Rafay slayings called 'inside job'

By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

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For four hours yesterday, James Konat attempted to weave together evidence from nearly six months of testimony to convince jurors that Burns and Rafay are the ones who used a baseball bat to kill Tariq, Sultana and Basma Rafay on July 12, 1994, in the Rafays' Somerset neighborhood home.

Konat is expected to address jurors for another two hours this morning before Rafay attorney Marc Stenchever delivers his closing statements. Jeff Robinson, one of Burns' lawyers, is to make his closing statements tomorrow, which will be followed by the state's rebuttal. The triple, aggravated first-degree murder case will then be handed over to the jury.

"Almost 10 years ago to the day, an Ivy League intellectual, Atif Rafay, and his very best friend, Sebastian Burns, an incredibly annoying ... and arrogant individual, ... acted on the sense of entitlement they believed belonged to them," Konat began yesterday. He then gave the prosecution's account of the defendants planning what they thought was the perfect murder, in Canada, before crossing the border to kill the family and cash in on a $500,000 inheritance.

Citing statements Burns and Rafay made to Bellevue police immediately after the slayings, Konat said the defendants' memories of the days they spent with the family preceding the killings were a total "mishmash," whereas they recalled in "vivid detail" what they did and whom they spoke with the night Rafay's parents and sister were attacked.

It's the state's contention Burns and Rafay, now 28, slipped out of the movie theater early, killed the family, staged a burglary and then went to a Seattle diner before returning to Bellevue to "discover" the bloody crime scene and call police.

The defense has argued the two were in fact at the theater when neighbors heard noises from the Rafay home that could have been the sounds of murder. Burns' and Rafay's attorneys have said the two were coerced into making false confessions a year later by undercover Canadian police officers they believed were big-money criminals.

The jury again viewed graphic crime-scene photos from inside the Rafay home as Konat described how Sultana Rafay was struck twice in the head before her killers went on to attack her sleeping husband and her autistic daughter.

Konat questioned Burns' and Rafay's later statements that they didn't touch Sultana or Tariq Rafay's bodies, nor do anything to help a fatally wounded Basma Rafay. Konat also said neither Burns nor Rafay had any blood on their shoes — which police would have expected to find if the two had simply stumbled upon the crime scene.

"If your mother was lying on the basement floor, for God's sake, wouldn't you do something to see if there was a breath of life in her? Something?" Konat asked.

Today, Konat plans to talk of the five-month undercover operation launched by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that led to the defendants' arrests in July 1995.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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