00:00:01
Now, a special two-part edition of 48 hours. [Music] You don't know exactly what you're going
00:00:18
to be finding up there. And and so just driving up there in in itself, you're kind of walking into the unknown.
00:00:27
I I believe I was a little nervous. I would describe it as being absolutely savage.
00:00:41
This was someone who used a baseball bat to kill the family. What I see is an attack that is not only
00:00:51
calculated and carried out with precision. There was blood all over the room, on the ceiling, on the floor. I
00:01:00
also see a crime scene that smacks of the murderer having a very, very personal vendetta.
00:01:10
Somebody just went off the deep end and once they started killing they either enjoyed it or they couldn't stop
00:01:16
themselves. In an upper middle class neighborhood of an upper middle class community,
00:01:28
[Music] three unsuspecting and undeserving human beings were savagely beaten to death. There's blood. They're
00:01:40
not breathing. I don't think it's safe here by somebody who they knew. [Music] [Music]
00:02:16
[Music] It was A plan, a well rehearsed, wellthoughtout plan. What happened in this house on a hot
00:02:41
summer night in 1994 brought tragedy and mystery to this quiet neighborhood in Belleview, Washington. Just after 2:00
00:02:50
in the morning on July 13th, police were called to a crime that would take them 10 years to bring to justice. Had you
00:02:58
ever seen anything like it? Never. James Jude Conat is a senior deputy prosecutor in King County. He and a team
00:03:07
of detectives have been haunted by this crime and the killers who got away. They
00:03:12
think that they are smarter than other people in the world. And I know that sounds just kind of a broad statement,
00:03:19
but I I really believe they believe that the search for the truth would lead police to another country through a web
00:03:26
of intriguing clues. Could this screenplay that described a murder unlock the mystery? And in the end,
00:03:34
would a sophisticated undercover operation set in a makebelieve world of crime catch the real killers?
00:03:43
The story begins with a call for help. Emergency. What are you reporting? Uh uh my friend, his mom and dad, we think
00:03:51
they're dead. Sebastian Burns and his friend Atifra had stumbled on a horrific scene.
00:03:58
Aif's parents had been murdered. There is nothing that I can imagine about my parents that could
00:04:06
have justified anyone to do what was done to them. Sultana Raf's mother was the first to be
00:04:16
killed. Sebastian, what did you see when you walked through that door? I saw mom
00:04:23
lying on the floor. Tariq Rafé was the next to be murdered. We could see there was blood around him
00:04:34
and it it was clear that he had been attacked. Why do you think that they're dead? There's blood. They're not
00:04:40
breathing. Uh there's blood all over his face. It was basically an overkill. Detective Bob Thompson has been on the
00:04:48
case since the night it began. It just looked like someone had hit him 40 or 50 times. Please. Fast. Okay. Yes, they're
00:04:56
on the way. Okay, they're on the way. We'll be outside. Okay, go ahead. As the boys waited for help to arrive, a third
00:05:03
victim, Aif's autistic older sister, Bosma, was clinging to life, moaning in her bedroom. The third victim was
00:05:12
autistic. It would make sense that she's murdered last because everybody knows that she can't make a 911 call.
00:05:19
Bosma died a few hours later at the hospital, taking with her the secret of who killed the Rafé family.
00:05:28
The Rafes had just moved to Belleview from Vancouver, Canada. Sultana had a doctorate in nutrition, but devoted her
00:05:35
life to raising her gifted son and disabled daughter. I think she was um certainly an extraordinary person. Do
00:05:43
you miss your mom? I do. What do you miss most about her? Well, the the mere presence is enough,
00:05:50
but uh she knew me in a way that uh I suspect that no one ever will. Um she was always able to look right through
00:05:57
the uh adolescent sort of pomposities that I might have had and remind me that uh I was just uh a silly kid at times.
00:06:06
Tariq Rafé was a structural engineer who had worked on buildings around the world. In a sense, we were all like kids
00:06:14
around him or or like my mom was too and we were all I guess sort of in his orbit. Um he was a brilliant person. Uh
00:06:23
probably a far better mathematician than I will ever be. No one could understand
00:06:28
who would take the lives of this quiet family and spare their only son. Detectives began to look more closely at
00:06:37
the crime scene. What's the problem there? There's been some kind of breakin. Sebastian had used the words
00:06:44
breakin to report what had happened. Is it locked? It's not locked. Unlock. Just
00:06:49
looking at that room, you started realizing this. This looks like someone set it up. Boxes were tipped over,
00:06:56
drawers were opened, but nothing appeared to have gone through. That night, when police asked what was
00:07:02
missing, Aif said two things. His disc man and a VCR. Someone came in, murdered three people, and took his Walkman and a
00:07:12
VCR. I mean, it makes no sense. Detectives probe deeper. Who were these teenage boys who reported the crime?
00:07:23
The 1992 93 school year. Sebastian Burns and Aif Rafé had been best friends since
00:07:29
high school. What' you like about high school? I liked being a kid. I liked having free time and I liked hanging
00:07:38
around with other kids and I just liked being young. The boys shared a sarcastic sense of humor and an
00:07:46
interest in reading and debate. What would you guys talk about? What were you interested in? You know, it was things
00:07:51
like uh Shakespeare and philosophy and uh kamu and things like that. They had a lot in common. They became very good
00:08:01
friends because they were both precocious. They were both intelligent. Sarah Isix is Sebastian's high school
00:08:08
sweetheart. He went to parties. He was athletic and he became friends with a Tif and sort of showed a Tif how to
00:08:17
dress. He'd introduced Tif to girls. He sort of helped Tif be a a stud like he was.
00:08:27
That's going back a bit. Sebastian was raised in a loving family with English roots. There was a lot of respect in our
00:08:34
household. I mean, um, you didn't talk back to my parents. You didn't swear in the house. Sebastian's sister, Tiffany.
00:08:43
We both grew up playing classical cello. So, we had music lessons and we had to practice every day after school. All
00:08:50
right. In 2005, Tiffany was a TV reporter at the CBS station in Cleveland. She can't say enough about
00:08:57
her little brother. He's very smart. I mean, he's definitely what you would call an intellectual.
00:09:05
He's so well read. He's got so many fascinating things to say. Sebastian became a member of the Royal Canadian
00:09:11
Aircadets and was given an award by Prince Edward. A Tif made it to the Ivy League, attending Cornell University. It
00:09:19
was the summer of their freshman year in college when the murders took place. It sort of is like a jigsaw puzzle
00:09:27
where, you know, you just take that piece and you put it here and you start you start fitting it together and pretty
00:09:31
soon you get a picture. Police took Sebastian and Aif to the station and examine them for traces of blood. They
00:09:39
found nothing. When asked where they had been that evening, the boys provide a full account. At 8:30, they drove to a
00:09:46
restaurant for a bite to eat. Then they went to a 950 showing of the Lion King. But why do you remember them? They were
00:09:54
acting annoying, obnoxious. Everywhere they went, the people who came into contact with them remembered
00:10:02
them. After the movie, they stopped at another restaurant and left the waitress a $6 tip on a $9 tab. They don't usually
00:10:10
do that, especially young guys. Young guys don't tip very well. But something else troubled police. How could the boys
00:10:18
remember so much detail about where they'd been that evening and yet not recall key moments at the murder scene?
00:10:24
The police decided to interview Sebastian and Aif again and detectives recorded the conversation.
00:10:33
I found my mom. What did you do? I I may have gone up to her. I I can't remember.
00:10:39
I don't know what I did. Um I can't remember. Did you go walk over to your dad? Um, I don't think so. No.
00:10:48
Did you touch your dad? I don't think so. Well, you'd know, though, would you? Yeah. I I don't I I I don't know if I
00:10:57
know, but I don't I don't think I touch him. See, I don't understand this. Aif, your your sister is moaning. She's hurt.
00:11:04
Yeah. And you don't want to help her? Detectives wanted to know why Aif didn't help his dying sister even though he
00:11:12
heard her through her bedroom door. How hurt is she? I didn't know. Okay. You don't know how
00:11:19
hurt she is? I don't know how hurt she is. All I know is that I can't I I I can't do anything. Sebastian
00:11:28
were witnesses. By the time they left at the end of these statements, were they suspects? Yes, definitely sus. By the
00:11:36
time they left, they were suspects. You know what? I I think you know who it is. Who did they go? No. I I would tell
00:11:45
you. I would tell you if I knew who did it. And investigators thought they not only knew who, they also knew why. $300
00:11:53
to $400,000 is about to slip through his fingers if she lives. Are you saying that didn't go to the aid of his sister?
00:11:59
Because he didn't want to save his sister. Aif didn't go to the aid of his sister because unless she died,
00:12:07
the whole plan came crumbling down on them. 3 days after the murders, relatives gathered in Belleview to bury the rafes
00:12:15
in a traditional Muslim ceremony. But the only surviving member of the immediate family was nowhere to be
00:12:22
found. They were wondering where's the teeth? Where's the where's the son? On the day of the funeral, the Rafé's
00:12:30
only son was on a bus headed across the border to Canada. And with him was his best friend, Sebastian Burns.
00:12:48
Sebastian and Aif were now in Vancouver, Canada, out of reach of the Belleview police and an investigation that
00:12:56
targeted them for the murders of the Rafé family. Did the boys go to Vancouver or did they flee to Vancouver?
00:13:04
From our perspective, they they fled back to Vancouver. He didn't flee. He went home. Their sudden bus trip
00:13:13
across the border only raised more suspicion even though both boys were Canadian citizens. How do you flee a
00:13:21
country getting on a Greyhound bus? In fact, a representative from the Canadian consulate informed the Belleview police
00:13:28
of their trip in advance. She contacted the Belleview Police Department to say, "These guys are leaving. They're going
00:13:35
home if that's okay with you." and she was told, quote, "Sure." Mhm. She then tells the boys, "It's okay to go and
00:13:43
they leave." That is not fleeing. It is not fleeing. I think it's to ask permission. Aif and
00:13:50
Sebastian both had my numbers. They knew I was even in the process of getting them a pager so we could keep in
00:13:55
contact. And they're gone. They don't tell me where they're at. They know I'm investigating the murders of their
00:14:00
parents. And they're gone. Detective Thompson was a veteran cop. This is the other. His gut told him that
00:14:08
the boys were guilty, but he just didn't have the evidence to prove it. Investigators kept combing the house. Is
00:14:18
it locked? It's not locked. They found no forced entry. There was, however, an eerie clue. A forensic tool, Luminol,
00:14:28
showed blood on the shower walls. The killer had used the shower before leaving. the person was so comfortable
00:14:36
and calm and collected that he or she might then decide perhaps they'll have a shower before they go.
00:14:44
It is inconceivable. Could that be the reason why the boys who had discovered the bodies at that
00:14:51
bloody crime scene didn't have a trace of blood on their hair, their hands, or anywhere on their bodies?
00:14:59
Are you a killer, Sebastian? No, absolutely not. Did you hold that bat in your hands and kill those three people?
00:15:06
No, I didn't. You're not lying to me. No. Would you have ever done anything, Aif to hurt your parents? No. The single
00:15:17
most distressing thing about this entire experience is the fact that I would even
00:15:23
have to speak out and say, "Yeah, no, I I did not do that." Okay. Right in here.
00:15:29
Even without physical evidence, detectives were determined. They began to build a case against the boys based
00:15:37
on their odd behavior following the murders. They cooperated. They did everything that was asked of them.
00:15:43
However, when they did things, they they had this air or this attitude about doing it. They honed in on their
00:15:51
demeanor at the crime scene and questioned why they sat in front of the house if they believed an intruder might
00:15:58
still be there. He's out on the curb, you know, 20 yard away from the the front door where this supposed killer
00:16:05
might be in the house and he's waiting for the police on the curb. Well, the T7 a cigarette. I'm not sure that anything
00:16:11
that we did made any sense. I I was not thinking in a normal way. Police also couldn't make sense of why a
00:16:20
thief would notice that his discman and VCR were missing. He's walking around the house claiming to discover the fact
00:16:30
the VCR is missing. And ultimately, while his mother and father and sister lay in a state of
00:16:40
carnage, let's not mince words here. It is carnage. He claims to have discovered that the
00:16:49
walkman was missing from his bedroom. And they've decided that my son and his friend are the guilty parties. They've
00:16:58
decided that I believe him to be totally innocent as is a teeth and they have been damned.
00:17:06
Sebastian's family and friends rallied around him and a teeth. I remember sitting on those steps with Sebastian. I
00:17:15
remember sitting on that field. Sebastian's former girlfriend, Sarah Isac, says she knows his character
00:17:23
better than anyone. Have you ever thought to yourself, maybe there was something I missed about Sebastian that
00:17:30
I just didn't see? There's nothing that anyone could tell me. There's never a moment when someone could tell me
00:17:36
something that made me think, honestly, maybe he did it. I never had to face that moment ever. I know Sebastian.
00:17:45
He was and is my very, very good friend. Did the cops investigating this just need to get home to dinner? I mean, why
00:17:55
didn't they follow up the leads that came their way? And there were other compelling leads.
00:18:03
Within days of the crime, police received a tip from a reliable informant that someone had offered $20,000 to kill
00:18:11
an East Indian family that had recently moved from Vancouver to Belleview. There's no physical evidence that links
00:18:18
Aif and Sebastian to the crime. Their alibis check out and now you get this lead from an informant in Canada that
00:18:26
somebody had been bragging about a hit on an East Indian family in Belleview, Washington.
00:18:33
tells me that's the direction now you should be focusing your investigation since there's no evidence against these
00:18:39
boys. Well, there is evidence against those boys. There was a lot of evidence against those boys and it was all
00:18:45
circumstantial. It wasn't evidence to convict them. Certainly. Is it fair to say that you didn't properly check out
00:18:52
this lead in Vancouver? Um, you know, there are it may be fair to say that that lead was not fully checked out.
00:19:01
You get all kinds of tips that come in and you have to weigh them. But the leads didn't go that direction. The
00:19:08
leads went directly to Canada and the leads followed we followed those leads to Sebastian and Aif.
00:19:22
Why don't you talk to police? But on the advice of a lawyer, the boys decided to
00:19:27
stop cooperating with Belleview authorities. The minute we went to Canada, Burns and Rafé wouldn't talk to
00:19:34
us at all. They were telling other people not to talk to us. So Thompson kept digging and found what
00:19:41
he thought was a disturbing clue from their past. We started looking through their high school yearbook and Sebastian
00:19:48
Burns was uh in a high school play called The Rope about two kids who commit the perfect murder.
00:19:55
[Music] These are words that Sebastian's character said on stage. Do you mind reading it?
00:20:05
An immaculate murder. I have killed. I have killed for the sake of danger and for the sake of killing. Ariana McGregor
00:20:13
performed in the West Vancouver High School production of Rope along with Sebastian. The character in the play is
00:20:20
somebody who's arrogant and um believes he's better than everybody else. And Sebastian had a quality of being
00:20:26
superior. He knew he was intelligent, knew he's good-looking. What was Rope about? The gimmick of the play is that
00:20:32
there's somebody is murdered at the start of the play and the villains put him into a box and then they invite
00:20:39
guests over. Everybody's at this party wondering when the last guest is going to show up and nobody knows that
00:20:45
actually he's in the box at the front of the play. And so, um, there's lots of suspenseful giggles all the way through
00:20:51
because everybody in the audience knows that there's this, uh, person, this this
00:20:57
thing in the box. He's black and white. Your character on stage says, "We've always said, you and I, that moral
00:21:04
concepts of right and wrong don't hold for the intellectually superior. The only crime we can commit is a mistake.
00:21:12
There's some people who believe those are words that the real Sebastian Burns might say. Mom, that's ridiculous.
00:21:21
There was no time ever during any performance or any rehearsal that anybody was ever thinking anything
00:21:28
serious about any of the supposed intellectual philosophies in this play or or anything like that.
00:21:35
But detectives believed the fictional murder story did inspire the real life crime. Even more chilling, the weapon
00:21:44
was the same, a baseball bat. Well, that's just a huge coincidence. I think Sebastian was actually mortified when
00:21:52
when he realized that he was a suspect in the baseball bat killings of the Rafé because he said, "Chris, what's going to
00:21:59
happen when they find out about the play?" How does the play end? their superior figures them out. Someone who
00:22:05
is actually more intelligent than they are uh figures it out and they get caught.
00:22:14
As the investigation continued in Belleview, the boys were living well in Vancouver.
00:22:23
With some of the money Aif inherited from his parents' estate, they bought a convertible and rented an apartment
00:22:31
together with another high school pal. I think I'll stay here forever. Jimmy Moshi
00:22:37
behind drawn curtains, they hid from the media who were constantly in pursuit of
00:22:42
them and their story. Hello, is Aif there? 987. But while they weren't talking to
00:22:54
the police, the police were listening to them. Hello, Rafe. Oh, yeah. Every word
00:23:02
they spoke at home or in their car was being recorded. How are you doing? Um, okay. I guess the boys had no idea they
00:23:12
were now the targets of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP. The RCMP applied for and ultimately uh obtained
00:23:23
authorization to do wire taps. On April 10th, 1995, RCMP investigators intercepted this phone message.
00:23:37
This is Quimper's hair salon calling for Sebastian to confirm his appointment with Gregory tomorrow, Tuesday, April
00:23:42
11th. Sebastian could never have imagined that he was about to fall into a trap set by one of the most
00:23:50
sophisticated undercover operators in the world. There was no doubt in my mind that yes, Sebastian Burns was
00:23:57
responsible for this and we were in fact going to get a full confession from him.
00:24:11
By April of 1995, Sebastian Burns and Aif Rafé were Canada's most famous teenage murder suspects.
00:24:22
I remember a time when we're at a bus stop and someone drove by and rolled down the window and yelled, "Murderers."
00:24:30
That was typical. They were paras. They were hated. I was uh unable to go to college. I was
00:24:37
unable to get a job. But the boys had a plan to make their fortune and live out a lifelong dream.
00:24:47
They started work on their very own screenplay about two best friends accused of murdering a family.
00:24:56
The movie was going to be about Sebastian Barren and a Tifra and the injustice that was heaped upon them as a
00:25:05
result of the suspicion about their involvement in this triple aggravated murder case in Belleview. They called it
00:25:12
the Great Despisers. We were worried that it would sound a bit nerdy because having the word great
00:25:18
in the title sounds makes sound kind of nerdy. And uh if we'd called that, for example, just the despisers,
00:25:25
um that would have uh been more unimpeachably cool. However, we we decided to have the courage to stick
00:25:34
with this nerdy title. While the boys worked on what they say is their fictional story about two friends
00:25:41
falsely accused, they had no idea the real life plotline was about to take an astonishing turn.
00:25:50
This is Crimper's hair salon calling for Sebastian to confirm his appointment with Greg. That simple message from a
00:25:55
local hair salon was the moment the RCMP was waiting for. I think they were very
00:26:02
vulnerable to whatever the RCMP had in store for them. These were kids who' lived pretty
00:26:10
sheltered lives. When Sebastian was finished at Crimper Salon, a stranger was waiting. And when
00:26:19
Mr. Burns comes out of the salon, the undercover operator just approaches him, what they call the cold approach.
00:26:27
He seemed to me like some kind of an entrepreneur. He walks up to him and says, "Hey buddy, can you give me a
00:26:33
hand? I seem to have locked my keys in the car." So, uh, he asked me for a ride to his hotel and I gave him a ride. The
00:26:40
stranger took Sebastian to a bar and bought him a drink for his trouble. I was impressed by that. And um I
00:26:50
was also sort of intrigued, I guess, or or excited about the way that he seemed um so ready to be interested in me.
00:27:00
Sebastian told his new friend that he and his buddies had written a screenplay, but he didn't have a job and
00:27:07
needed financing. The friend said he knew someone who could help. Ultimately, the goal was to get Sebastian to meet
00:27:15
with the next guy up the chain, and it worked perfectly. Sebastian thought he was about to meet a connected
00:27:23
businessman, but it was this man, Sergeant Hlett of the RCMP. We cannot show you his face. I don't
00:27:33
think there's an undercover team like this anywhere in the world. And I say that very seriously. The best of the
00:27:39
best. the best. The RCMP spent months preparing to manipulate their target. They had access to fancy cars, posh
00:27:54
hotel suites, weapons, false international documents, beautiful women. Posing as professional mobsters, the
00:28:05
RCMP set up the first meeting with Sebastian at a strip club. How important was this movie to Sebastian Burns? It
00:28:13
was just about his whole uh life. The crime boss told Sebastian he did have cash to invest in his screenplay, but
00:28:22
Sebastian would have to earn it. Sebastian had no idea he was being offered work in a makebelieve world of
00:28:30
crime. Jobs were also promised to Aif and their pal Jimmy Mioshi. I hope these guys are solid, man. These
00:28:40
guys are never going to betray me. Ever. All right. Never. Ever. Sebastian's first assignment.
00:28:50
Transport a stolen car for the crime boss. He had nothing. And then he was offered something. He was offered
00:28:57
something that was criminal, something that he probably wouldn't have thought was a good idea had he had something
00:29:03
else going on in his life. He was only paid $200 for the job. And he wasn't happy. He was disgusted.
00:29:12
He made it clear he wasn't happy. He uh told us he could make more money than that stealing his videos out of stores.
00:29:18
It was essential to the undercover operation that Sebastian continue working for the organization. So the
00:29:25
next staged crime is easier for more cash. What I want you guys to do, which is no big deal. It's pretty
00:29:31
straightforward. Uh Sebastian and Jimmy Moshi go from one bank to another laundering money. Cash is here. Just
00:29:39
take a deposit into this account. 20 What are you guys running the first time? Next time a different bank. This
00:29:44
time for a day's work, they get paid $2,000. So cool. This has been a thing for anymore. I
00:29:56
couldn't help but be excited about having $2,000 put in my hand and I'd hardly had to do anything for it. Months
00:30:02
go by. The undercover operators take Sebastian to posh hotels trying to build trust and draw him out.
00:30:13
Where are we going? uh go out. We haven't started filming or anything, but our script is uh can
00:30:23
Did you sense that Sebastian felt he was smarter than you? Oh, there's no doubt.
00:30:27
He made it clear and told us that on more than one occasion. Smart. Tell me how smart you are. I'm
00:30:36
one of the most intelligent people in the world. Slowly, the undercover operators bring up the investigation in
00:30:43
Belleview. Hlett tries to get Sebastian to confess by telling him he already knows what happened. I know you did it.
00:30:52
You know you did it. The police know you. All right. I know that. Sebastian doesn't admit guilt, but he
00:31:00
confides in the mobsters that if the police did find something to tie him to the crime, he might want them to destroy
00:31:07
it. And he has a very practical theory. As one of the best known murder suspects in
00:31:14
Canada, he is confident that his movie would make millions if he is suddenly proven innocent.
00:31:22
And a film with that kind of promotion because the thing is as it is right now, it's like controversy, right? Which in
00:31:27
itself promotes, right? But this is like, oh, you're heroes. Something goes up to 2530 million. Taking their cue
00:31:36
again from their target, the businessmen raise the stakes. They tell Sebastian that the Belleview police have physical
00:31:44
evidence tying him to the crime. Well, I tell you, they're coming to lock your ass up.
00:31:52
Yours and your friends. To make it seem real, Haslett shows him this phony memo on Belleview Policehead
00:32:01
detailing the evidence linking Sebastian to the murders. here. Just read this piece of
00:32:08
The mobsters offer to destroy the so-called evidence, but they need Sebastian to tell them exactly what
00:32:16
happened in the Rafé house the night of the murders. Well, I want your help and you need my
00:32:25
help. So, you tell me what went on down there and I'm going to tell you how I'm going
00:32:30
to take care of your problem. Finally, on July 18th, 1995, one year after the murders, Sebastian
00:32:38
meets the crime boss, Sergeant Hlett, at the Ocean Point Resort, and the cameras
00:32:45
are rolling. He walks into this hotel room and takes off his shoes. He stretches out on a love
00:32:54
seat. It's only then that Mr. Burns lets his guard down and the dirty little secret that he's been protecting for the
00:33:00
last 12 or 13 months starts to unravel on video for the whole wide world to see. It has taken 3 months of undercover
00:33:07
work to get to this moment. Both guys are coming in and say, "Hey, let's go off your family and get all
00:33:15
their money." Basically, essentially, yeah. and he uh told me the details how him
00:33:26
and Tif Rafé did commit the murders in Belleview. How you knew three people at once?
00:33:34
Uh not at extremely extremely cold individual. It's phenomenal to you, man. The next day, Sebastian brings a teif to
00:33:49
the crime boss to tell his story. Particularly, how does it feel when your parents must
00:33:56
pretty rottenly, but it's tempered by the fact that I felt that necessary to I guess um achieve what I wanted to
00:34:11
achieve in this life. That's all the police needed to hear. Those were solid, strong confessions
00:34:22
that only the individuals that responsible for that murder would be able to sit down and tell it like it
00:34:28
was. Cheers. Sebastian, Aif, and Jimmy Moshi are all arrested. You have anything to say? But
00:34:40
this case is just beginning. Sebastian says he's lying, that undercover officers intimidated him into making a
00:34:49
false confession. I believe that if I'd cross them that they would have me killed
00:35:07
Sebastian Burns and Aif Rafé, best friends who once dreamed of making it big in movies,
00:35:14
were now behind bars. But no sooner were Sebastian and Aif arrested than the same Canadian
00:35:27
government that set a trap to catch them led an international battle to spare their lives. We should not be sending
00:35:35
anybody back. The case went all the way up to Canada's Supreme Court. Persons who leave the country and commit
00:35:42
offenses outside of the country should expect that they will be punished under the laws of the jurisdiction in which
00:35:48
they committed um the crime. [Music] Sending the boys back across the border to Washington meant they would face the
00:36:01
death penalty if convicted. A punishment Canada had long since abolished and considered inhumane.
00:36:11
We never knew when we were going to be leaving for the United States. And every time we heard, oh, there may be a trial,
00:36:17
you know, next year, then it became the next year. And that lasted for about four years where we thought that we were
00:36:24
a week away from extradition. After 6 years of legal wrangling, the King County prosecutor in Seattle agreed
00:36:35
to Canada's demands not to seek the death penalty. Sebastian and Aif, now 25year-old men,
00:36:45
were finally extradited to face murder charges. Mr. Raf, you're charged. Mr. Burns, you're charged in the cause
00:36:53
numbers that I just read with three counts of aggravated murder in the first degree. If convicted, the penalty would
00:37:01
now be life with no parole. That goes with the motion to dismiss. They were appointed a team of attorneys.
00:37:08
Representing Sebastian was Terresa Olsen, an ardent, if eccentric, public defender who believed in the boy's
00:37:16
innocence. Of course they didn't do the killings. The the evidence is clear that
00:37:20
they didn't do the killings. Olsen worked tirelessly on the case, running down leads and witnesses.
00:37:27
But in the summer of 2002, the case took a bizarre turn. Guards at the King County Jail reported
00:37:36
seeing Olsen having sex with Sebastian during an attorney client meeting. Shut up. The well publicized scandal even
00:37:44
caught the attention of late night comic Jay Leno. A female lawyer in Seattle is
00:37:49
in trouble for having sex in jail with her client who is a murderer. How creepy is that? Huh? Sex with a lawyer
00:38:01
and brought the trial to a grinding halt. This court had no choice but to appoint new counsel. Sebastian's
00:38:11
new attorneys were a dream team. Ivy League trained Jeff Robinson and Song Richardson. There is a lot at stake for
00:38:19
Sebastian Burns and we will be fighting till the end. 187's a retired artist. They were among Seattle's best and most
00:38:29
expensive criminal defense lawyers. Exactly. Along with Amanda Lee, they staunchly
00:38:35
believed in the boy's innocence and agreed to take the high-profile case at a public defender's wage. They have been
00:38:43
essentially judged and treated as though they were guilty from the beginning when
00:38:47
the evidence just isn't there. What kind of pressure is on all of your shoulders
00:38:52
as we approach this trial? nothing more or less than the rest of Sebastian Burn's natural life.
00:39:02
They were up against two of the most seasoned and respected prosecutors in Seattle. I want to talk to him. Let's
00:39:10
set up. Roger David Heheiser would be joining James Conat on the case. It's not justice. It's the truth. What we're
00:39:18
after here is the truth. And I would submit to you that's what separates our side from theirs.
00:39:29
By September 2003, Sebastian and Aif had been in jail for more than 8 years. Charged but never convicted for the Rafé
00:39:39
family murders. You have to recognize that these are human beings and they have had their
00:39:47
lives stolen from them. And to make it worse, they've had their lives stolen from them
00:39:54
to somehow resolve a murder that they didn't commit. The case would turn on those
00:40:01
controversial confessions. Make believe mobsters extracting confessions from teenagers.
00:40:11
Is that allowed in the state of Washington? It's not allowed in the state of Washington.
00:40:17
And I don't think it's allowed anywhere else in the United States under the circumstances that it was done in this
00:40:25
case. Are you comfortable using the results from an illegal undercover investigation by US laws in your case?
00:40:34
This investigation was not illegal because it was conducted in Canada by Canadian authorities targeting Canadian
00:40:40
citizens. It was an investigation that they undertook separate and apart from the Belleview investigation.
00:40:49
[Applause] This case, it's not only about the lives of my two friends. It's about the
00:40:59
responsibility of police and prosecutors to do their job properly and to act in good faith.
00:41:07
And they have not done that in this case. It would be up to Superior Court Judge Charles Martell. Well, please be
00:41:15
seated everyone to decide if Sebastian and Aif's chilling confessions caught on tape would be allowed to damn them in an
00:41:23
American court. Other prosecutors in other cases with evidence just like that have told jurors just like the ones
00:41:32
that will sit in our case that it's a slam dunk. And those jurors very comfortably have convicted people and
00:41:39
sentenced them to die. And they've been wrong. Judge Martell was about to make the most
00:41:48
controversial ruling of his career. The boy's lives would depend on what he was about to say.
00:41:57
48 hours continues. [Music] Before [Music] we begin, just a trigger warning. The
00:42:33
following episode contains references to graphic physical violence. Please listen
00:42:38
with care. Let's be honest. You've been portrayed as a monster. Yes. Evil, maniacal,
00:42:48
plotting, a murderer. Are you those things? No. [Music] Welcome to Killer Conversation, a
00:43:01
podcast about the criminal mind. My name is Judy Ryback and I'm a longtime 48 Hours producer, so I like to think I
00:43:09
know a thing or three about killers. In this episode, Peter Vans and I will take
00:43:14
a deep dive into two interviews he did with convicted killers, teenagers who murdered three people for money and the
00:43:22
thrill of it back in 1994. A decade later, they agreed to be interviewed exclusively by Peter for 48
00:43:30
hours. Did you hold that bat in your hands and kill those three people? No, I didn't.
00:43:37
Sebastian Burns has been described as the mastermind who used a metal baseball bat to kill his buddy Aif Rafé's mother,
00:43:45
father, and sister while Aif stood by. Aif, did you and Sebastian Burns meticulously plan the murder of your
00:43:56
family? Absolutely not. Hi, Peter. Good to see you again. Thanks so much for joining me. So, this was
00:44:04
such a high-profile case. You covered it twice for 48 hours and wrote a book about it. Tell us how you got involved.
00:44:11
Sometimes it's the simplest of of ways. The house where this occurred was about a mile and a half from the house where I
00:44:20
grew up in, this was in Bellev, Washington. and a great source that I'd used over the years, my mother called to
00:44:28
tell me about it and I immediately did everything I could to try to uh land this assignment. So, from the very
00:44:35
beginning, it was I had really kind of a personal stake in this. I think I know the answer to this question, but I want
00:44:42
to hear you say it. What was it about this case? Oh, man. This story had everything. You've got two best friends.
00:44:49
They're young. They're meticulous plotters. vicious, heartless characters that some fiction writer could not have
00:44:57
come up with. The two of them met in high school in Vancouver, Canada. And in all the years I had lived in Belleview,
00:45:03
there had never been an unsolved murder case. So both of these boys were Canadian citizens at the time, right? I
00:45:11
mean, the Rafes were living in Washington, but they were they were Canadians. So this case drew
00:45:17
international attention. And yet you were the only journalist who Sebastian and Natif agreed to interview with. How
00:45:25
did you get that interview? Why 48 hours? Well, first 48 does have a great reputation of honestly telling these
00:45:33
stories and wanting to hear from both sides and and respecting the whole process. But it has to go back to my
00:45:40
producers on this one. Jenna Jackson, Guyian Kosishian, and Nancy Kramer, uh, who lived dedicated their lives, uh,
00:45:49
this six-monthlong trial. We had someone there virtually every day. And so, they
00:45:53
met the defense attorneys, they developed relationships, they met Sebastian's parents, and Tifs, of
00:45:59
course, were dead. Um, and they developed some trust. And as a Seattleite, that connected with a lot of
00:46:05
people. I was I grew up there. I knew the the area. I knew Vancouver, Canada really well. And I think all of that
00:46:12
came together and we managed to land the interviews. Amazing. I I know what that's like to uh sit through long
00:46:19
trials and and gain everyone's trust. Um so they are both remorseless killers but
00:46:27
so different. Sebastian seems diabolical. Aif is so aloof. How did you prepare for two very different
00:46:35
interviews? Well, in both cases, you know, we had the the ability to dig into these police
00:46:42
reports. We watched the undercover videos which were haunting. We interviewed investigators, prosecutors,
00:46:50
defense attorneys. You know, they all were very open with sharing information with us and I can't can't thank them
00:46:56
enough. Sebastian was cocky and condescending and people said he was the mastermind and he just would look at you
00:47:03
and couldn't help it but look down upon you even though he's wearing an orange jumpsuit even though he's the one behind
00:47:11
bars. Um I was the fool in the room I felt when I was talking to him and I knew I had to be direct and really well
00:47:20
prepared because he would correct me on any any fact. Aif was his devoted follower. He was a very soft-spoken
00:47:28
intellectual um who, if you believe what investigators have concluded in this case, he stood by while his best friend
00:47:38
in the world savagely beat his family to death with a baseball bat. So, I honestly didn't know what to expect with
00:47:47
him because when you first greet him, he's very well-mannered, but as you get into a conversation, he loves to turn it
00:47:54
into um verbal combat and he wants to impress you with his with his array of weapons uh with the with the English
00:48:04
language. And so it's fascinating to sit with him and he found that to be almost
00:48:09
a contest, a debate in a way that he in his mind he could never lose. You talked
00:48:14
to them separately in the jail where they were awaiting sentencing. Tell me about that day.
00:48:22
It was so weird. I It was a vibe that I have never encountered in any other uh interview with a killer. Arrogance just
00:48:33
filled the air. or no remorse, not taking any responsibility for these horrors. Occasionally, they would smile
00:48:40
in a way that was exasperating. I mean, I even said at one time in the interview
00:48:44
to Sebastian, "What do you think this is funny?" Cuz he'd have a smile on his face. And so, in that way, it was a real
00:48:52
out of body experience for me as a journalist. Did you ever think to yourself that
00:48:57
because of your superior intelligence, the rules of society did not apply to you?
00:49:03
No. And I really didn't sincerely think in those terms at all. My, as you put it, my superior intelligence. I just
00:49:12
like I said, I used to make a lot of wise cracks. And um no, I I didn't think like that.
00:49:21
How would you describe Sebastian in a word? Uh, I have to use words unfortunately, but he handsome, charming
00:49:28
when he chose to be, smart, someone who could have accomplished great things in life. Sebastian, he became a member of
00:49:34
the Royal Canadian Aircadets. And there's this picture of him getting an award by Prince Edward, you know, and
00:49:40
his parents were so proud. Uh, he expected to be a lawyer in life, he said, because he loved to be so
00:49:46
argumentative. He was raised in a um in a really great home, a very sophisticated upper middle
00:49:52
class family. Mom and dad were very well educated. They lived in West Vancouver,
00:49:57
British Columbia. It was a very, very desirable neighborhood. It was a place where Sebastian and his sister Tiffany,
00:50:05
they'd wake up the parents in the morning, uh, on Christmas morning playing their cellos, you know, a
00:50:11
Christmas song to to wake them up. Uh, Sister uh, Tiffany was was a real successful woman in her own right. She
00:50:19
was a television reporter and anchor at at the CBS station in Cleveland and working her way up in a very promising
00:50:27
career. How would you describe a Tif in in a word? Compliant. That's the way he was
00:50:35
with with Sebastian. Aif had been accepted at Cornell University, which is currently ranked number 11 in the
00:50:43
country by US News and World Report. He was impressive and he knew it. And I know you've heard this many times, but
00:50:52
the notion is two arrogant, smug, self-absorbed young men who saw themselves as intellectually superior
00:51:01
planned the perfect murder so that you could financially benefit from it and achieve the things in your own words
00:51:09
that you wanted to achieve in life. Yeah, I know. It's uh such a compelling tabloid narrative, but like many tabloid
00:51:18
narratives, it's fatuous and foolish and false. And um it's uh that particular line about uh achieving
00:51:30
the things that I want to do in life. I think that if any discerning person looks at that, they will see the empty
00:51:38
abstractions of someone who is trying to come up with some kind of justification
00:51:45
for something that he didn't do and couldn't justify. My goodness, his smuggness is palpable
00:51:53
and he has a smile on his face the whole time. What made these two friends, Peter?
00:52:00
I guess there was there similarities in intellect, but they were the odd couple.
00:52:04
One was the leader, one was the follower. They were both quirky. Um they they gravitated toward each other in
00:52:12
high school. Both were fans of the German philosopher Frederick Nichze who was Hitler's favorite philosopher by the
00:52:20
way. Nietze um had this theory of uber mench, the superman who could impose his own morality, his own will upon the weak
00:52:30
through strength and dominance. Um I think they saw themselves as supermen. Were there any signs when they were in
00:52:39
high school that either of them might be capable of of a crime like this? Yeah. And when we were doing interviews in in
00:52:46
Vancouver, there was a a woman we spoke to uh who was a a good friend of Sebastian's, in fact, a girlfriend, and
00:52:55
she told authorities. Sebastian had told her that he wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.
00:53:03
Are you saying that you are incapable of committing murder? Yes, absolutely. You
00:53:09
are. Then how do you explain what you said to your friend Nazgal Shifty 6 months before these murders? I'd like to
00:53:16
kill somebody someday. I think I'd like to know what it feels like. I think I might find it rather enjoyable.
00:53:24
That was a sarcasm that I made. First of all, I want to be clear. That's not a verbatim quote. Nobody knows what the
00:53:32
verbatim quote is. That was a sarcasm that was made uh at some point when I was 17 years old. I was reminded of it
00:53:40
for the first time just this last March. Okay. Why would he even say a thing like that?
00:53:47
Like who says a thing like that? What was he testing her? Yeah. Look, this girlfriend, that quote was burned into
00:53:54
her mind. She was very bright. And I think that was maybe a word or two off. But note the note the analysis he has to
00:54:02
give us about about it's not exactly verbatim but she was absolutely certain this what it what what what he said and
00:54:09
it also sent a chill up her spine and um but also as an uber mench he could say and do whatever he wanted to and get
00:54:18
this in the high school yearbook Sebastian had described himself as a titan with furious contempt for the
00:54:25
petty strictctures of plebeians And a tif wrote, "Hearing the cries of the plebs below, Aif descended through
00:54:34
the clouds and gazed beusely at the petty struggles of those around him and laughed."
00:54:42
This again, brilliant immaturity, word play used for shock. Okay, let's let's talk about the
00:54:50
murders. According to authorities, sometime in the late evening of July 12th, 1994, Sebastian used a metal
00:54:58
baseball bat to bludgeon Aif's parents and his sister while Aif basically stood by. He may even have been watching at
00:55:07
some points. You've seen a lot of crime scene photos, Peter. We both have. How do you think these compare?
00:55:15
These crime scene pictures were among the most gruesome I had ever seen. particularly Aif's father. The first
00:55:23
picture I saw was of Sultana Rafé, Aif's mother. Um, who would have known that Sultana at that time of day would have
00:55:32
been down unpacking boxes cuz they had they had moved into this new house. Latif would know that. And it's believed
00:55:40
that she was attacked first. Her head was crushed from behind. She probably had no idea that this killer was
00:55:47
approaching her. She's lying on her stomach. Uh fascinating that too that her head was covered in a scarf. And
00:55:55
investigators will tell you that when a killer knows the victim and particularly
00:56:00
if it's someone close to them that they often cover the head because they just don't want to look at the face, right?
00:56:07
And so we move on then upstairs. The killer then moved upstairs and Tariq Aif's father, 56 years old at the time,
00:56:16
he was sleeping on his back uh and his head was pulverized by several dozen blows at least um investigators believe.
00:56:29
And this was as savage a rage killing as I have ever seen. The third one was Basma. She's 20 years
00:56:39
old. Why would they save Basma for last? Well, she couldn't talk and uh she uh was autistic
00:56:47
and the killer entered her room and this uh turned into a bit of a struggle because she was physically strong and
00:56:56
she was running and trying to get away and was being being hit. And one neighbor heard, and this is so
00:57:05
disturbing, what he described as a mooing sound coming from inside the Rafé house. And we know today, and
00:57:14
investigators believe that noise was Bosma crying out as she fought for her life. When investigators got into the
00:57:24
room, they noticed she had defensive wounds all over her hands. uh her skull had been smashed in and many of her
00:57:32
teeth had been knocked out. So this was a terrifying, horrible, drawn out uh death for Bosma. So incredibly brutal. I
00:57:42
mean, one of the detectives said somebody went off the deep end and once they started killing either enjoyed it
00:57:49
or couldn't stop themselves. Two neighbors even heard the pounding of the bat. Yeah. One thought they were must be
00:57:59
putting up big paintings because they were having to hit the wall so hard. Why would Sebastian be so brutal about
00:58:07
these killings? This is something that um I don't really have the answer for this one. People
00:58:15
have often wondered and the investigators did on this considering what Sebastian had talked about killing
00:58:21
and wondering what it was like that that this was a thrill kill, right? Uh, we know that Sebastian had starred in a
00:58:28
high school play called Rope, which was turned into a movie. One of my favorite films, mine, too. Directed by Alfred
00:58:35
Hitchcock. The play and his film are about two young friends, much like Sebastian and Aif, who strangle a friend
00:58:42
with a rope for the thrill of it, right? To see what it's like. And so, there's similarities between what he acted out
00:58:48
on stage and what was occurring in that house. Okay, let let's take a break and when we come back we'll talk about why
00:58:55
prosecutors think Sebastian and Aif committed these horrible murders. The answer is chilling on so many levels.
00:59:10
The senior deputy prosecutor on the case against Sebastian Burns and Aifra Fay called the murders absolutely savage.
00:59:18
What reason did they have to commit these gruesome murders? Well, we know Sebastian had expressed an
00:59:25
interest in killing someone someday to see what it felt like. And in this case, um, Aif's parents, uh, had some money
00:59:33
and they had life insurance as well. And I think money did play a role in this. And uh Aif had this difficult
00:59:41
relationship with his father who was deeply religious and and he had also expressed kind of a resentment of his
00:59:48
autistic sister Basma. He called her gross and said he never really liked her and prosecutors said that he would mock
00:59:56
and he would mimic her in front of her. Um so money that that to me I think is at the heart of this. I think you're
01:00:06
right. And with a teeth saying at one point that he wanted to be able to live the life he wanted to do to live and the
01:00:14
money would would allow him to do that. Right. Right. You asked a tie about his relationship with his family and his
01:00:21
answer left me cold. How would you describe your relationship with your parents?
01:00:29
Um, I we had uh I I was close closer to my mom than probably anyone that I ever have been or will ever be close to. Um
01:00:39
uh I loved both my parents. Um I admired my father. Uh I had we had a I mean at the same time we had uh all kinds of
01:00:50
arguments uh which I enjoyed having and which I suspect they enjoyed having as well. Um we had um
01:00:58
uh I guess uh I mean it's hard to sum up the relationship that a person has with
01:01:05
one's parents because it's in one sense the closest and most basic sort of relationship that you will ever
01:01:14
have. It constitutes who you are as a human being. Um and uh I mean did you love your mom and dad? Yes. Yes. Do you
01:01:24
love your sister? I would have to say that um I didn't really have a relationship with my
01:01:31
sister. And so I think that if I were to say that I loved my sister, I would sort
01:01:35
of be demeaning the feelings that I had for my parents. That is so strange. And he was very
01:01:44
honest about not loving his sister. What were you thinking in that moment? It's it's just a coldness that u that
01:01:53
you know if you dehumanize it's easier to kill. Okay. So the these murders were very well thought out.
01:02:00
Clearly not well enough to keep them out of prison, but there was a lot of planning that went into these murders.
01:02:05
What was the plan? The idea was to be out uh for the evening in a very noticeable way cuz
01:02:12
they went to a restaurant called the Keg. By the way, Keg is, you know, five miles from where I grew up. I I went
01:02:20
there after while I was covering this case, just to have dinner there and see the place. Um, and that's in Factori,
01:02:28
Washington, which is right off the interstate near Belleview. That's where the movie complex was, where they went
01:02:33
to see The Lion King. And a waiter would later tell police that he remembered the
01:02:36
two underage Canadians trying to order wine. So, they did something that would draw attention where they'd have to show
01:02:42
ID, right? Um, and then when they get to the movie theater, when Sebastian was buying his movie tickets, he goes, "Hey,
01:02:52
you like my shirt?" And his shirt had a big cartoon character, some milkman character on it. And and the ticket
01:03:00
taker remembered Sebastian. Yeah. This odd guy said, "Hey, take a look at my t-shirt." Again, he's registering in
01:03:06
people's minds. He's creating a a memory that he was there. and a thief was wearing an army jacket. Once inside the
01:03:14
movie theater, people said that they were obnoxious. They were drawing attention to themselves. They were
01:03:18
talking loudly. At one point, one of them went up to the screen and tried to pull the movie curtains apart again. Get
01:03:26
everyone's attention. Yeah, I remember those guys. I saw them there. Then after they snuck out, they committed the
01:03:31
crimes. Investigators believe that after the murder, the boys went out on this uh
01:03:37
tour of eeries to try to to try to draw attention to themselves as much as they could so people would remember them if
01:03:47
investigators came to question employees. And their first stop was a diner where they paid with a $10 bill
01:03:56
for basically about a $3 meal and leaving a $7 tip. and the waitress remembered them when they end up also
01:04:04
then going out to a nightclub that that was closing at 2 am and they demanded to
01:04:09
be let in but they were not again people would remember yeah those two boys they
01:04:13
were shouting at us let us into the club everywhere they went they wanted to create a memory with an employee that if
01:04:20
authorities came and remember over and over the police questioned the neighbors in the hopes that they would change
01:04:27
their timelines because for investigators this was a big problem. On one side of the Rafé house, there was a
01:04:34
woman named Julie. And she was a very meticulous woman who every night went through a routine that began at a
01:04:43
certain time where, as I recall, she put in a a load of wash and um and then put
01:04:50
it in the dryer and then she would read for a particular amount of time, usually
01:04:54
even the same amount of pages each night. and she would look at her at her clock and she would go to bed at exactly
01:05:01
the same time. And based on her story, the boys were at that movie theater at the time that she was an ear witness to
01:05:13
the murders inside the Rafé house. When she heard all of this noise coming from there, the boys weren't there. They were
01:05:20
at the movie theater and that is not disputed. So, so she heard pounding at a time when those boys were allegedly
01:05:29
spotted at the movie theater. Yeah. This is before any of the encounters with the
01:05:34
waitresses and everything else, right? She never changed her her timeline. But investigators just simply said,
01:05:41
"Well, we're going to say and we'll say in court that we just think she's wrong.
01:05:45
She just had her times wrong." Even though she won't change and that that she was wrong, but it created an opening
01:05:51
for the defense. And there was another neighbor who heard it and believed it was also at the same time.
01:05:57
So Sebastian and Aif claimed they entered the Rafé family home uh at around 2:00 a.m. and that Sebastian was
01:06:05
the first to see Aif's mother lying in a pool of blood. They admit that they never touched her. They didn't even
01:06:12
bother to see if she was still alive or try to help her. How do you know she's still not
01:06:18
breathing? How do you not turn her over to check if she's breathing to see if there's something you could do? I don't
01:06:24
know. I don't know. And I don't know. And maybe that was a really cowardly thing to do. It was just
01:06:32
a reflex. I I cannot describe to you how shocking it was. Just how completely confounding it was.
01:06:50
And there was nothing sensical about my reaction at all. It's been alleged you didn't want to touch the body because
01:06:58
you didn't want to get blood on you because you that would wreck your alibi. It would wreck the stage that you had
01:07:08
set there to fool police. That's completely wrong. I mean, if you're not the killer, you're
01:07:16
you're trying to save that person, right? You don't care if you get blood on you, right? Right. Absolutely. During
01:07:22
the investigation, Sebastian was caught on tape saying that he was naked when he
01:07:28
committed the murders. What's that all about? Well, think about it. If you're wearing clothes, you're going to get
01:07:33
blood spatter on those clothing, and that can turn into evidence. Uh, and investigators concluded fairly early on,
01:07:41
this is just one of the bizarre things. Never heard of this before in any murder
01:07:45
case I've covered that the killer stepped into the shower and took a shower. And what did investigators find
01:07:54
in that in that shower stall on the drain? There were 21 hairs recovered and they were all from Sebastian Burns
01:08:05
and uh and the walls of the shower uh had blood on them. It was tested and that was Tariq
01:08:13
Rafase, Aif's dad. But what killer would step in to take a shower, particularly if it was a stranger? Cuz that killer
01:08:23
would have known, hm, a teeth's not here. He could come home. I better get out of this house as quickly as
01:08:28
possible. Good point. What killer would step in to take a shower if that killer didn't know there wasn't anyone left to
01:08:36
come home? Right. if if because Aif was there. He was alive there and he was one
01:08:41
of the two killers. So they discover Aif's mother and then Sebastian calls 911. When the police
01:08:50
arrived, uh Aif's sister, Bosma, was still alive. They could hear her moaning. The boys would have heard her,
01:08:58
too. And you asked them why they didn't try to save Bosma's life. Let let's listen to a tif.
01:09:05
Your sister was in the other room. You knew she was injured. You could hear her moaning. How do you not go in and give
01:09:11
first aid? You could have saved your sister's life. Well, for one, I don't really know first aid. And I didn't even
01:09:19
think of it. I didn't even You're a bright guy. If someone's bleeding, you know how to stop bleeding, right? You're
01:09:23
right. You know that for the average person, it sounds terrible that you didn't go in there. It sounds like you
01:09:31
wanted her to die. Well, I suppose that if I had planned these murders, I would certainly have
01:09:39
rushed in and made heroic efforts to uh save her. Um, unfortunately, I had not planned these uh murders. I didn't
01:09:49
commit these murders, and Sebastian didn't either. And I was I acted in a cowardly and shameful way, which I felt
01:09:58
ashamed of even in the days immediately following and have never since ceased feeling shameful of. But those
01:10:09
were my reactions under pressure, I guess. Oh, Peter, where to start? It was a decision. It wasn't a decision if he had
01:10:19
planned the murders. But unfortunately, he didn't plan the murders. Is this a confession of sorts? I'm not quite sure.
01:10:27
I mean, so in other words, yeah, I he uh planned it. Sebastian did. I would have
01:10:32
done a much better job. Uh it's it's stupid that that answer is so clumsy and so void of humanity.
01:10:41
[Music] [Music] Okay. So, Peter, police focused on the boys from the very beginning. Why? Well,
01:10:55
let's go down the list. You know, they discovered the bodies. The murders didn't look like a robbery gone bad.
01:11:00
They both talked about there must have been a break-in. There were no signs of any forced entry at the house. There was
01:11:06
an overkill situation. No burglar would do something like that. And cops became even more suspicious when the night
01:11:13
after the murder, Sebastian and a thief were spotted at a local video store renting movies. They didn't seem at all
01:11:20
phased by the gruesome murder scene they had they had discovered. And police were
01:11:24
also struck by how many details they remembered about their night out on the town. Remember all the waitresses and
01:11:30
all the things, but they couldn't recall what they did when they got home and found Aif's family beaten to death.
01:11:36
Yeah, they weren't exactly acting like teenagers who were in a state of shock. So, let's talk about the defense for a
01:11:43
minute. The boys and their defense team believed that Aif's father was assassinated and that his wife and
01:11:49
daughter were collateral damage. What What can you tell us about that? Well, Aif's father, Tariq, he was prominent
01:11:55
and active in the local Muslim community and he offended more conservative Muslims. And how is that? Well, as an
01:12:04
engineer, Tariq Rafé, he calculated true east and determined that all the mosques
01:12:12
in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, were not properly facing Mecca, you know, and Muslims must
01:12:20
pray toward Mecca. And this is crucial. Uh, and so he said everyone was going to
01:12:27
have to move their prayer mats one degree. doesn't sound like a big deal, but for some this could be blasphemous.
01:12:35
This could be how how dare you? We you're telling us that we've been praying in the wrong direction. Um and
01:12:42
Belleview police ended up getting three tips that the murders may have been related to fundamentalists who wanted
01:12:48
Tariq and his family dead. A Canadian officer told them that an informant had warned him that there was a hit out on
01:12:57
an East Indian family in Belleview. Now, the Rafé family, they're not East Indians, they're from Pakistan, but
01:13:05
still the context and the nature of that tip is strongly suggesting that that they could have been the targets. Right.
01:13:16
Also, the Seattle Police Intelligence Division reported that they believed the family may have been killed by an
01:13:22
extremist group called Alukra. And an FBI informant told them that he knew an imam who ordered the murders and knew a
01:13:33
man who said he committed the murders. He said he even saw a baseball bat in in the trunk of his car and believed that
01:13:40
that was the murder weapon. Um, the cops hadn't even publicized that the weapon was a metal baseball bat yet. I mean,
01:13:48
all this is just so intriguing. It seems like the Belleview police kind of like blew that all off. Do you think it's
01:13:55
possible that they just didn't pay attention to that at all? I believe with all that has happened in the world, this
01:14:01
would this would be checked out. And at the time, I I think it wasn't properly checked out.
01:14:09
On the day that Aif Rafé's parents and his sister were laid to rest, Aif was nowhere to be found, he and his buddy
01:14:17
Sebastian Burns were on a bus on their way to Sebastian's home in Vancouver, Canada.
01:14:25
My dad was very worried about what the Belleview police were doing. He'd called a friend of his who was a lawyer. He
01:14:32
told his friend uh some of the things that the police had been saying to him and it was pretty clear that the police
01:14:39
were treating us as suspects. His friend, who was a lawyer, said if it was my kid, I'd drive down there tonight and
01:14:47
pick him up myself. My dad asked me did I want him to come and drive down that night and pick him up myself after after
01:14:54
he told me that. And I told him, "No, it's okay. We'll catch a bus back the next day." but he was very concerned
01:15:01
that we'd come back to Canada as soon as possible. How did the Belleview police feel about
01:15:06
their prime suspects fleeing the country? This is a part of the story that really drives me freaking crazy.
01:15:14
Um, they didn't have any basis to continue holding them. They'd been interviewed numerous times and the truth
01:15:23
is they didn't flee. These boys didn't flee. A representative from the Canadian consulate informed the Bellev police of
01:15:31
their plans that the boys would be picked up by their father and taken back to Vancouver, British Columbia. And they
01:15:37
said, "Is that all right?" And they were told, "Yes, it's all right." She then tells the boys, this consulate officer
01:15:45
tells the boys, "It's okay to go." And they leave. That is many things in this world, but that is not fleeing. But the
01:15:52
media reported it as them fleeing, which did not make them look good. So there wasn't enough evidence to hold them.
01:15:59
When they got to Canada, did Sebastian's family believe that the boys were innocent? Oh, absolutely. They believed
01:16:06
they this was an impossibility that it that this could have happened. They believed they were innocent and they
01:16:12
were just being set upon by a police department in a wealthy community that was under enormous pressure to solve
01:16:18
this case. But again, the boys didn't really help themselves at all. They behaved very badly. They used money from
01:16:26
the Rafé family estate to rent and then buy a Mustang convertible and go on a road trip. Yeah. And there was a
01:16:34
memorial service for the Rafé family in Vancouver. It was covered by media from around the world. And the boys were
01:16:42
there and and they decided to when they came out of the mosque to to run to a car and they were laughing and covering
01:16:49
up their faces and it was just a shocking shocking moment. What was so funny, Aif?
01:17:00
I guess you know it was the media that was funny and it was it was the the sheer grotesqueness of I mean these were
01:17:07
people who were literally chasing me down to ask me why won't you cooperate with the police? Um, I guess the sheer
01:17:16
gall, I suppose, of of being chased down at a memorial service and asked questions by reporters who really cared
01:17:26
nothing, I suspect, for my family, for the murders, for anything but getting a rise essentially, out of me. Uh, it just
01:17:37
seemed it just seemed absolutely grotesque. And I I suppose I couldn't help laughing at it.
01:17:45
You know, when I watched uh the clips of of that memorial service, it looked to me like Sebastian gave the finger to one
01:17:52
of the camera crews and they just they looked like rock stars walking into some venue. It was just bizarre. But you know
01:18:01
what's interesting is to some people they actually look like traumatized teenagers. Some people believe that if
01:18:08
they were trying to get away with murder, they would have been crying and acting, you know, upset and uh and
01:18:14
weeping at the grave sites, not acting like like the idiots that they were acting like. Do you think they were in
01:18:22
shock? Well, there was a behavioral expert who was ready to testify for the defense, but but this man was never
01:18:29
called, and he said that this goofy, bizarre behavior is actually common in extremely traumatic events with boys
01:18:38
whose brains aren't yet fully formed that you'll get that kind of behavior. So, no matter what people believed about
01:18:45
these boys, they became clearly notorious. It seems like everybody knew who they were and what they were
01:18:51
suspected of doing. I mean, Sebastian testified that he w he now is almost like the best he and Aif were the best
01:18:59
known men in British Columbia because of all the the media coverage. He couldn't
01:19:04
get a job and he couldn't go back to college and Aif couldn't get back to school due due to the attention of this
01:19:11
case. So, they ended up they rent a house in Vancouver with two high school friends, including a close friend who
01:19:17
ends up playing an important role in this case, Jimmy Moshi. Uh, and they would play loud music all night long.
01:19:25
People would call the RCMP, the the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Yeah. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And and
01:19:32
the RCMP at this point decides, you know, let's open up our own investigation, right? And so they decide
01:19:38
to bug the house that the boys were living in. They also bugged uh Sebastian's cell phone. And uh yeah, and
01:19:47
they they realized that that they were smart boys and that they had to be smarter than the boys. So they used what
01:19:54
they were what was called in Canada at that point the Mr. Big operation. Detective Bob Thompson told us you had
01:20:02
committed the perfect murder. There was no evidence at the house linking you to this crime. And if you hadn't gone back
01:20:10
to Canada and gotten involved in this undercover operation, you never would have been arrested. Do
01:20:17
you think about that? Oh, I think about that often. And that sting operation would prove to be the boy's undoing.
01:20:25
That's next time on Killer Conversation. 48 hours Killer Conversation is hosted and produced by me, Judy Ryback. Our
01:20:35
story editor is Mora Walls. Alan Pang oversees recording, mixing, and sound design, fact-checking, and additional
01:20:43
production support from Rebecca Laflam. And special thanks to 48 hours executive
01:20:48
producer Judy Tyiggard and Paramount Podcast Vice President Megan Marcus. Follow and listen to Killer Conversation
01:20:56
on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked this episode, please rate and review on Apple
01:21:04
Podcasts or Spotify. Follow Killer Conversation on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.