On the night of July 12, 1994, friends Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay left the Rafay family’s Bellevue, WA home for some fun out on the town. When they returned hours later, however, what they discovered inside the house was nothing less than a massacre. Atif’s parents, along with his sister, had been brutally murdered with a baseball bat by at least one unknown assailant during a break-in.
As the investigation proceeded, police began to suspect the teens might have been involved, which is something they vehemently denied. Without sufficient evidence to press charges, the RCMP intervened with a controversial tactic called Mr. Big to extract a confession. It’s illegal in the US where the crime occurred, but the suspects were both Canadian citizens who fled to their home country in the aftermath of the crime.
Soon enough, the pair found themselves convicted of the crime. But in the years since, other motives and facts, combined with insufficient physical evidence, have cast doubt up...
On the night of July 12, 1994, friends Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay left the Rafay family’s Bellevue, WA home for some fun out on the town. When they returned hours later, however, what they discovered inside the house was nothing less than a massacre. Atif’s parents, along with his sister, had been brutally murdered with a baseball bat by at least one unknown assailant during a break-in.
As the investigation proceeded, police began to suspect the teens might have been involved, which is something they vehemently denied. Without sufficient evidence to press charges, the RCMP intervened with a controversial tactic called Mr. Big to extract a confession. It’s illegal in the US where the crime occurred, but the suspects were both Canadian citizens who fled to their home country in the aftermath of the crime.
Soon enough, the pair found themselves convicted of the crime. But in the years since, other motives and facts, combined with insufficient physical evidence, have cast doubt upon the result in this case. It seems there might have been others who wanted the family dead. So, is it possible the wrong men are in prison? Did the authorities force a false confession?
Join host Ryan Kraus for a psychological dissection of the controversial Burns & Rafay case in an effort to understand what really happened.
