and spoke with a British accent. He was not Alahverdian, he claimed, but an Irish orphan-turned-businessman.
A Scottish judge disagreed and Alahverdian was extradited to the United States in January 2024. During a bail hearing that followed, he acknowledged his true identity and said he’d changed his name to Arthur Knight to protect himself against what he described as “credible threats” made in response to his foster youth advocacy in Rhode Island.
In the second Utah rape case, a woman whom Alahverdian was briefly engaged to testified that she bought their engagement rings and lent him money for rent. Afterward, she testified, he became increasingly mean and controlling and raped her after an argument about ending their relationship.
Alahverdian was accused of similar allegations elsewhere. In a divorce filing, an ex-wife in Ohio, Kathryn Heckendorn, said he borrowed $52,000 and failed to pay her back. She accused him of gross neglect and extreme cruelty. In an interview with “Dateline,” Heckendorn accused him of locking her in a bathroom and raping her when she refused to have sex with him.
Alaverdian denied the allegations and said in a court filing that the money was a gift, not a loan.
In another case in 2008, a woman in Ohio whom Alahverdian met on MySpace accused him of sexually assaulting her while they were walking to class at a local community college. He denied the allegation and was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, a misdemeanor crime indicating sexual contact against a person’s will.
After a trial, Alahverdian was fined and ordered to register as a sex offender.