The Confession Tapes (2017) s01e02 Episode Script
True East, Part 2
[rain falling.]
[thunder rumbling.]
[man.]
After I lost my parents I felt very unmoored and crazy.
That night in July when that happened, I-I It I can't even describe it.
All standards were lost at that point of reality.
The unimaginable happened.
The world that Mr.
Big creates is this incredibly elaborate one, in which this international crime organization has this enormous power and We were, like, really young and reality had, in part, come from films like Goodfellas.
It creates this pervasive illusion that the only options you have are the ones that they're holding out.
[man.]
This undercover operation doesn't work unless the killers have a problem with which they need help.
So, Al, in no uncertain terms, told Burns that if he wanted his help getting rid of that hair and DNA evidence in Bellevue, he was going to have to tell him exactly what went down so that he knew what he needed to get rid of.
[device clicks.]
[Al.]
So, when'd you fucking do the dirty deed? [Burns.]
During the movie.
[Al.]
See you left that out, see? I'm trying to check up on things.
You didn't tell me that you left the movie You left during the movie? Sorry, I thought you would've known that just from-- I thought you'd just take it for granted.
[Al.]
No, I didn't take fuck all for granted.
So, they got a story.
The story's false.
The story doesn't match any evidence.
It doesn't make any sense.
They do whatever they can to obtain a confession.
[Al.]
So, what's this about the shower? I took a shower to clean off, you know, blood and that kind of stuff.
The boys were called "people of interest" for, at that point, months.
And the murder weapon was in some of the news reports.
[Al.]
So, how do you know these weapons--? Well, what'd you use? A bat.
[Al.]
Okay, how did you know they didn't find it? Well, I-I I don't know, but, um pretty early on, they kept saying that they haven't found the murder weapon yet.
[indistinct chatter.]
They kept saying they hadn't-- in the press and stuff and whatever-- They kept saying they hadn't found the murder weapon yet.
And that could be just some front or something, but I [Al.]
They're not gonna find your clothes? They're not gonna--? Is there blood on your clothes? [Burns.]
Um No, there wasn't.
Those clothes are gone anyhow, but, no, there was no blood on them.
-[Al.]
There was no blood on 'em? -No.
[Al.]
How do you fuckin' hit someone with a baseball bat, have to shower and have no blood on you? You do it naked.
[Al.]
Fuck, see, I didn't know that either.
See, fuckin'-- You're holding fucking things out on me that-- No, what you're saying to me, like "Oh, well, what do I need to know?" And-- [Al.]
Well, yeah.
I wanna know.
I don't give two fucks if you did it naked.
That's thinking smart.
It's little details like that that are gonna fuck us up in the end.
See what I'm saying? You see why I get a little pissed off? 'Cause I can't afford fuckups.
Okay, actually, I just remembered one detail.
Sorry.
Um I had a gonch on.
[Al.]
Great.
Where's those gonch? Just, like, in some garbage can or something.
[Al.]
They're not the fucking boxer shorts that are in the dryer -or whatever they're talking about there? -No.
Definitely fucking not.
[Al.]
Okay.
[Levin.]
If you looked at the video, Burns is doing typical criminal braggadocio.
"Now let me break off here for a second.
" Criminal braggadocio I'll use a case, for example.
D.
E.
A.
headquarters asked me to play Mr.
Big in an undercover sting operation targeting corrupt D.
E.
A.
agents.
I posed as Mr.
Big, a Mafioso.
Met one of these D.
E.
A.
agents.
And he so wanted to impress me that he said things on camera that would've gotten him indicted for homicide or conspiracy to murder.
Like Burns.
Only this is an experienced D.
E.
A.
undercover agent, not a 19-year-old.
And the reason I say that is to show you how vulnerable people are in the right situation to brag.
Even though it's a lie.
Criminal braggadocio is common as dirt.
[Al.]
How solid's Atif? Solid, man.
[Al.]
Yeah? As long as he's not gonna fuckin' break down after and say, -"Oh, fuckin' Sebastian--" -Jesus Christ.
Al, man.
How long do you think we've been enduring all this stuff, dude? Really, like, this-- I-- I, really-- I do not think that anything that-- that's gonna happen to us now is gonna compare to that fuckin'-- It was-- It was quite intense around those days.
I mean, we'd just sit around and feel kind of sick, just all the time.
[laughs.]
You know what I mean? 'Cause, like, you know, it was just rough and, like, I mean Whatever.
Those would be the days-- Like, cops were saying to his fucking face, like, [in deep voice.]
"Atif we know that you know who did this or that you know something about it and you're not telling us," and stuff.
And I'm like-- [Al.]
I gotta meet him before too long.
I'll tell you that right now.
'Cause when we enact this plan in motion, I gotta make sure that cocksucker's solid.
I mean, fuckin' solid.
Well, I haven't told him about it yet, but [Al.]
Well, no, we'll be telling him together.
They demanded that he bring in Atif because they needed the corroboration.
[Burns.]
This is, uh Al over here.
-[Atif.]
Hello.
-[Al.]
How you doin', man? [Atif.]
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
The entire undercover operation was focused on Burns, but Rafay was never there.
The first time that Rafay ever met Gary and Al was the morning after Burns confessed to these murders.
[Al.]
I don't know what Sebastian's told you about me.
Um Well, he just introduced me, said your name's Al [Al.]
Before that, before today.
Um That, uh, you're a businessman of some kind? It felt like these mobsters had sort of Alice in Wonderland -style-- just opened up this whole 'nother view of what the surface of the world looked like, so that, all of a sudden, I fully believed that the police were actively framing us and that these guys had the only way of keeping us from being arrested.
[Al.]
You and Sebastian are in a little bit of trouble.
In fact you and him are so close to goin' to jail right now.
It's fuckin' unreal.
And I know that 'cause of different things I know and I've read.
Why did you do this? [chuckles.]
Well, um Uh, I guess the reason we did anything was to, um I guess set ourselves up so that we could I guess become richer and more prosperous and more successful and [Al.]
Hey, don't be embarrassed about it.
[clears throat.]
Everything I do is for money.
[man.]
This particular Mr.
Big operation was the youngest boys ever manipulated.
No one really considered the fact that these were 19-year-old boys going before extraordinarily manipulative federal agents of Canada, the very best that they have.
[Al.]
Who chose the bat? -I can't remember.
-We mutually did, I assume.
Most of this was mutual, I assume.
[Al.]
Why wouldn't you get a fuckin' .
22? Pop, pop, pop.
We don't know where to get firearms.
Tell us where to buy it back then, and, you know, silencer and all this crap.
And I'll tell you something else, okay? One thing we didn't know-- Gunshot residue test, like, immediately after.
-It was brutal.
-Yeah.
I guess you may have known about that, but, at the time, I-- I was fuckin' introduced to that concept when they did the test on us.
They stashed the weapon, the Walkman that Atif claims to have noticed that was missing in-between observing his murdered parents, and the VCR that they yanked out of the-- out of the holder that it was in.
They put them in a series of different dumpsters in Seattle.
So, the baseball bat was never recovered.
Uh, and there was no way it was ever going to be recovered.
And-And-And, again, that's an example of the planning that went into the way these murders were committed.
[Al.]
Jimmy's another guy.
What does Jimmy know about this? What happened to you in the States.
-Tell me.
-Um, he knows what happened.
And then the last scenario was them bringing Jimmy Miyoshi over to talk to Al.
And Miyoshi, he was the only one who was smart enough to not make any concessions about having been involved in this plan.
[Al.]
What I like about you so far is that, uh when they were going down to the States, you didn't fuckin' rat 'em out.
-[Miyoshi.]
There's nothing to rat about.
-[Al.]
What? You could've ratted 'em out.
-[Miyoshi.]
Huh? -[Al.]
You could've ratted them out.
[Miyoshi.]
I'm just saying that there's nothing to rat about.
Do I believe that he was in on some of the planning? I do.
Jimmy Miyoshi was the last piece to the puzzle.
[Burns.]
He basically just wants to know, like-- confirm with you, I guess, did you know, like, what you know, was going to go on in the States kind of thing? [Miyoshi.]
Why don't you talk for me, then? [Al.]
This isn't gonna work.
[Burns.]
Jimmy, I know that I can trust you with my life.
You know what I mean? He doesn't know that, all right? And so, if you explain, "Yes, I knew about it in advance.
I didn't say shit to anybody," okay, It just shows that, basically, you know, you didn't fuck me up.
[Al.]
Did you know about it? -Huh? -[Miyoshi.]
Do you want me to speak loud-- [Al.]
No, I don't want you to speak loud.
You're sitting there like you're a little fucking whipped puppy dog.
Do you know who killed the parents? -[Miyoshi.]
Yeah.
-[Al.]
Who? -[Miyoshi.]
Is that all you want? -[Al.]
Yeah.
[Miyoshi.]
And I just want I just want you to explain to me exactly the purposes of you wanting to know.
Is that so we can establish this kind of? [Al.]
Totally for trust.
-[Miyoshi.]
Totally for trust? -[Al.]
Totally.
[Miyoshi.]
Okay.
-Yes, I do know.
-[Al.]
Okay, who did it? [Miyoshi.]
Right there.
[Al.]
Yeah, Sebastian.
I knew that all along, so you're not fucking telling me somethin' I don't know.
And, as we like to say, that was the beginning of the end.
[woman.]
Tonight, police charged the two 19-year-olds with three counts of aggravated murder [man.]
murdering his father, mother, and sister.
[woman.]
They say they have a wire-tapped confession from the pair [man.]
Once they had the confession, the Canadians made an arrest on Burns and Rafay for the conspiracy to commit the murder.
[woman.]
Got anything to say Sebastian? [man.]
And that confession was now probable cause, based on the physical evidence that we had in Bellevue to get warrants for their arrest for murder in the state of Washington.
[woman.]
Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay will likely be held in custody for some time while officials in both countries work out legal details.
[Konat.]
I had to make arguments in Canadian courts about why Burns and Rafay should be extradited to the United States.
They spent more than six years fighting that extradition.
But, ultimately, the extradition was accomplished, and they were back in the state of Washington so that they could be brought to trial.
[man.]
Rafay, after years, was offered a "sweetheart" soft time in a Canadian prison for turning on Sebastian.
As he told me-- because I wanted to make sure I heard it from him, and I did-- he said, "I couldn't do that.
It just isn't the truth.
" And he never did.
Jimmy Miyoshi was immediately threatened with being a co-conspirator unless he went along with the sweetheart deal and fingered both of them.
[Konat.]
We spent about four and a half months putting testimony on so that all of the defense lawyers could understand how this undercover operation works.
And once they did, they were in a position to argue to the judge that it should not be admissible.
[Saunders.]
When you go to trial, the only evidence that can come in are things that's lawfully gained.
And you can't force someone to say something that they wouldn't have said otherwise.
That kind of confession should not come in because it's not freely given.
[woman.]
Defense attorneys wanted the tapes thrown out, saying Canadian police used methods illegal in the U.
S.
But because investigators followed Canadian law, the judge said he'll allow it under international treaty.
That motion is denied.
[woman.]
It is a major victory for prosecutors.
There's all kinds of hypotheticals and "what ifs," but that-- that was a very, very key issue in this case.
And, obviously, it was devastating to the two accused that that confession was going to be used against them.
[Dave.]
Sebastian was at first represented by Neil Fox.
And Theresa Olson.
They were really hard working, hard digging defense lawyers.
Theresa Olson went to see Jimmy Miyoshi in Tokyo and came away convinced that Jimmy knew that he'd been leaned on and that he'd like to come back and, uh withdraw his evidence.
Having flown back to Seattle by 7:30 in the morning, she was in to see Sebastian to tell him what she had, uh picked up from Jimmy and how this was going to, uh really turn this case around.
And then the whole other fiasco occurred.
Theresa Olson was observed by no fewer than three corrections officers in the King County Jail having sex with Burns.
I-I didn't see it, but I did read the statements of the three officers who did see it, and it was for real.
[man.]
The sex scandal at the county jail could delay the trial again.
[woman.]
Olson's lapse in judgment cost the case time, and it cost the county money.
[man.]
How much money may have to be re-spent? Uh, a lot.
I don't have any way of-- There's no way for me to give you an estimate of what we, as tax payers, paid for the representation of Ms.
Olson and Mr.
Fox for the last 34 months.
[Klonsky.]
Of course, Sebastian gets blamed for this.
That was a horrifically stupid thing to do.
But here's a young man who's been in prison for years.
And nobody's resisting.
I think it's just part of the strangeness of this case.
The focus has to be whether Mr.
Burns and Mr.
Rafay can have a fair trial.
Um, they deserve to have a fair trial.
The allegations involving Ms.
Olson constitute a distraction to that.
[Dave.]
And so, Fox and Olson were taken off the case.
Theresa vanished almost immediately.
Less than 24 hours after Theresa gets on a plane coming back, all excited about what she's been able to extricate from Jimmy Miyoshi That's gone.
So, the case got delayed for another 18 months, two years.
While new lawyers Jeff Robinson and Sam Richardson came in.
When police officers pretend to be mobsters, when they lie, threaten, and intimidate teenagers into manipulating them into a make-believe world of organized crime, that creates the recipe for a false confession.
During all of those years, we did not know the evidence that had been gathered against them.
I learned what the evidence really was I'm gonna say 2002.
Jeff Robinson said there's nothing but the confessions.
And I thought, "Oh, well.
Thank God.
" Because these confessions are nonsense.
According to the story that Atif and Sebastian made up, Sebastian went around the house, clubbed everybody to death, while Atif sat down in the living room and did nothing.
[Al.]
Where was he when all this was goin' on? That's what I wanna know.
He's, like around the corner.
He didn't physically see it.
Um, and, like, the same thing with his sister.
One of the problems with that theory, uh, was that there was blood spatter in Mr.
Rafay's bedroom.
And the wall showed the outline of a body, which showed, in all likelihood, that someone was standing there, along with the person who was killing Mr.
Rafay.
So, the story that Atif was sitting down somewhere in the living room and Sebastian was going around killing everybody, it wouldn't have held up.
[woman.]
There are all kinds of internal inconsistencies and you know, things that just don't make sense and don't match with the physical evidence.
They were asleep upstairs, the dad and the sister.
The sister who, basically, um yeah, was standing up and walking around or whatever, so This is a key marker of a false confession.
[Al.]
Where'd you guys get the baseball bat from? I think it was, like, just kickin' around or something, like [Al.]
You didn't go buy it in a store down there where they can trace it back to you guys? No? -[Al.]
Who bought the bat? -It was bought in Bellingham.
-[Al.]
You were both -We were both in the store.
[Isaacs.]
It changes over time.
It changes from Sebastian to Atif.
It's a It's a childish story.
[Al.]
Hopefully, they don't empty the dumpster on Tuesday morning.
That's all I'm thinking of.
And yours and your friend's clothes are both in there? In dumpsters.
In different dumpsters all over? Not-- Not like-- Yours and his aren't together? Each article was in a different one.
-[Al.]
And what'd you do with your clothes? -Uh Hucked out the window, I think.
Those-- Those ones I did.
Or-Or, at least, the socks and We had gloves.
They got hucked out the window.
[Al.]
Why do you say all the clothes went in the dumpster, he says they're out the window? I'm assuming that "out the window" is the most colloquial term for saying, "I tossed the crap out.
" As an undercover agent, what would I say to Rafay and Burns? I'm trying to understand.
I'm trying to believe their confession.
"Tell me how the murder of your mother went down.
This is really important.
Tell me how it went down.
" They didn't do that.
Now, we cut back to Sultana's photo.
She was obviously murdered with the shawl over her head facing east.
I mean, if you ever want a red flashing light that said, "This is an Islamic fundamentalist based murder," that's it.
It was well into the 2000s before I realized there's no DNA evidence.
There's no fingerprints.
No weapons.
I don't really think I found out about the Mr.
Big situation until the trial.
[woman.]
Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns are now 27 years old and just about to stand trial for a triple murder that happened when they were teenagers.
The two friends are accused of beating Rafay's parents and autistic sister to death, nine years ago in Bellevue.
I thought "Yippee, I'm getting out of work for a while.
" 'Cause I work on my knees at Boeing.
"Wow, I'll get a break for a while.
" It was the biggest thing that happened in Bellevue and probably still is, you know? [Konat.]
Mr.
Burns and Mr.
Rafay acted in tandem to extinguish, to systematically wipe out, if you will, the Rafay family in July of 1994.
Their disenchantment [woman.]
James Konat was a snappy dresser.
[laughs.]
He always looked so nice.
Yeah.
The women on the trial loved it.
I wouldn't say that the RCMP made my mind up, because my mind was pretty much already made up even before I saw that.
But I liked Mr.
Big.
[laughs.]
That was quite interesting.
Part of the reason why they get these targets involved in criminality is to devalue them in front of a jury.
They want to make this person look like someone who's not worthy of reasonable doubt in a fair trial.
[man.]
Do you want a stout? -Sebastian.
-No, thanks.
[Isaacs.]
The earlier tapes don't look good for the RCMP.
They're menacing and threatening and bullying.
And, um that comes through.
Did I tell ya' that fucker said, uh he needed the money for something and had a real fuckin' attitude? I told him, uh Next time it happened I'd chop his fuckin' old lady's hands off.
And fuckin', uh till he paid, she'd fuckin' sit there and bleed.
This guy with his ponytail and his greasy look and, uh "So, what the fuck are you telling me? Fuck! I didn't come on last night's fucking train, fuckhead!" They talked like that to be threatening and intimidating and, uh, to add to their image.
All these guys had been trained in somebody's theater school.
[Al.]
How do you fucking, uh, hit someone with a baseball bat, have to shower, and have no blood on you? [Sebastian.]
You do it naked.
Once they saw the tapes, the jury was shocked.
When someone confesses to murdering three people, that pretty much I mean, that really solidified the whole case, as far as I was concerned.
You know, I was open-minded at first, but the one kid from Canada had bragged about it.
[Al.]
Both you guys woke up one day and said, "Hey, let's go off your family and fuckin' get all their money?" [Sebastian.]
Basically.
It was quite disgusting, actually.
I was disgusted at Sebastian for being so flippant about the whole thing.
Even if the content of the confession is demonstrated to be false, juries think, "I would never do that.
I would never make incriminating statements, false statements about myself.
Only a guilty person would do that.
" And that's part of the negative power of confessions evidence.
The original defense attorneys wanted me to testify as to criminal braggadocio.
Now, enter new attorneys.
They said, "Well, we're going with the fear defense.
" And, since they claimed that they were frightened into confession, then everything I wrote, my whole review, was moot.
It was the judge that said, "We don't need Levine's testimony.
" Because you don't need an expert to tell you that somebody's afraid or not when it's on video.
And I was out.
The judge prohibited the defense from raising all kinds of defenses that, uh they should have been able to say.
"It could've been these people.
It could've been that person.
" But none of it was allowed in by the judge.
So, we really had a situation where what the jury heard was the state's evidence.
[Isaacs.]
They just had these statements, and they chose to believe them.
And they chose to not believe all of the other substantial hard evidence that had been supplied.
[man.]
The defense 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.
Whose DNA got mixed with Dr.
Rafay's blood in the shower? Doesn't it have to be the killer? [man.]
Robinson says police found an unknown fingerprint on this door, another blood spot in the garage.
Again, blood from Tariq Rafay mixed with blood from a different, unidentified person.
[Levin.]
If they did do it, that incredibly bloody murder, why could they not come up with any forensics that was undisputably linked to the murder? Nothing.
Zero.
If they did do it, how come, in the hundreds, if not, a thousand hours of audio that I listened to-- that they didn't know they were being taped-- it was in their car, in their bedroom-- how come they never even mentioned it? Sebastian [Levin.]
The fact that these prosecutors were willing to put in as evidence that they're devotees of Nietzsche, who believes that it's okay for people to kill each other-- as evidence-- tells you really how bad this is.
[Hutchinson.]
They also were the subjects of some betrayal by, at least, one of their friends, Jimmy Miyoshi.
What did Atif tell you when he discussed what had occurred at the time of the murders? I remember him telling me, after his mother was struck, that he went and got the VCR, while Sebastian had gone in into, uh his father's bedroom.
And when they had left, that his sister was um, I guess, still alive.
[Konat.]
Jimmy Miyoshi was one of the most obstinate and uncooperative, soft-spoken, polite witnesses I've ever had.
With the time that you were living in Ontario, going to school, and then the time when you moved to Japan, there was a total of about six years where nobody contacted you about this case.
Yes.
[Robinson.]
And when this case came back into your life, it ended up touching your job, didn't it? Yes, eventually, it did affect my job.
[Konat.]
The only reason he ever came back to testify was because he was working for an American corporation in Japan.
And we called them and told them about his role and our our concern about how involved he might've been in this.
And his employer said to him, "You need to go to the United States of America and cooperate with the authorities and do what you need to do to make this right.
" And that's the only reason we ever got Jimmy Miyoshi back here.
[Robinson.]
And it was clear to you that if you refused to come here and testify, your company would find a reason to fire you -in the immediate future? -Yes.
That's what I believed, yes.
[Robinson.]
I'll ask if this is a copy of an email that you sent to Mr.
Konat the King County prosecutors.
In the first paragraph, sir, did you state the following? "I did not believe you had it in yourselves to damage careers that my wife and I have worked considerably hard to rebuild from our situation almost ten years ago.
I am not sure what we have to live for at this point, and I am not convinced that we can ever recover from this.
" -Did you write that? -Yes.
[Robinson.]
July 31st, 1995.
I'm going back to that day you were arrested.
One of the things they were telling you is that you could go to jail if you didn't say Sebastian and Atif told you about the murders.
And Sergeant Rinn confirmed that for you.
He told you, "Hey, we'll re-open our conspiracy-to-commit-murder case against you in Canada if you don't come and testify, consistent with your immunity agreement.
" That's what he told you, right? Possibly, yes.
[Robinson.]
Do you recall saying that Atif told you his sister was alive when they left the house after attacking the family? -You said that yesterday, didn't you? -Yes.
[Robinson.]
It's the first time in eight years that you have ever said anything like that, isn't it, sir? I-I probably have mentioned things like that, but not necessarily in those statements.
[Robinson.]
You're making it up as you go along, sir.
That's why you're saying things for the first time yesterday.
No, I don't believe I am.
[Robinson.]
You actually called my office before you came here to testify.
-Didn't you? -[Miyoshi.]
Yes, I did.
[Robinson.]
One of the things you said during that conversation was, "Well, Mr.
Robinson, how would the situation change if I were to be a witness for your side?" You remember saying that? Um No, I don't.
So, from any evidence I've ever read about Jimmy Miyoshi, he largely said what he thought-- what it was they wanted to hear.
[Levin.]
I-I absolutely think nothing of the Jimmy Miyoshi statement.
You can pretty much threaten somebody with prosecution and get them to say anything.
[Konat.]
They're desperate for you to believe that somebody snuck into that house in a very brief period of time and systematically executed this family.
How many times does the evidence have to tell us it's not Sebastian and it's not Atif.
They are desperate for you to ignore the way that they behaved for the 12 months that followed.
We still don't know who committed these murders.
[Dave.]
I was there for the closing.
And when I heard the closing arguments of both sides, I thought, "These kids are gonna be out of here.
" I was convinced that they were gonna be walking free.
She was in her bedroom while Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay were systematically executing her parents.
I thought Konat was rambling, and he was he was angry.
And I'm thinking, "He thinks he's lost this case, and he's trying to pull out the-- whatever he can.
" What this is really all about is, they're upset that they got caught.
And that was what I took away from his closing argument.
I was dead wrong.
[man.]
We, the jury, find the defendant, Glen Sebastian Burns, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Atif Ahmad Rafay, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
[Hutchinson.]
In the end, despite the tight alibis, the lack of physical or forensic evidence, the jury convicted them, and they convicted them for one reason only, and that's because of their confessions.
-[man.]
Your reaction, Mr.
Burns? -Back off.
Back off.
Give us some room.
Thank you.
Found guilty on three counts of homicide.
And then we were there for the sentencing.
[man.]
Uh, Mr.
Burns, I'm obligated at this point to stop and give you an opportunity to make a statement before I sentence you.
If there's something you want to say, I will, uh, certainly consider it.
Mr.
Burns.
Thank you, Your Honor.
My friend and I have been convicted for a crime we did not commit.
There's two things I want to discuss this morning, if possible.
The first is, a few reasons why I think our trial is unfair.
With respect.
I was hoping to make some comments about the evidence.
We were unable to tell this jury about other suspects who knew what the murder weapon was before anybody else did.
We were prosecuted with a tactic that would not be legal in this country.
We were not able to present evidence to answer the state's case.
I was not allowed to give critical testimony that I needed to give to explain this evidence.
We were defending ourselves in this trial with both arms tied behind our backs.
[Konat.]
Burns stood up and said that his two Ivy League educated lawyers didn't handle his case properly, that they didn't give him effective assistance of counsel.
You know, I think most people who understand what the word "hubris" means they oughta put his picture in the dictionary.
I'm certainly I certainly feel sorry for the victims.
I feel sorry for their surviving son.
I feel sorry for their surviving family.
We didn't commit the crime.
We've been found guilty based on the continuing representations of the state and the news media.
It seems that the principal other piece of evidence against us is is arrogance.
Our arrogant personalities.
When the newspaper stories first started to appear about us when I was 18, back in 1994 my stomach would go into knots whenever a story would come out.
I would be inconsolable for the rest of the day.
The way that I got over that was to become cynical and to act tough.
And it's the same way I got over not being able to go to school.
Or work.
Or have a public life.
[woman coughs.]
Atif and I have been convicted for a crime we didn't commit.
We're going to be sentenced for a crime we didn't commit.
Unless somebody does something to stop it.
Your Honor, that's all I have to say.
[Dave.]
Sebastian's statements actually were quite articulate, but for people who were just there for the show and hadn't followed the case, it was written as a deranged rambling.
But it wasn't that way at all.
It was the, uh, thoughts expressed, perhaps not as punchy as they could have been, but when you've spent seven or eight years in various forms of incarceration uh you you didn't perhaps have the, uh, best critical audience.
[Mertel.]
Mr.
Burns, you're, uh you've been, uh uh, given ample opportunity to make your allocution.
Uh It's-It's-- It's chilling, uh, your recitation of what you feel has occurred over these many years.
It's chilling in the lack of remorse that you show for these victims.
I mean, it was virtually a throwaway line that I suspect your attorney suggested to you after the break.
-[Sebastian.]
That's not true.
-But, in any event, it-- You got to talk, Mr.
Burns.
Now, I get to talk.
Okay? You're not immoral.
You're amoral.
You have no moral rudder, whatsoever.
You are an arrogant convicted killer.
You are not a kid, as you so often refer to yourself.
You're an adult, and you will be held responsible as an adult.
You were convicted, Mr.
Burns, based on your own chilling, casual confession.
It is, therefore, the conclusion of this court that you should be sentenced on count one, on count two, and on count three, to life without possibility of parole.
Those three sentences to run consecutively.
Shall we proceed with Mr.
Rafay? I wanna thank you, Your Honor, for the opportunity in speaking.
[sighs.]
Today is a day of anguish for me.
It's not the first.
I want to insist today on the truth that we are innocent.
[voice breaking.]
And I loved my parents.
I revere their memory to this day.
I can't convey to you the mortification that I felt over the course of this trial, the lie that we told, the masks that we put on.
The masks that we put on to survive a situation, an appalling, atrocious situation that was constructed constructed to entice us and elicit from us those very lies and that mask.
I'm tormented by the thought that I've been manipulated somehow into contributing to the fact that my parents' killers, to this day, walk with impunity, that their murders have never been properly investigated.
The loss of my parents devastated me, left me utterly bereft.
I didn't know how to construct-- re-construct my life in the month-- weeks and months that followed.
When I say I loved my parents, I don't mean that I felt merely the feeling of affection that every child, I'm sure, feels for their parents.
I mean that I truly admired my father.
His brilliance, his learning his sincere pleasure in every opportunity at generosity.
I was probably closer to my mother than to any other person than I ever will be.
And the memory of her wit and her charm and her keen human sympathy are dear to me to this day.
And-And they'll be vivid to everyone who knew her, including some of my friends.
I consider having my family the greatest of privileges.
They're with me in my memory today.
I'm gonna continue to struggle for the truth in this case, of our innocence.
Because I won't betray their hopes for me or their expectations of me, which I'm proud to say that they had.
-I'd like to thank this court.
-[Mertel.]
Mr.
Rafay, thank you.
Unlike your colleague, I find you genuinely remorseful, Mr.
Rafay.
Uh I think you do have a moral compass.
Uh Your conviction was-- and I I can't explain it either, why you would do that if it wasn't true.
The difficulty is telling somebody you were lying then, but you're telling the truth now.
Always a difficult proposition.
But you were convicted on your own confessions.
Frightening confessions casually given about how you did these things and why you did it.
In fact, I think one of your remarks was, "This was unfortunate, but it simply had to be done to get what we wanted in life.
" It's the responsibility of this court to sentence you, and I will do that at this time.
On count one, it's life without possibility of parole.
On count two, it's life without possibility of parole.
And on count three, it's life without possibility of parole.
And those three sentences are to run consecutively.
[Hutchinson.]
So many people can't believe that the Mr.
Big technique is allowed to happen in Canada, that police officers are allowed to conduct themselves this way.
And the Canadian Supreme Court has, in the last year or so, thrown out a Mr.
Big conviction.
The Canadian Supreme Court finally said, "From now on, you can't do it.
It's presumed inadmissible in trial.
" But this was years after Sebastian had already been convicted.
[Dave.]
We see him once a month, and uh, it's reasonably pleasant.
We can see him for about four or five hours at a time.
He spent about ten years in solitary confinement.
And solitary confinement is a real brain scrambler.
We saw many changes occurring to him.
You deal with it.
Sometimes, you sleep.
Sometimes, you can't get it out of your mind and you go over it.
"If I had done this, if I had said that.
" Uh Wow.
In prison, there's an initial shock, and then there's there's this frightening sense of unreality.
When that begins to fade away and you enter into a routine, your previous life begins to seem like a-- some sort of a dream.
I think that's very frightening.
And especially the idea that it is gonna continue and continue and continue like that.
After having recently been married, I've had a lot of I guess, opportunity to think about, you know, where my dad was when he was my age and where I am now.
Loretta really changed my life in the sense that there's now something every day that I look forward to doing, which is talking to her.
And gives a whole different shape to my week because I'm always looking forward to seeing her on the weekends.
We always are able to share things, like reading Shakespeare together in the visiting room or working on some issue together.
It changes the whole way in which I think about time and think about what I'm doing.
It's a very strange thing to fall in love and-- and have this beautiful experience happen in prison while you're going through something like this.
[rain falling.]
I had been used to my parents taking care of me and taking care of things in the responsible adult world.
I thought that that this was one of those things that would just be taken care of.
I should have been an adult about it.
Justice will not happen just because you're innocent.
[thunder rumbling.]
[man.]
After I lost my parents I felt very unmoored and crazy.
That night in July when that happened, I-I It I can't even describe it.
All standards were lost at that point of reality.
The unimaginable happened.
The world that Mr.
Big creates is this incredibly elaborate one, in which this international crime organization has this enormous power and We were, like, really young and reality had, in part, come from films like Goodfellas.
It creates this pervasive illusion that the only options you have are the ones that they're holding out.
[man.]
This undercover operation doesn't work unless the killers have a problem with which they need help.
So, Al, in no uncertain terms, told Burns that if he wanted his help getting rid of that hair and DNA evidence in Bellevue, he was going to have to tell him exactly what went down so that he knew what he needed to get rid of.
[device clicks.]
[Al.]
So, when'd you fucking do the dirty deed? [Burns.]
During the movie.
[Al.]
See you left that out, see? I'm trying to check up on things.
You didn't tell me that you left the movie You left during the movie? Sorry, I thought you would've known that just from-- I thought you'd just take it for granted.
[Al.]
No, I didn't take fuck all for granted.
So, they got a story.
The story's false.
The story doesn't match any evidence.
It doesn't make any sense.
They do whatever they can to obtain a confession.
[Al.]
So, what's this about the shower? I took a shower to clean off, you know, blood and that kind of stuff.
The boys were called "people of interest" for, at that point, months.
And the murder weapon was in some of the news reports.
[Al.]
So, how do you know these weapons--? Well, what'd you use? A bat.
[Al.]
Okay, how did you know they didn't find it? Well, I-I I don't know, but, um pretty early on, they kept saying that they haven't found the murder weapon yet.
[indistinct chatter.]
They kept saying they hadn't-- in the press and stuff and whatever-- They kept saying they hadn't found the murder weapon yet.
And that could be just some front or something, but I [Al.]
They're not gonna find your clothes? They're not gonna--? Is there blood on your clothes? [Burns.]
Um No, there wasn't.
Those clothes are gone anyhow, but, no, there was no blood on them.
-[Al.]
There was no blood on 'em? -No.
[Al.]
How do you fuckin' hit someone with a baseball bat, have to shower and have no blood on you? You do it naked.
[Al.]
Fuck, see, I didn't know that either.
See, fuckin'-- You're holding fucking things out on me that-- No, what you're saying to me, like "Oh, well, what do I need to know?" And-- [Al.]
Well, yeah.
I wanna know.
I don't give two fucks if you did it naked.
That's thinking smart.
It's little details like that that are gonna fuck us up in the end.
See what I'm saying? You see why I get a little pissed off? 'Cause I can't afford fuckups.
Okay, actually, I just remembered one detail.
Sorry.
Um I had a gonch on.
[Al.]
Great.
Where's those gonch? Just, like, in some garbage can or something.
[Al.]
They're not the fucking boxer shorts that are in the dryer -or whatever they're talking about there? -No.
Definitely fucking not.
[Al.]
Okay.
[Levin.]
If you looked at the video, Burns is doing typical criminal braggadocio.
"Now let me break off here for a second.
" Criminal braggadocio I'll use a case, for example.
D.
E.
A.
headquarters asked me to play Mr.
Big in an undercover sting operation targeting corrupt D.
E.
A.
agents.
I posed as Mr.
Big, a Mafioso.
Met one of these D.
E.
A.
agents.
And he so wanted to impress me that he said things on camera that would've gotten him indicted for homicide or conspiracy to murder.
Like Burns.
Only this is an experienced D.
E.
A.
undercover agent, not a 19-year-old.
And the reason I say that is to show you how vulnerable people are in the right situation to brag.
Even though it's a lie.
Criminal braggadocio is common as dirt.
[Al.]
How solid's Atif? Solid, man.
[Al.]
Yeah? As long as he's not gonna fuckin' break down after and say, -"Oh, fuckin' Sebastian--" -Jesus Christ.
Al, man.
How long do you think we've been enduring all this stuff, dude? Really, like, this-- I-- I, really-- I do not think that anything that-- that's gonna happen to us now is gonna compare to that fuckin'-- It was-- It was quite intense around those days.
I mean, we'd just sit around and feel kind of sick, just all the time.
[laughs.]
You know what I mean? 'Cause, like, you know, it was just rough and, like, I mean Whatever.
Those would be the days-- Like, cops were saying to his fucking face, like, [in deep voice.]
"Atif we know that you know who did this or that you know something about it and you're not telling us," and stuff.
And I'm like-- [Al.]
I gotta meet him before too long.
I'll tell you that right now.
'Cause when we enact this plan in motion, I gotta make sure that cocksucker's solid.
I mean, fuckin' solid.
Well, I haven't told him about it yet, but [Al.]
Well, no, we'll be telling him together.
They demanded that he bring in Atif because they needed the corroboration.
[Burns.]
This is, uh Al over here.
-[Atif.]
Hello.
-[Al.]
How you doin', man? [Atif.]
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
The entire undercover operation was focused on Burns, but Rafay was never there.
The first time that Rafay ever met Gary and Al was the morning after Burns confessed to these murders.
[Al.]
I don't know what Sebastian's told you about me.
Um Well, he just introduced me, said your name's Al [Al.]
Before that, before today.
Um That, uh, you're a businessman of some kind? It felt like these mobsters had sort of Alice in Wonderland -style-- just opened up this whole 'nother view of what the surface of the world looked like, so that, all of a sudden, I fully believed that the police were actively framing us and that these guys had the only way of keeping us from being arrested.
[Al.]
You and Sebastian are in a little bit of trouble.
In fact you and him are so close to goin' to jail right now.
It's fuckin' unreal.
And I know that 'cause of different things I know and I've read.
Why did you do this? [chuckles.]
Well, um Uh, I guess the reason we did anything was to, um I guess set ourselves up so that we could I guess become richer and more prosperous and more successful and [Al.]
Hey, don't be embarrassed about it.
[clears throat.]
Everything I do is for money.
[man.]
This particular Mr.
Big operation was the youngest boys ever manipulated.
No one really considered the fact that these were 19-year-old boys going before extraordinarily manipulative federal agents of Canada, the very best that they have.
[Al.]
Who chose the bat? -I can't remember.
-We mutually did, I assume.
Most of this was mutual, I assume.
[Al.]
Why wouldn't you get a fuckin' .
22? Pop, pop, pop.
We don't know where to get firearms.
Tell us where to buy it back then, and, you know, silencer and all this crap.
And I'll tell you something else, okay? One thing we didn't know-- Gunshot residue test, like, immediately after.
-It was brutal.
-Yeah.
I guess you may have known about that, but, at the time, I-- I was fuckin' introduced to that concept when they did the test on us.
They stashed the weapon, the Walkman that Atif claims to have noticed that was missing in-between observing his murdered parents, and the VCR that they yanked out of the-- out of the holder that it was in.
They put them in a series of different dumpsters in Seattle.
So, the baseball bat was never recovered.
Uh, and there was no way it was ever going to be recovered.
And-And-And, again, that's an example of the planning that went into the way these murders were committed.
[Al.]
Jimmy's another guy.
What does Jimmy know about this? What happened to you in the States.
-Tell me.
-Um, he knows what happened.
And then the last scenario was them bringing Jimmy Miyoshi over to talk to Al.
And Miyoshi, he was the only one who was smart enough to not make any concessions about having been involved in this plan.
[Al.]
What I like about you so far is that, uh when they were going down to the States, you didn't fuckin' rat 'em out.
-[Miyoshi.]
There's nothing to rat about.
-[Al.]
What? You could've ratted 'em out.
-[Miyoshi.]
Huh? -[Al.]
You could've ratted them out.
[Miyoshi.]
I'm just saying that there's nothing to rat about.
Do I believe that he was in on some of the planning? I do.
Jimmy Miyoshi was the last piece to the puzzle.
[Burns.]
He basically just wants to know, like-- confirm with you, I guess, did you know, like, what you know, was going to go on in the States kind of thing? [Miyoshi.]
Why don't you talk for me, then? [Al.]
This isn't gonna work.
[Burns.]
Jimmy, I know that I can trust you with my life.
You know what I mean? He doesn't know that, all right? And so, if you explain, "Yes, I knew about it in advance.
I didn't say shit to anybody," okay, It just shows that, basically, you know, you didn't fuck me up.
[Al.]
Did you know about it? -Huh? -[Miyoshi.]
Do you want me to speak loud-- [Al.]
No, I don't want you to speak loud.
You're sitting there like you're a little fucking whipped puppy dog.
Do you know who killed the parents? -[Miyoshi.]
Yeah.
-[Al.]
Who? -[Miyoshi.]
Is that all you want? -[Al.]
Yeah.
[Miyoshi.]
And I just want I just want you to explain to me exactly the purposes of you wanting to know.
Is that so we can establish this kind of? [Al.]
Totally for trust.
-[Miyoshi.]
Totally for trust? -[Al.]
Totally.
[Miyoshi.]
Okay.
-Yes, I do know.
-[Al.]
Okay, who did it? [Miyoshi.]
Right there.
[Al.]
Yeah, Sebastian.
I knew that all along, so you're not fucking telling me somethin' I don't know.
And, as we like to say, that was the beginning of the end.
[woman.]
Tonight, police charged the two 19-year-olds with three counts of aggravated murder [man.]
murdering his father, mother, and sister.
[woman.]
They say they have a wire-tapped confession from the pair [man.]
Once they had the confession, the Canadians made an arrest on Burns and Rafay for the conspiracy to commit the murder.
[woman.]
Got anything to say Sebastian? [man.]
And that confession was now probable cause, based on the physical evidence that we had in Bellevue to get warrants for their arrest for murder in the state of Washington.
[woman.]
Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay will likely be held in custody for some time while officials in both countries work out legal details.
[Konat.]
I had to make arguments in Canadian courts about why Burns and Rafay should be extradited to the United States.
They spent more than six years fighting that extradition.
But, ultimately, the extradition was accomplished, and they were back in the state of Washington so that they could be brought to trial.
[man.]
Rafay, after years, was offered a "sweetheart" soft time in a Canadian prison for turning on Sebastian.
As he told me-- because I wanted to make sure I heard it from him, and I did-- he said, "I couldn't do that.
It just isn't the truth.
" And he never did.
Jimmy Miyoshi was immediately threatened with being a co-conspirator unless he went along with the sweetheart deal and fingered both of them.
[Konat.]
We spent about four and a half months putting testimony on so that all of the defense lawyers could understand how this undercover operation works.
And once they did, they were in a position to argue to the judge that it should not be admissible.
[Saunders.]
When you go to trial, the only evidence that can come in are things that's lawfully gained.
And you can't force someone to say something that they wouldn't have said otherwise.
That kind of confession should not come in because it's not freely given.
[woman.]
Defense attorneys wanted the tapes thrown out, saying Canadian police used methods illegal in the U.
S.
But because investigators followed Canadian law, the judge said he'll allow it under international treaty.
That motion is denied.
[woman.]
It is a major victory for prosecutors.
There's all kinds of hypotheticals and "what ifs," but that-- that was a very, very key issue in this case.
And, obviously, it was devastating to the two accused that that confession was going to be used against them.
[Dave.]
Sebastian was at first represented by Neil Fox.
And Theresa Olson.
They were really hard working, hard digging defense lawyers.
Theresa Olson went to see Jimmy Miyoshi in Tokyo and came away convinced that Jimmy knew that he'd been leaned on and that he'd like to come back and, uh withdraw his evidence.
Having flown back to Seattle by 7:30 in the morning, she was in to see Sebastian to tell him what she had, uh picked up from Jimmy and how this was going to, uh really turn this case around.
And then the whole other fiasco occurred.
Theresa Olson was observed by no fewer than three corrections officers in the King County Jail having sex with Burns.
I-I didn't see it, but I did read the statements of the three officers who did see it, and it was for real.
[man.]
The sex scandal at the county jail could delay the trial again.
[woman.]
Olson's lapse in judgment cost the case time, and it cost the county money.
[man.]
How much money may have to be re-spent? Uh, a lot.
I don't have any way of-- There's no way for me to give you an estimate of what we, as tax payers, paid for the representation of Ms.
Olson and Mr.
Fox for the last 34 months.
[Klonsky.]
Of course, Sebastian gets blamed for this.
That was a horrifically stupid thing to do.
But here's a young man who's been in prison for years.
And nobody's resisting.
I think it's just part of the strangeness of this case.
The focus has to be whether Mr.
Burns and Mr.
Rafay can have a fair trial.
Um, they deserve to have a fair trial.
The allegations involving Ms.
Olson constitute a distraction to that.
[Dave.]
And so, Fox and Olson were taken off the case.
Theresa vanished almost immediately.
Less than 24 hours after Theresa gets on a plane coming back, all excited about what she's been able to extricate from Jimmy Miyoshi That's gone.
So, the case got delayed for another 18 months, two years.
While new lawyers Jeff Robinson and Sam Richardson came in.
When police officers pretend to be mobsters, when they lie, threaten, and intimidate teenagers into manipulating them into a make-believe world of organized crime, that creates the recipe for a false confession.
During all of those years, we did not know the evidence that had been gathered against them.
I learned what the evidence really was I'm gonna say 2002.
Jeff Robinson said there's nothing but the confessions.
And I thought, "Oh, well.
Thank God.
" Because these confessions are nonsense.
According to the story that Atif and Sebastian made up, Sebastian went around the house, clubbed everybody to death, while Atif sat down in the living room and did nothing.
[Al.]
Where was he when all this was goin' on? That's what I wanna know.
He's, like around the corner.
He didn't physically see it.
Um, and, like, the same thing with his sister.
One of the problems with that theory, uh, was that there was blood spatter in Mr.
Rafay's bedroom.
And the wall showed the outline of a body, which showed, in all likelihood, that someone was standing there, along with the person who was killing Mr.
Rafay.
So, the story that Atif was sitting down somewhere in the living room and Sebastian was going around killing everybody, it wouldn't have held up.
[woman.]
There are all kinds of internal inconsistencies and you know, things that just don't make sense and don't match with the physical evidence.
They were asleep upstairs, the dad and the sister.
The sister who, basically, um yeah, was standing up and walking around or whatever, so This is a key marker of a false confession.
[Al.]
Where'd you guys get the baseball bat from? I think it was, like, just kickin' around or something, like [Al.]
You didn't go buy it in a store down there where they can trace it back to you guys? No? -[Al.]
Who bought the bat? -It was bought in Bellingham.
-[Al.]
You were both -We were both in the store.
[Isaacs.]
It changes over time.
It changes from Sebastian to Atif.
It's a It's a childish story.
[Al.]
Hopefully, they don't empty the dumpster on Tuesday morning.
That's all I'm thinking of.
And yours and your friend's clothes are both in there? In dumpsters.
In different dumpsters all over? Not-- Not like-- Yours and his aren't together? Each article was in a different one.
-[Al.]
And what'd you do with your clothes? -Uh Hucked out the window, I think.
Those-- Those ones I did.
Or-Or, at least, the socks and We had gloves.
They got hucked out the window.
[Al.]
Why do you say all the clothes went in the dumpster, he says they're out the window? I'm assuming that "out the window" is the most colloquial term for saying, "I tossed the crap out.
" As an undercover agent, what would I say to Rafay and Burns? I'm trying to understand.
I'm trying to believe their confession.
"Tell me how the murder of your mother went down.
This is really important.
Tell me how it went down.
" They didn't do that.
Now, we cut back to Sultana's photo.
She was obviously murdered with the shawl over her head facing east.
I mean, if you ever want a red flashing light that said, "This is an Islamic fundamentalist based murder," that's it.
It was well into the 2000s before I realized there's no DNA evidence.
There's no fingerprints.
No weapons.
I don't really think I found out about the Mr.
Big situation until the trial.
[woman.]
Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns are now 27 years old and just about to stand trial for a triple murder that happened when they were teenagers.
The two friends are accused of beating Rafay's parents and autistic sister to death, nine years ago in Bellevue.
I thought "Yippee, I'm getting out of work for a while.
" 'Cause I work on my knees at Boeing.
"Wow, I'll get a break for a while.
" It was the biggest thing that happened in Bellevue and probably still is, you know? [Konat.]
Mr.
Burns and Mr.
Rafay acted in tandem to extinguish, to systematically wipe out, if you will, the Rafay family in July of 1994.
Their disenchantment [woman.]
James Konat was a snappy dresser.
[laughs.]
He always looked so nice.
Yeah.
The women on the trial loved it.
I wouldn't say that the RCMP made my mind up, because my mind was pretty much already made up even before I saw that.
But I liked Mr.
Big.
[laughs.]
That was quite interesting.
Part of the reason why they get these targets involved in criminality is to devalue them in front of a jury.
They want to make this person look like someone who's not worthy of reasonable doubt in a fair trial.
[man.]
Do you want a stout? -Sebastian.
-No, thanks.
[Isaacs.]
The earlier tapes don't look good for the RCMP.
They're menacing and threatening and bullying.
And, um that comes through.
Did I tell ya' that fucker said, uh he needed the money for something and had a real fuckin' attitude? I told him, uh Next time it happened I'd chop his fuckin' old lady's hands off.
And fuckin', uh till he paid, she'd fuckin' sit there and bleed.
This guy with his ponytail and his greasy look and, uh "So, what the fuck are you telling me? Fuck! I didn't come on last night's fucking train, fuckhead!" They talked like that to be threatening and intimidating and, uh, to add to their image.
All these guys had been trained in somebody's theater school.
[Al.]
How do you fucking, uh, hit someone with a baseball bat, have to shower, and have no blood on you? [Sebastian.]
You do it naked.
Once they saw the tapes, the jury was shocked.
When someone confesses to murdering three people, that pretty much I mean, that really solidified the whole case, as far as I was concerned.
You know, I was open-minded at first, but the one kid from Canada had bragged about it.
[Al.]
Both you guys woke up one day and said, "Hey, let's go off your family and fuckin' get all their money?" [Sebastian.]
Basically.
It was quite disgusting, actually.
I was disgusted at Sebastian for being so flippant about the whole thing.
Even if the content of the confession is demonstrated to be false, juries think, "I would never do that.
I would never make incriminating statements, false statements about myself.
Only a guilty person would do that.
" And that's part of the negative power of confessions evidence.
The original defense attorneys wanted me to testify as to criminal braggadocio.
Now, enter new attorneys.
They said, "Well, we're going with the fear defense.
" And, since they claimed that they were frightened into confession, then everything I wrote, my whole review, was moot.
It was the judge that said, "We don't need Levine's testimony.
" Because you don't need an expert to tell you that somebody's afraid or not when it's on video.
And I was out.
The judge prohibited the defense from raising all kinds of defenses that, uh they should have been able to say.
"It could've been these people.
It could've been that person.
" But none of it was allowed in by the judge.
So, we really had a situation where what the jury heard was the state's evidence.
[Isaacs.]
They just had these statements, and they chose to believe them.
And they chose to not believe all of the other substantial hard evidence that had been supplied.
[man.]
The defense 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.
Whose DNA got mixed with Dr.
Rafay's blood in the shower? Doesn't it have to be the killer? [man.]
Robinson says police found an unknown fingerprint on this door, another blood spot in the garage.
Again, blood from Tariq Rafay mixed with blood from a different, unidentified person.
[Levin.]
If they did do it, that incredibly bloody murder, why could they not come up with any forensics that was undisputably linked to the murder? Nothing.
Zero.
If they did do it, how come, in the hundreds, if not, a thousand hours of audio that I listened to-- that they didn't know they were being taped-- it was in their car, in their bedroom-- how come they never even mentioned it? Sebastian [Levin.]
The fact that these prosecutors were willing to put in as evidence that they're devotees of Nietzsche, who believes that it's okay for people to kill each other-- as evidence-- tells you really how bad this is.
[Hutchinson.]
They also were the subjects of some betrayal by, at least, one of their friends, Jimmy Miyoshi.
What did Atif tell you when he discussed what had occurred at the time of the murders? I remember him telling me, after his mother was struck, that he went and got the VCR, while Sebastian had gone in into, uh his father's bedroom.
And when they had left, that his sister was um, I guess, still alive.
[Konat.]
Jimmy Miyoshi was one of the most obstinate and uncooperative, soft-spoken, polite witnesses I've ever had.
With the time that you were living in Ontario, going to school, and then the time when you moved to Japan, there was a total of about six years where nobody contacted you about this case.
Yes.
[Robinson.]
And when this case came back into your life, it ended up touching your job, didn't it? Yes, eventually, it did affect my job.
[Konat.]
The only reason he ever came back to testify was because he was working for an American corporation in Japan.
And we called them and told them about his role and our our concern about how involved he might've been in this.
And his employer said to him, "You need to go to the United States of America and cooperate with the authorities and do what you need to do to make this right.
" And that's the only reason we ever got Jimmy Miyoshi back here.
[Robinson.]
And it was clear to you that if you refused to come here and testify, your company would find a reason to fire you -in the immediate future? -Yes.
That's what I believed, yes.
[Robinson.]
I'll ask if this is a copy of an email that you sent to Mr.
Konat the King County prosecutors.
In the first paragraph, sir, did you state the following? "I did not believe you had it in yourselves to damage careers that my wife and I have worked considerably hard to rebuild from our situation almost ten years ago.
I am not sure what we have to live for at this point, and I am not convinced that we can ever recover from this.
" -Did you write that? -Yes.
[Robinson.]
July 31st, 1995.
I'm going back to that day you were arrested.
One of the things they were telling you is that you could go to jail if you didn't say Sebastian and Atif told you about the murders.
And Sergeant Rinn confirmed that for you.
He told you, "Hey, we'll re-open our conspiracy-to-commit-murder case against you in Canada if you don't come and testify, consistent with your immunity agreement.
" That's what he told you, right? Possibly, yes.
[Robinson.]
Do you recall saying that Atif told you his sister was alive when they left the house after attacking the family? -You said that yesterday, didn't you? -Yes.
[Robinson.]
It's the first time in eight years that you have ever said anything like that, isn't it, sir? I-I probably have mentioned things like that, but not necessarily in those statements.
[Robinson.]
You're making it up as you go along, sir.
That's why you're saying things for the first time yesterday.
No, I don't believe I am.
[Robinson.]
You actually called my office before you came here to testify.
-Didn't you? -[Miyoshi.]
Yes, I did.
[Robinson.]
One of the things you said during that conversation was, "Well, Mr.
Robinson, how would the situation change if I were to be a witness for your side?" You remember saying that? Um No, I don't.
So, from any evidence I've ever read about Jimmy Miyoshi, he largely said what he thought-- what it was they wanted to hear.
[Levin.]
I-I absolutely think nothing of the Jimmy Miyoshi statement.
You can pretty much threaten somebody with prosecution and get them to say anything.
[Konat.]
They're desperate for you to believe that somebody snuck into that house in a very brief period of time and systematically executed this family.
How many times does the evidence have to tell us it's not Sebastian and it's not Atif.
They are desperate for you to ignore the way that they behaved for the 12 months that followed.
We still don't know who committed these murders.
[Dave.]
I was there for the closing.
And when I heard the closing arguments of both sides, I thought, "These kids are gonna be out of here.
" I was convinced that they were gonna be walking free.
She was in her bedroom while Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay were systematically executing her parents.
I thought Konat was rambling, and he was he was angry.
And I'm thinking, "He thinks he's lost this case, and he's trying to pull out the-- whatever he can.
" What this is really all about is, they're upset that they got caught.
And that was what I took away from his closing argument.
I was dead wrong.
[man.]
We, the jury, find the defendant, Glen Sebastian Burns, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Atif Ahmad Rafay, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
[Hutchinson.]
In the end, despite the tight alibis, the lack of physical or forensic evidence, the jury convicted them, and they convicted them for one reason only, and that's because of their confessions.
-[man.]
Your reaction, Mr.
Burns? -Back off.
Back off.
Give us some room.
Thank you.
Found guilty on three counts of homicide.
And then we were there for the sentencing.
[man.]
Uh, Mr.
Burns, I'm obligated at this point to stop and give you an opportunity to make a statement before I sentence you.
If there's something you want to say, I will, uh, certainly consider it.
Mr.
Burns.
Thank you, Your Honor.
My friend and I have been convicted for a crime we did not commit.
There's two things I want to discuss this morning, if possible.
The first is, a few reasons why I think our trial is unfair.
With respect.
I was hoping to make some comments about the evidence.
We were unable to tell this jury about other suspects who knew what the murder weapon was before anybody else did.
We were prosecuted with a tactic that would not be legal in this country.
We were not able to present evidence to answer the state's case.
I was not allowed to give critical testimony that I needed to give to explain this evidence.
We were defending ourselves in this trial with both arms tied behind our backs.
[Konat.]
Burns stood up and said that his two Ivy League educated lawyers didn't handle his case properly, that they didn't give him effective assistance of counsel.
You know, I think most people who understand what the word "hubris" means they oughta put his picture in the dictionary.
I'm certainly I certainly feel sorry for the victims.
I feel sorry for their surviving son.
I feel sorry for their surviving family.
We didn't commit the crime.
We've been found guilty based on the continuing representations of the state and the news media.
It seems that the principal other piece of evidence against us is is arrogance.
Our arrogant personalities.
When the newspaper stories first started to appear about us when I was 18, back in 1994 my stomach would go into knots whenever a story would come out.
I would be inconsolable for the rest of the day.
The way that I got over that was to become cynical and to act tough.
And it's the same way I got over not being able to go to school.
Or work.
Or have a public life.
[woman coughs.]
Atif and I have been convicted for a crime we didn't commit.
We're going to be sentenced for a crime we didn't commit.
Unless somebody does something to stop it.
Your Honor, that's all I have to say.
[Dave.]
Sebastian's statements actually were quite articulate, but for people who were just there for the show and hadn't followed the case, it was written as a deranged rambling.
But it wasn't that way at all.
It was the, uh, thoughts expressed, perhaps not as punchy as they could have been, but when you've spent seven or eight years in various forms of incarceration uh you you didn't perhaps have the, uh, best critical audience.
[Mertel.]
Mr.
Burns, you're, uh you've been, uh uh, given ample opportunity to make your allocution.
Uh It's-It's-- It's chilling, uh, your recitation of what you feel has occurred over these many years.
It's chilling in the lack of remorse that you show for these victims.
I mean, it was virtually a throwaway line that I suspect your attorney suggested to you after the break.
-[Sebastian.]
That's not true.
-But, in any event, it-- You got to talk, Mr.
Burns.
Now, I get to talk.
Okay? You're not immoral.
You're amoral.
You have no moral rudder, whatsoever.
You are an arrogant convicted killer.
You are not a kid, as you so often refer to yourself.
You're an adult, and you will be held responsible as an adult.
You were convicted, Mr.
Burns, based on your own chilling, casual confession.
It is, therefore, the conclusion of this court that you should be sentenced on count one, on count two, and on count three, to life without possibility of parole.
Those three sentences to run consecutively.
Shall we proceed with Mr.
Rafay? I wanna thank you, Your Honor, for the opportunity in speaking.
[sighs.]
Today is a day of anguish for me.
It's not the first.
I want to insist today on the truth that we are innocent.
[voice breaking.]
And I loved my parents.
I revere their memory to this day.
I can't convey to you the mortification that I felt over the course of this trial, the lie that we told, the masks that we put on.
The masks that we put on to survive a situation, an appalling, atrocious situation that was constructed constructed to entice us and elicit from us those very lies and that mask.
I'm tormented by the thought that I've been manipulated somehow into contributing to the fact that my parents' killers, to this day, walk with impunity, that their murders have never been properly investigated.
The loss of my parents devastated me, left me utterly bereft.
I didn't know how to construct-- re-construct my life in the month-- weeks and months that followed.
When I say I loved my parents, I don't mean that I felt merely the feeling of affection that every child, I'm sure, feels for their parents.
I mean that I truly admired my father.
His brilliance, his learning his sincere pleasure in every opportunity at generosity.
I was probably closer to my mother than to any other person than I ever will be.
And the memory of her wit and her charm and her keen human sympathy are dear to me to this day.
And-And they'll be vivid to everyone who knew her, including some of my friends.
I consider having my family the greatest of privileges.
They're with me in my memory today.
I'm gonna continue to struggle for the truth in this case, of our innocence.
Because I won't betray their hopes for me or their expectations of me, which I'm proud to say that they had.
-I'd like to thank this court.
-[Mertel.]
Mr.
Rafay, thank you.
Unlike your colleague, I find you genuinely remorseful, Mr.
Rafay.
Uh I think you do have a moral compass.
Uh Your conviction was-- and I I can't explain it either, why you would do that if it wasn't true.
The difficulty is telling somebody you were lying then, but you're telling the truth now.
Always a difficult proposition.
But you were convicted on your own confessions.
Frightening confessions casually given about how you did these things and why you did it.
In fact, I think one of your remarks was, "This was unfortunate, but it simply had to be done to get what we wanted in life.
" It's the responsibility of this court to sentence you, and I will do that at this time.
On count one, it's life without possibility of parole.
On count two, it's life without possibility of parole.
And on count three, it's life without possibility of parole.
And those three sentences are to run consecutively.
[Hutchinson.]
So many people can't believe that the Mr.
Big technique is allowed to happen in Canada, that police officers are allowed to conduct themselves this way.
And the Canadian Supreme Court has, in the last year or so, thrown out a Mr.
Big conviction.
The Canadian Supreme Court finally said, "From now on, you can't do it.
It's presumed inadmissible in trial.
" But this was years after Sebastian had already been convicted.
[Dave.]
We see him once a month, and uh, it's reasonably pleasant.
We can see him for about four or five hours at a time.
He spent about ten years in solitary confinement.
And solitary confinement is a real brain scrambler.
We saw many changes occurring to him.
You deal with it.
Sometimes, you sleep.
Sometimes, you can't get it out of your mind and you go over it.
"If I had done this, if I had said that.
" Uh Wow.
In prison, there's an initial shock, and then there's there's this frightening sense of unreality.
When that begins to fade away and you enter into a routine, your previous life begins to seem like a-- some sort of a dream.
I think that's very frightening.
And especially the idea that it is gonna continue and continue and continue like that.
After having recently been married, I've had a lot of I guess, opportunity to think about, you know, where my dad was when he was my age and where I am now.
Loretta really changed my life in the sense that there's now something every day that I look forward to doing, which is talking to her.
And gives a whole different shape to my week because I'm always looking forward to seeing her on the weekends.
We always are able to share things, like reading Shakespeare together in the visiting room or working on some issue together.
It changes the whole way in which I think about time and think about what I'm doing.
It's a very strange thing to fall in love and-- and have this beautiful experience happen in prison while you're going through something like this.
[rain falling.]
I had been used to my parents taking care of me and taking care of things in the responsible adult world.
I thought that that this was one of those things that would just be taken care of.
I should have been an adult about it.
Justice will not happen just because you're innocent.