SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty late Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

An eight-person jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand. Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf. He will be sentenced on Oct. 20 and is set to stand trial in September on another rape charge in Utah County.

First-degree felony rape carries a punishment in Utah of five years to life in prison, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place,” Gill said in a statement. “It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable.”

Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified through a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018. He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when Utah made a push to clear its rape kit backlog.

Months after he was charged in Utah County, an online obituary claimed Rossi died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff recognized his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

Extradited to Utah in January 2024, Rossi insisted he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed. Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

He appeared in court this week in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.

Rossi’s public defender denied the rape claim and urged jurors not to read too much into his move overseas years later.

“You’re allowed to move, you’re allowed to go somewhere else, you’re allowed to have a different name,” attorney Samantha Dugan said. She declined further comment following the verdict.

Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

The woman was living with her parents and recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. They began dating and were engaged within about two weeks.

She testified Rossi asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him $1,000 so he wouldn’t be evicted, and take on debt to buy their engagement rings. He grew hostile soon after their engagement and raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home, she said.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons told jurors Wednesday that the woman did not consent. “This is not romantic, this is not her mistaking things.”

The woman said her parents’ dismissive comments convinced her not to go to the police. She came forward a decade later after seeing him in the news and learning he was accused of another rape from the same year.

Rossi’s lawyers said the woman built up years of resentment after he made her foot the bill for everything in their monthlong relationship. They argued she accused him of rape to get back at him years later when he was getting media attention, and sought to undermine her credibility with jurors.

Rossi’s accuser in the Utah County case, who testified at this week’s trial, is also a former girlfriend. She went to police at the time of that alleged rape. He is accused of attacking her at his apartment in Orem in September 2008 after she came over to collect money she said he stole from her to buy a computer.

When police initially interviewed Rossi, he claimed she raped him and threatened to have him killed.

Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and returned there before allegedly faking his death. He was previously wanted in the state for failing to register as a sex offender. The FBI says he faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.