This week for the True Crime Wednesday feature, I’m breaking down the first episode of the Confession Tapes series on Netflix. As with the previous documentary series I have covered, I’m going to break down the information from the episode followed by any additional information I researched and finally end with my opinion and take. Episode one is titled True East Part 1, so I am going to include additional research after the second part.
True East Part 1
On July 13th, 1994 at 2:01 am a 911 call was placed requesting assistance. From the 911 call, it is reported that the two boys believed there was a break-in and the parents were deceased. At 2:30 a.m., Bob Thompson receives a phone call requesting his presence at the crime scene. The residence was of the Rafay family. They had recently moved into the house in Bellevue and there were boxes throughout the residence. Mrs. Rafay was found facedown in the downstairs family room. Dr. Rafay was found in his room, blood splatter covered the room. Basma, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Rafay, was found clinging to life in her room. Basma would later die from her injuries. All three victims had experienced blunt force trauma. They had been discovered by Atif Rafay (Dr. and Mrs. Rafay’s son) and Sebastian Burns (Atif’s best friend). Since the boys were the only witnesses, they were brought down to the station for questioning.
Sarah Isaacs, Sebastian’s former girlfriend, describes Sebastian as bright, a good student but a lazy one. Sebastian likes to talk, debate, share, and tell people how he feels. Sarah had dated Sebastian from 12th grade through their first year of college. Sarah describes Atif as an achiever. She believes that Atif was happy to fulfill the expectations his parents had for him. The Rafay family had been living in North Vancouver prior to their move to Bellevue, Washington. Dr. Rafay and his wife were highly educated individuals. Mrs. Rafay has a master’s degree and Dr. Rafay’s doctorate was in engineering. This is believed to be part of the reason Atif chose to attend Cornell University. Basma had been disabled as a child due to contracting spinal meningitis. The Rafays had only been living in Bellevue for 5 days prior to the murders.
Sebastian and Atif were described as an odd pairing of friends. They looked from the outside as the type to not be friends. However, despite appearances, they were the best of friends. Sebastian was living in Vancouver while Atif was at Cornell. Mrs. Rafay had said that Atif should come to visit them in Bellevue, and Sebastian had tagged along for that visit. Thompson acknowledges that everyone reacts differently to trauma, however, he found the behaviors of the boys odd. Thompson describes Atif as nonchalant and finds it strange that he didn’t check on his sister when he heard her from the other room. Atif also seemed concerned about a Walkman that was missing, unlike his parents’ murder. Sebastian, according to Thompson, seemed put out by having to be interviewed by police. This was the only red flag for investigators.
When checking the alibi, investigators found it strange that someone remembered them from each of their stops after the movies that night. Thompson remembers the particular things that caught his attention. The first thing that Thompson flagged was the fact that when Sebastian called 911 he reported a break-in, not a murder. Thompson believes the house was staged to look like a break-in due to the fact that boxes appeared to be knocked over but not riffled through. At the Keg restaurant, the waiter remembered them ordering a salad and wine. Thompson believes they ordered the alcohol so they would have to be carded. At the all-night diner the waitress remembered them for ordering a Coke and fries, and then leaving a $10 tip. The doorman at The Weathered Wall, a nightclub, remembered not letting them in because it was 20 minutes to close. While individually these things don’t look like anything, Thompson believes when added together it looks like the boys planned to commit the murder. After the interviews, the boys were put up in a motel, left with investigators’ contact information, and told that the investigators would be in touch.
Sarah had been woken by her parents, who informed her about Atif’s family after reading about it. Sarah was concerned about whether or not Sebastian’s parents were aware of what happened, so she reached out to his father. Because of her previous attempts to reach Sebastian at his parents’ house, Dave, Sebastian’s father, joked that Sebastian wasn’t home yet to Sarah when answering her call. This alerted Sara to the fact that they probably hadn’t heard the news yet. Dave received a call from his son at 9 p.m. that evening. Sebastian had stated that the police had put them up in a motel for the time being. Dave wanted to pick up the boys and bring them back to their house. Sebastian expressed that they would have to notify the police before leaving. According to Sarah, the boys had been sequestered by the Bellevue police for three days. During that period of time, they were questioned at the Bellevue Police Department’s discretion.
Bizarre Behavior
Sebastian’s mother had the forethought to phone the Canadian consulate to make sure that Bellevue police had been consulted about the boys going back to Vancouver. The consulate confirmed that the police had been notified. Sarah believes that the Bellevue police used dirty tactics when they told the press that the boys had fled the country. She believes that this was the first sign that things weren’t going to go well. When the boys arrived in Vancouver, the Seattle news was airing funeral coverage for the Rafay family. Dave stated that Atif had an emotional outburst about not being there for the ceremony of interment for his family.
James Konat, Washington State Senior Prosecutor, claims that Atif’s outage of not being informed of the burial is fake. He makes known that anyone that is remotely familiar with the Muslim faith knows that the dead must be buried in three days and the family is responsible for washing the bodies, as well as preparing them for burial. Konat also points out that there was a ceremony in British Columbia months later. At that ceremony, a reporter asked Atif why he wouldn’t talk to the police as he and Sebastian entered the mosque. A few minutes later Atif and Sebastian came out of the building laughing and being playful before they ran to their vehicle driving off. In the public’s opinion, this behavior confirmed that they were the murderers.
While the public believes they are murderers Ken Klonsky a wrongful convictions scholar confirms that their behavior is a semi-normal reaction for kids who have been through a traumatic event. He states that if they had been serious killers, they would have been by the gravesite putting on a show by crying. From Klonsky’s observations, the boys were a bunch of goofballs in shock from the trauma. Plus, it needs to be remembered that there is no set standard for how someone is to behave after such a tragedy. Brian, Hutchinson, Canadian National Post Reporter, acknowledges that the story was compelling, and reporters were skeptical of their innocence. These doubts as well as well as information were seeded by law enforcement. Sarah confirms that the boys were demonized by the press. They had been made to look like criminal masterminds and evil geniuses. This portrayal inspired a lot of hatred from the public. Thompson continues to fan these flames in the episode.
A big thing to Thompson was the boys’ love of Nietzsche. Loretta Fisher, Atif’s girlfriend, believes that both boys are well-read young men. Atif has sent her essays that he had written on various topics. Loretta through conversations with Atif, learned the aspects of Nietzsche that the boys enjoyed were about freedom of spirit and freedom of thought. Thompson on the other hand claims that they are examples of Nietzsche’s Superman Theory. The Superman Theory states that there are people who were elevated above others and they were superior beings to others. Some believed that the motive for the murders was money. They used the fact that Atif collected and spent on an American life insurance policy on a spree as well as a road trip for him and Sebastian as evidence of that.
Mr. Big
The RCMP used the Mr. Big technique normally with cold murder cases where they had a suspect but not enough evidence. Law enforcement would disguise themselves as fingers from the underground. As they would get close to a suspect, they would tell them that their boss “Mr. Big” would tell the suspect that they were bringing heat to the organization via association. Mr. Big would press the suspect on why they were suspected of murder and to tell him exactly what happened. The “Mr. Big” stings were meant to extract a confession. These operations would last months at a time.
The RCMP targeted Sebastian because they believed he couldn’t read people as well as Atif; making him the easier target. Sebastian was seen as a killer in Canada and unable to obtain a job. The RCMP had officers pose as mobsters to get close to him. Due to his circumstances the fact that two mobsters took an interest in him was attractive. Sebastian denied to the undercover officers that he had murdered the Rafays many times.
The Informants
There had been discussion that the Rafays were murdered by a fundamentalist. Dr. Rafay had spoken about Islam in the West, which had upset the more conservative Muslims. Dr. Rafay had also found that the mosques didn’t face Mecca and that they needed to move their prayer rugs 1 to 1 ½ degrees to face true east. There had been other law enforcement agencies that reached out to the Bellevue police. However, none of them were taken under serious consideration by Bellevue police.
One tip came from an RCMP officer. The officer had an informant tell them that there was a hit out for a Pakistani family living in Bellevue, Washington. This tip had been received before the Rafay murders had happened. Another tip came from the Seattle police. They had contacted Bellevue to inform them that they believed an organization called Al-Fuqra was involved. The FBI even provided a tip to the Bellevue police. An FBI informant had come forward with information on who murdered the Rafays and how. They had known that the murder weapon was a baseball bat before police had figured that out. The informant had provided a list of names and other details on the perpetrators and had this information within days of the murders.
Al-Fuqra is a U.S.-based terrorist organization. According to a 1998 U.S. State Department report, Fuqra has attacked a variety of targets that they view as enemies of Islam. This included Muslims whom the group regarded as heretics. The FBI has noted that Fuqra had likely committed a similar murder of an east Indian family in Washington in 1984. The slain family had been close friends with the president of Alpha Engineering. Alpha Engineering was where Dr. Rafay had been working when the murders occurred. Hutchinson believes that in a post-9/11 world, these tips would have been followed up on.
Konat doesn’t believe that an organization would kill a whole family over one man’s belief that True East was off by 1 – 1 ½ degrees. Klonsky doesn’t believe the murders had anything to do with Islam or the Muslim religion. He thinks it has to do with the way people take these ideas to the extreme. The police felt that the FBI informant wasn’t credible due to the length of the list they had provided. Thompson is dismissive of everything that doesn’t fit his narrative.
There was physical/DNA evidence at the scene that didn’t match the Rafay family or Sebastian. There was a hair found in Dr. Rafay’s room as well as blood stains in the garage. Through interviews with the neighbors, the police were able to narrow down the time of the murders to between 8:50-9:50 p.m. This was the time period in which Sebastian and Atif were at the movies. The police had done a luminal test on the downstairs shower and it lit up. They retrieved 22 hairs all matching Sebastian from the shower. They had also found underwear belonging to both Sebastian and Atif in the wash they were the only items in there. They had already gone through the spin cycle; the police had come up empty after testing. There wasn’t enough evidence for an arrest, so Bellevue partnered with the RCMP for a “Mr. Big” sting. The U.S. had banned the use of this kind of police operation.
The Sting
The Bellevue police created a fake memo stating they were running DNA to create the fake narrative for the RCMP undercover team. Jason Saunders, Appellate Attorney, says Sebastian felt that if a person is innocent there would be no reason for their DNA to be at the crime scene. Sebastian stressed that he was innocent several times to the “Mr. Big” undercover law enforcement officer. Michael Levine, “Mr. Big” expert, explains that Sebastian’s reaction when confronted is exactly what he would do. If you were told that someone had information, wouldn’t you accept the offer of some powerful figure offering to find what said information is? He points out that if you were told that they were going to arrest you, however, if you tell us everything, you’ll walk away is a surefire way to get a false confession.
I have some serious issues with how Bellevue Police handled themselves. My biggest issue is with the fact that they agreed to work with the RCMP on a “Mr. Big” sting when it is illegal in the US. If that is what they used to convict Atif and Sebastian, I question why it was allowed. If the practice is banned in the US, it shouldn’t be allowed to be used as evidence in a US court. I was quite miffed with Thompson after a while. The hollow defense of his dismissive attitude quickly became old. I would rather a law enforcement officer be like, “Hey I’m human and with my training and experience I came to this conclusion. However, I can see where someone else looking at the same evidence may come to a different conclusion based on their experience.” I know that people don’t like to admit they are wrong, yet we’re human meaning each of us is flawed. There is nothing wrong with not being perfect. Our flaws are what make us beautiful.
Next week for the Missing Person Wednesday feature, I’m highlighting the Doe Network Profile of Glenn Lane Towery. Until then keep sleuthing; Nerd out!
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