Prosecutors say the man is Nick Alahverdian, an American who faked his death to avoid standing trial in Utah for sex crimes. But, the man in the Scottish jail cell said he was Arthur Knight and he’d never been to the U.S. That all came to an end Friday.
An online obituary said Nicholas Alahverdian, of Rhode Island, died in 2020 surrounded by his family in a room"filled with the sounds of the end credits for the 1997 film 'Contact.'" The announcement of his death at 32 came two months after he told local media he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Shortly after news of his death, tributes from politicians poured in for Alahverdian, an outspoken critic of of Rhode Island’s child care system.
The DNA collected at the time of the sexual assault wasn’t tested until 2017 as part of an effort to clear backlogged rape kits. In 2018, the DNA evidence came back as a match to a sexual assault case in Ohio, where Alahverdian was convicted in 2008 on two sex-related charges. As McFadyen read his decision, Alahverdian showed no reaction and simply followed along reading a copy of the judgement from his wheelchair at the defense table.
Alahverdian's attorney Mungo Bovey, had little to work with. During his closing statement, Bovey said he might call as a witness a former lawyer of Alahverdian's who would testify his client had no tattoos when he saw him in April. But Bovey dropped that idea after Sheriff McFadyen raised the obvious contradiction: his client claimed hehearing in Edinburgh
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