Rafay and Burns trial begins 9 years after slayings

By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

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Graphic crime-scene photos and videotaped confessions were projected onto a screen in front of the jury yesterday as a King County deputy prosecutor mapped out the state's case against Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, two Canadian men who've spent more than eight years in jail awaiting trial on charges they bludgeoned Rafay's family to death in their Bellevue home.

In his opening statements to jurors in King County Superior Court, deputy prosecutor Roger Davidheiser painted the defendants as arrogant intellectuals who meticulously planned and executed the killings to cash in on inheritance money.

They believed, Davidheiser said, that they had committed "the perfect crime." They thought they were smarter than police, but ultimately it was their "hubris that sealed their fate," he said. They not only confessed to the killings to undercover Canadian police detectives but to their best friend, Davidheiser said.

Song Richardson, one of Burns' defense attorneys, attacked the state's version of events, saying her client was a teenager whom Canadian detectives manipulated into falsely confessing to the crimes out of fear for his life.

She told the jury Burns' confession contradicted forensic evidence — a fingerprint, a hair, bloody shoe tracks — found at the Rafay home that points to other killers. She called the state's star witness a liar who has changed his story with each telling of it. She also blasted Bellevue police detectives for failing to follow up on a credible tip suggesting an assassin had been hired to kill the family.

Rafay's defense attorneys are to make their opening statements this morning.

It's been over nine years since Tariq Rafay, his wife, Sultana, and their daughter, Basma, were beaten to death in their home in Bellevue's Sommerset neighborhood. The July 1994 slayings initially confounded police. But a year later, because of evidence gathered during an undercover sting operation by Canadian police, Rafay and Burns were arrested in Vancouver, B.C.

They spent six years fighting extradition, ultimately sparking an international debate on the death penalty. They returned to Washington in March 2001 but only after King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng assured the Canadian government Rafay, now 27, and Burns, 28, would not be executed if convicted of aggravated first-degree murder.

Yesterday was the much-anticipated start of a trial that's expected to last six months. Journalists from 17 Canadian and U.S. news organizations filled several rows of seats; attorneys and police officers packed several more.

The case before the jury of 11 men and nine women — eight of them alternates — will focus on the defendants' alibis and the police timeline; the methods used by undercover Canadian police to elicit confessions; the testimony of witness Jimmy Miyoshi (who is expected to say he spoke about the killings with Burns and Rafay before and after the slayings); and on forensic evidence found in the Rafay home.

Davidheiser told the jury that a month before the killings, "Atif first discussed his plan to kill his family with his friend, Jimmy Miyoshi." That July, Rafay and "his best friend in the world, Sebastian Burns," returned from college to visit in Bellevue.

They later told police that five days after their arrival, they went out for dinner, saw a movie, headed to Seattle for a late-night snack, stopped by a nightclub and drove back to Bellevue, where they discovered the bodies of Sultana and Tariq Rafay and called 911.

"It was show time," Davidheiser said of the call to police. "They had to put on the act of their life, the performance of their life — and their lives depended on it."

Sultana Rafay, 56, was attacked first.

"She had literally been knocked out of her shoes by her killer before she could react," Davidheiser said. Her husband, a 56-year-old engineer, was asleep when "he was beaten with such violence that his facial features were unrecognizable," Davidheiser said.

Their daughter, Basma, 20, was developmentally disabled, but unlike her parents, "Basma had an opportunity to perceive her attackers and to fight back," Davidheiser said. Police found her mortally wounded, and she died soon after.

Davidheiser told the jury the alibi Rafay and Burns gave police doesn't stand up. He played police surveillance videos showing Burns and Rafay sipping beers in a Vancouver Island hotel room as they talk in "chilling, sickening detail" with an undercover detective about the killings.

While Richardson conceded that the confessions sound convincing, she said they had to be because Burns and Rafay believed they were dealing with international criminals who wouldn't hesitate to kill them. In their ruse, undercover detectives were trying to entice Burns into a world of crime, and he falsely confessed to gain their trust, Richardson said.

The ruse "set the stage for a false confession and Sebastian (had) to falsely confess to stay alive," she said.

The trial continues today.

Staff reporter Christine Clarridge contributed to this report.

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

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