"GRANDMA BOOKS FLIGHT TO VIETNAM AS NAVY KILLER'S $850,000 CHECK 'BURNS': Third Wife Testifies While Death-Faking Fugitive Claims He's Irish

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Red Carter and welcome to celebrity trials. And today we've got three trials that prove reality is stranger than any screenplay Hollywood could write. A Navy officer whose third wife just testified about an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars check that supposedly burned in a car fire, a seventy five year old grandmother about to face trial for orchestrating her ex son in law's murder. And a fugitive rapist who faked his own death fled to Scotland and now claims he's an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight. You can't make this stuff up, but apparently these defendants tried. Let's start with the latest from the Nicholas Casotis dismemberment trial in Georgia, where wife number three just took the stand and blew this case wide open. Remember Nicholas sodis the former Navy jag officer on trial for cutting his wife Mindy into pieces and scattering her remains across two Georgia counties. Yesterday we heard from parents who were told their daughter died in a hospital that didn't exist. Today, we heard from a woman who almost became victim number three. Samantha Kolesnik took the stand on day four. Let me tell you her story because it's a masterclass in manipulation. September twenty twenty two.

1:28 Kolesnik is a horror fiction writer and yes, the irony is not lost on me. She gets a Twitter message from someone named Nicholas Stark. He says he's bought all four of her books. He's an unpublished short fiction writer himself. They start chatting online, casual at first literary discussions, writer to writer. By November twenty twenty two, the same month, prosecutor say Cassodis murdered Mindy, the relationship turns emotional, phone calls, deep conversations, tells her he's a widower. His wife, an unborn child, died two years ago from blood pressure complications and an undiagnosed heart condition two years ago. Remember that timeline.

2:11 December sixteenth, twenty twenty two, two weeks after hunters found Mindy's dismembered remains, Casotis meets Kollsnik in person for the first time. He's supposedly traveling for work, some big merger that requires him to bounce between Georgia, Missouri, and Delaware. Here's where it gets interesting. When Kolesnik gets a flat tire in November, Casotis immediately pays six hundred dollars for four new tires and two headlight bulbs. When she expresses concern about the expense, he apologizes, saying he's out of practice after grieving for two years. Out of practice, this man's actual wife is decomposing in the Georgia woods, and he's telling another woman he's out of practice at dating because he's been grieving for two years. By February twenty twenty three, they're engaged. April twenty twenty three, they're married.

3:04 On the marriage application, Casodis writes his name as Stark and claims his previous marriage ended December first, twenty twenty, but prosecutors say Mindy died between November twenty seventh and twenty ninth, twenty twenty two. But here's the part that should have sent this woman running the house purchase. They decide to buy a house together find a perfect place. Casdis says he'll handle the finances, makes an offer. It's accepted. Closing date March twentieth, twenty twenty three. The morning of closing, Casodis leaves to get a check for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash purchase, no mortgage. He never comes back. Instead, Kolesnik gets frantic text messages he's been in a car accident.

3:50 When she finally sees him, he looked a little burned, half an eyebrow. She testified, he's admitted to the hospital and the eight hundred fifty thousand dollars check earned in the car fire gone poof eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars up in smoke. The house purchase never happens because there was no check, there was no money. There was probably no car accident. This man murdered his wife, immediately started dating someone new, married her, and then faked a car accident to explain why he couldn't buy her a house. It wasn't until GBI agent Tracy Sands contacted her that Kolesnik learned the truth. Casotis had multiple wives. She wasn't the second, she was at least the third. She immediately cooperated with investigators and got an annulment based on fraud.

4:42 The jury also heard Castis's twenty twenty three police interview after his arrest. In it, he spins this elaborate tale about harassment, assaults, and mysterious figures controlling his life. He claims his father attacked him with a bat. He says they lived with Mindy's family for over a year. He paints himself as the victim of some vast conspiracy, but the evidence tells a different story. The shopping receipts for knives and shovels, the Clorox wipes scattered around Mindy's remains, the immediate pursuit of another woman while his wife's body was still being identified. This isn't a victim. This is a predator. Seven women and five men on that jury.

5:24 They're hearing all of this. If they don't convict, there's no justice left in Georgia. Back in a moment, Welcome back to celebrity trials. I'm reed, Carter. Now let's talk about a different kind of family dysfunction, the kind where grandma allegedly orchestrates a hit on her ex son in law because she wants to see her grandkids more often. The matriarch of murder Donna Addelson, seventy five years old, South Florida socialite grandmother, and, according to prosecutors, the mastermind behind one of the most shocking murder for higher plots in Florida history. Jury selection begins next Monday, August nineteenth, in Tallahassee, the same courthouse where her son Charlie was convicted last year, the same city she desperately wanted her daughter to leave, the same place where Florida State University law professor Dan Markell was shot twice in the head in his own garage eleven years ago. Here's the family tree of evil, as prosecutors see it. Dan Markelle was in a bitter custody battle with his ex wife, Wendy Addleson.

6:45 Wendy wanted to move their three and four year old sons to Miami to be closer to her family, specifically her mother, Donna. The court said no, the boys had to stay in Tallahassee, four hundred and fifty miles from Grandma. So what has Grandma ly do? She gets her son Charlie involved. Charlie, a wealthy periodontist, recruits his on again, off again girlfriend, Catherine Magbanua. Magbanua knows some people. Specifically, she knows Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera Latin King's gang members who need money. July eighteenth, twenty fourteen. Dan Marcel pulls into his garage after dropping his kids at daycare.

7:27 Two shots to the head. One shatters his cheekbone, the other lodges in his brain. He dies the next day. For years, nothing happens. Then the dominoes start falling. Twenty sixteen. Luis Rivera takes a plea deal nineteen years in exchange for testimony. Twenty nineteen. Sigfredo Garcia convicted life in prison. He was the trigger man. Twenty twenty two. Catherine Magbanua convicted on retrial, life in prison. She was the middleman. Twenty twenty three, Charlie Addelson convicted life without parole. He was the moneyman. November thirteenth, twenty twenty three, one week after Charlie's conviction, Donna Addlson is arrested, but not at home, not at work, on the jetway at Miami International Airport, about to board a flight to Vietnam one way ticket, no extradition treaty with the US, according to prosecutors. After Charlie's conviction, Donna had multiple phone calls with him, where she talked about getting things in order, creating trusts, and making sure her grandchildren are taken care of. She discussed suicide, She discussed fleeing to a non extradition country, then she bought those tickets. State attorney Jack Campbell told Court TV they had to move up their timeline when we found that she was leaving the country. Extradition would have been

8:57 an issue at her final pre tri While hearing last Thursday, defense attorneys indicated Donna plans to testify in her own defense. This should be interesting. What's she going to say that she had no idea her son was hiring hitmen, that she just happened to be fleeing the country a week after his conviction that the one way ticket to Vietnam was for a vacation. This is a family that ran a successful dental practice, educated people, wealthy people, and allegedly people who thought murder was an acceptable solution to a custody dispute. Dan Markell's father Phil recently said, when I say I've lost two grandchildren, at this moment, I feel I've lost them. They've been Basically, I don't know what they know about the situation. I don't know what they're aware of I don't know how they feel about us.

9:51 Those boys are now thirteen and fourteen. Their father is dead, their uncle is in prison for life, their grandmother is about to go on trial for murder, and they haven't seen their paternal grandparents in seven years, all because Donna Adelson allegedly couldn't stand being four hundred and fifty miles from her grandsons. Back in a moment. Now for the most bizarre case of the day. Nicholas Rossi or Nicholas Alaverdian or Arthur Knight, depends on when you ask him. This guy is accused of raping two women in Utah in two thousand and eight. When DNA finally identified him as a suspect years later thanks to a backlog at the crime lab, he did what any innocent person would do.

10:43 He faked his own death and fled to Scotland. In twenty twenty, Rossi told media he had late stage non Hodgkin lymphoma and weeks to live. An obituary was published online claiming he died February twenty ninth, twenty twenty. He was supposedly cremated. Case closed right wrong December twenty twenty one, a man is hospitalized in Scotland with COVID nineteen. Routine fingerprinting reveals he's not who he claims to be. He's Nicholas Rossi, fugitive from Utah, very much alive. But here's where it gets absolutely insane. Rossi insists he's not Nicholas Rossi. He's Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan who has never set foot on American soil. He claims, and I'm not making this up, that authorities took his fingerprints while he was in a COVID coma and framed him. While he was in a coma, they framed him by taking his fingerprints in Scotland. He fought extradition for three years with this story.

11:42 Three years of claiming to be Arthur Knight, speaking in what witnesses described as a terrible fake British accent, and insisting this was all a case of mistaken identity. He was finally extradited to Utah in twenty twenty four. His trial starts soon, but last week, at an evidentiary hearing, he took the stand and the story got even crazier, speaking in a raspy voice, still maintaining the accent by the way. Rossi now admits he changed his name to Arthur Knight, but not because he's a fugitive. No. He claims he received credible threats against his life due to his previous work in child services. He says he had to change his identity for safety. He also claims he worked as a public information officer for a company called Ico in the UK. He's married to someone named Miranda Knight, which is where he got the surname, and he says if he's released from jail, his life will still be in danger. The prosecutor's response, then jail would be the safest place for you. Judge Derreck Pullan wasn't buying any of it. He cited Rossi's history of lying, including the whole faking his death thing, and ordered him held on three hundred fifty thousand dollars bail. Rossie can't pay it, so he sits in Utah County jail, still claiming to be an Irish orphan, still speaking in that fake accent, still insisting he's been framed. The FBI says he also faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex related charges in two thousand and eight. At one

13:14 point he was wanted in Rhode Island for failing to register as a sex offender. This isn't some innocent Irish orphan. This is a serial predator who thought he could fake his death and disappear. Two trials coming up, two different women saying he raped them in two thousand and eight, and his defense is what that the real Nicholas Rossi is dead and this is all mistaken identity, that American authorities flew to Scotland during COVID to frame an Irish orphan that his fingerprints were planted while he was unconscious. This is what happens when criminals watch too many movies. They think they can create new identities, fake their deaths, flee to foreign countries, and somehow the truth won't catch up.

13:55 But it always does. Ask Nicholas Rossi or Arthur Knight, or whatever he's calling himself today. Three trials, three different flavors of delusion. Nicholas Casotis thought he could murder his wife, marry another woman, and explain away eight hundred fifty thousand dollars with a fake car fire. The juries hearing, how he bought knives and shovels. Scattered chlorox wipes around crime scenes and was shopping for wife number three while wife number two was being eaten by insects. Donna Adelson allegedly thought she could orchestrate her ex son in law's murder and then fleet of Vietnam when her son got convicted seventy five years old on a jetway with a one way ticket, and she probably thought she'd gotten away with it.

14:45 Nicholas Rossy literally faked his own death, fled to Scotland, claimed to be an Irish orphan, and insisted authorities framed him while he was in a coma. He's still maintaining the accent in a Utah jail where everyone knows exactly who he is. What connects them narcissism, the absolute belief that they're smarter than everyone else, that they can talk their way out of anything. That lies become truth if you just repeat them enough. But here's the thing about lies. They require maintenance. You have to remember what you told to whom, You have to keep your timeline straight. You have to have explanations for the explanations. Casotis couldn't keep straight whether his wife died in October or November, whether it was two years ago or two months ago. Donna Addelson couldn't explain why she needed a one way ticket to Vietnam right after her son's conviction, and Nicholas Rossy he can't explain why an Irish orphan has the same fingerprints as a convicted sex offender from Rhode Island. But today, remember this. You can change your name, fake your death, flee the country, or burn imaginary checks in imaginary car fires.

15:57 But the truth, the truth doesn't burn, It just waits. I'm read Carter, and this is celebrity trials. Check your grandmother's travel plans, verify those eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars checks. And if someone claims to be an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight, maybe run their fingerprints. See you tomorrow,