In this image captured from video, Nicholas Rossi, left, appears in a Salt Lake City court room on October 20 for his sentencing hearing on a rape conviction. To his right is MacKenzie Potter of the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association. AP Salt Lake City AP —
A Utah judge on Monday sentenced a man who appeared to fake his death and flee the United States to avoid arrest on rape charges to anywhere from five years to life in prison.
Nicholas Rossi, 38, is “a serial abuser of women” and “the very definition of a flight risk,” District Judge Barry Lawrence said before handing down the sentence.
It was Rossi’s first of two sentencings after separate convictions in August and September of raping two women in northern Utah in 2008. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November in the