Authorities have said that Rossi has claimed to be an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who has never been to America before and whose arrest and extradition to the U.S. to face criminal rape charges has been a case of mistaken identity.
Utah Third District Court Judge Barry Lawrence said the state has presented evidence sufficient to establish probable cause to believe the defendant committed the crime he was charged with.
On Thursday, Derek Coats, who was an investigator with the Utah Department of Public Safety, testified in a courtroom in Salt Lake City that a DNA sample from a sexual assault kit matched DNA from Rossi that was in a law enforcement database.
Coats said he was assigned to a sexual assault kit program that looked for DNA “hits” in older sex crime cases.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
He said DNA from a kit from an alleged sexual assault in Utah County in 2008 was submitted for testing. He said the system indicated there was a match with a suspect from an Ohio case.
Rossi in 2008 was convicted of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old Sinclair Community College student in the staircase of a building located on the school’s downtown Dayton campus.
That same year, he was accused of sexual misconduct by another female Sinclair student. No criminal charges were filed related to that incident.
Coats said a woman whose initials are M.S. reached out to him after there were news reports about Rossi and the sexual assault case in Utah County.
Coats said M.S. alleged that Rossi sexually assaulted her as well in Salt Lake County, Utah, in late 2008.
Samantha Dugan, an attorney representing Rossi, asked Coats in court if there was DNA evidence from the alleged sexual assault in Salt Lake County. He confirmed there was no DNA evidence in that case.
Dugan on Thursday said in court that she advised her client not to testify during the preliminary hearing. He followed her advice.
Dugan declined comment when contacted by the Dayton Daily News.
Rossi also was identified as a potential suspect in a 2016 fraud case from his time living in the Dayton area.
According to a Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office report, Rossi was suspected of opening up multiple financial accounts in the name of one of his foster parents without their consent.
Rossi is expected to appear in Salt Lake City court again in October for an arraignment. His attorney said she may seek a bail hearing that month.
Prosecutors say Rossi raped a 26-year-old former girlfriend after an argument in Salt Lake County in 2008.
In a separate case, he is accused of raping a 21-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, that same year and was not identified as a suspect for about a decade due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab.
Rossi, a fugitive, grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death and fleeing the country. An obituary published online claimed Rossi died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Rossi was arrested in Scotland after being hospitalized and nearly dying from COVID.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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