Dateline is Airing an Utterly Bonkers Interview With a Fugitive Rapist from RI Who Faked His Own Death, Fled to the UK, and is Trying to Pass Himself Off as a Brit Using the Worst Fake Accent of All Time

True crime is not the genre for everyone. It can be gut-wrenching to hear victims of sexual assault tell their stories, even if they are tough and strong as the women in this video. And as a general rule, watching a fucking sadistic monster escape justice and not answer for his crimes is the polar opposite of entertaining. 

This though? This is the rare exception. First the details, then the video of the wildest interview in the history of true crime TV:

Daily Mail - A Rhode Island fugitive who faked his own death and fled to Scotland steamed his glasses up with rage while angrily insisting he is a British man called Arthur Knight.

Nicholas Alahverdian - aka Nicholas Rossi, 35 - also theatrically tried standing to prove that was was unable to walk during a Dateline interview with Andrea Canning that will be screened Friday at 9pm ET. 

Rossi was interviewed in April 2022 - seven months before a ruling in which a Scottish judge rubbished his claims, and confirmed he is in fact the US-born fugitive. 

'I am not Nicholas Alahverdian. I do not know how to make this clearer,' he told NBC in a bizarre accent, muffled by an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. ...

Rossi seemed determined to continue with the deception, and grew so irate he was unable to see out of his small, round-framed glasses. ...

In a desperate attempt to then prove he is unable to walk, Rossi tried to stand up before dramatically falling back into his chair as his wife stabilized him. ...

When asked if he is putting on a show, he said: 'That is a low blow, that is a very low blow.'

Rossi was first arrested in October, 2021, after checking himself in to a hospital in Glasgow with a serious COVID infection. That is the condition he claims now necessitates his use of an oxygen tank.

Medical staff and police were able to identify him by comparing his tattoos with pictures of Rossi on an Interpol red notice.

Let's go to the video tape ...

To be clear, I think we'll all be laughing harder when Nicholas Alahverdian/Nicholas Rossi/Arthur Knight is being thrown in the hole at a supermax facility right now, instead of trying to pull off this outrageous grift. But for now? This will do. This is just the essence of unintentional hilarity. 

I mean, where do we begin dissecting this? I suppose the disguise, which is every hackneyed stereotype of a sniffy British aristocrat, from the round spectacles to the bow tie to the matching vest. It looks like he bought it at Spirit Halloween with "English Lord" on the label. For fuck's sake, he might as well have gone with a pair of pince-nez glasses with the little string that runs down into the vest pocket like Scrooge McDuck. Or sipped tea with his pinkie out and said, "Pip pip. Cheerio, Old Boy!" He pulls this off like a frustrated Rhode Island tax accountant trying to break into acting and he's workshopping his new character Sir Nigel Stuffington III for his Improv Class. For real, when my younger son was in 4th grade he played Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, and 9-year-old him sounded like Ian McKellen compared to Arthur Knight here. 

Next, you've got to admire his commitment to the bit, still hiding behind an oxygen mask to help the disguise. I'm sure that felt like the perfect ruse two years ago, back when we were still figuring out Covid. But by now, virtually everyone we know has had the bug whether they know it or not. And the next person you see walking around with a fishbowl sized mask on will be the first. As far as I can figure, when the NIH was issuing oxygen mask guidelines, they were saying six days was the maximum. But I guess it's different for preposterously refined British gentlemen with cartoonish accents.

Lastly, you truly have to hand it to a scumbag with tattoos that have been positively indentified by his victims, doctors, local and international law enforcement, and the presiding judge on his criminal trial to just keep going along with the charade. A lesser lunatic would've given up by now. Or had the tats removed when he had the chance. But not our creep from the Biggest Little State in the Union. He's leaning into the lie until the bitter end. Like a real life Monty Python character trying to pretend he doesn't have a giant fake nose on his face:

Again, not enough bad things can happen to this imbecile. But still. Even in his deranged, sadistic, criminality, he's good for some laughs. What else can you say about a man who fakes his own death and that's not even the most ridiculous stunt he's ever pulled?