Crime Stories TV - The Vancouver Sun - Vancouver Outlook online - The Confession Tapes 2018 -
A quiet suburban town undone by an unspeakable crime. Crime Stories: Twisted Plot
Twenty-year-old Basma Rafay barely alive. Fifty-six-year-old Sultana Rafay is lying dead on the family room floor. ibid.
A baffling triple homicide [inc Dr Tariq Rafay] and two teenagers with a questionable story. ibid.
Burns and Rafay plead not guilty ... Atif and Sebastian are sentenced to three consecutive life terms. ibid.
Rafay and Burns guilty of murder, face life in prison. The Vancouver Sun headline
What’s the next legal move for Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay, the former West Vancouver residents who’ve been behind bars for nearly two decades?
According to their lawyer, David Koch, the plan is to take their case to US federal court.
This comes in the wake of last Thursday’s decision by Washington State’s top court to deny the pair’s petition for a review of their failed bid in appeal court last July to overturn their triple-murder convictions.
In 2004, Burns and Rafay were found guilty of the murders of Rafay’s parents and autistic sister inside their suburban Seattle home in 1994 and sentenced to 99-year life terms. Vancouver Outlook online article 9th March 2013
We found Mrs Rafay face down on the ground; she had blunt force trauma to the head. From that room we went upstairs to Dr Rafay’s room – there was blood spatter, brain matter, the entire room was covered in debris from the murder of Dr Rafay. And then we went into Basma Rafay’s room, the daughter of Dr Rafay, she was still alive, and she later died at the hospital that morning. The two people that found them were Atif, Rafay’s son, and his best friend Sebastian Burns. The Confession Tapes I: True East part 1, rozzer, Netflix 2017
Teen Genius May Have Committed Perfect Murder, Say Cops: He’s been holed up in Canada since his family was brutally slain – and US police can’t touch him! ibid. newspaper headline
The Royal Canadian mounted police developed an undercover investigative technique called the Mr Big technique … The police officers disguise themselves as underworld figures. ibid. commentary
According to a 1998 US state department report, ‘Fuqra members have attacked a variety of targets that they view as enemies of Islam, including Muslims they regard as heretics’. The FBI noted that Fuqra likely committed a similar murder of an east Indian family living in Washington in 1984. The slain family were close friends of the president of Alpha Engineering. Alpha Engineering is the same firm that Tariq Rafay worked for when he and his family were murdered in 1994. ibid. captions
Defence accuses Mounties of illegal tactics. The Confession Tapes II: True East part 2, The Province newspaper headline 29 July 2003
The defence attorney says police ignored a fingerprint on this shower door, and they ignored a blood spot in the shower with DNA from Tariq Rafay and someone else, someone else who didn’t match any of the victims or Burns or Rafay. ibid. television news report
If they [Rafay & Burns] did do that incredibly bloody murder, why could they [rozzers] not come up with any forensics that was indisputably linked to the murder? Nothing. ibid. defence dude