A man accused of faking his own death and fleeing the US to avoid rape charges will face trial, as ruled by a judge in Utah. The decision came after a preliminary hearing where District Judge Barry Lawrence determined that there was sufficient evidence for a jury trial to proceed.
The accused, identified as Nicholas Rossi, allegedly committed rape against two women in separate incidents in Utah back in 2008. One incident involved a 26-year-old former girlfriend in Salt Lake County, while the other was a 21-year-old woman in Orem. Due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab, Rossi was not identified as a suspect until a decade later.
