Speaker 1: The Raffets were a Pakistani Canadian immigrant family who moved
Speaker 1: to Bellevue, Washington, while their son of teeth finished his
Speaker 1: freshman year at Cornell University. A chief's father, doctor Terek Raffet,
Speaker 1: was a prominent and outspoken moderate Muslim with controversial views
Speaker 1: in their old community in Vancouver. While a thief and
Speaker 1: his best friend, Sebastian Burns, were out for the night
Speaker 1: on July twelfth, a thief's father, mother, and sister were
Speaker 1: brutally bludged to death in their home. Neighbors on either
Speaker 1: side of the Reves home independently reported hearing the sounds
Speaker 1: of the murders at a time for which the boys
Speaker 1: whereabouts were well known. Their vocal operation revealed no incriminating evidence.
Speaker 1: DNA evidence mixed with doctor at vas blood belonged to
Speaker 1: neither the victims nor a Tief or Sebastian. Yet, despite
Speaker 1: all of this, as well as compelling leads implicating religious extremists,
Speaker 1: the Bellevue police never took their focus off of a
Speaker 1: thief and Sebastian. While the boys went up to live
Speaker 1: with Sebastia his parents in Canada, investigators enlisted the help
Speaker 1: of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform an undercover
Speaker 1: sting called Mr Big that extracted two false confessions that
Speaker 1: were riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. To solidify their case,
Speaker 1: they coerced a Tief and Sebastian's friend Jimmy Yoshi to
Speaker 1: give a third inconsistent statement. When expert testimony on false confessions,
Speaker 1: as well as the evidence of other possible suspects were
Speaker 1: ruled inadmissible, the jury was only able to weigh the
Speaker 1: inconsistent false confessions against the physical evidence and eyewitness accounts
Speaker 1: that clearly contradicted them. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flom.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason Floman. Wow. I mean,
Speaker 1: where do why you even start? Because this case should
Speaker 1: have gone in an entirely different direction with what came
Speaker 1: from the initial investigation. But they took the really long, borderline,
Speaker 1: crazy way around the right answer to get to this one.
Speaker 1: It's so convoluted, and luckily with us today to help
Speaker 1: tell the story, we have a true hero of the
Speaker 1: innocence movement, and of course I'm talking about Ken Klonsky.
Speaker 1: Ken is the director of Innocence International, an organization that
Speaker 1: he co founded with a legend, a boxing legend, and
Speaker 1: a civil rights legend, a man whose name you will
Speaker 1: probably recognize, Reuben Hurricane Carter so Ken. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here today. We
Speaker 1: are compelled to shine a light on the horrendous case
Speaker 1: of at Frafe and Sebastian Burns to nineteen year old boys.
Speaker 1: Back then, seven years ago were nineteen who were egregiously framed,
Speaker 1: her secuted in the court system and in the press.
Speaker 1: A tief is with us today. Sebastian can't be unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but the case, I want to be clear, they're both
Speaker 1: equally innocent, and they're both framed in the exact same proceedings.
Speaker 1: You have a prepaid call. You will not be charged
Speaker 1: for this call. This call is from and inmate at
Speaker 1: Monroe Correctional Complaint. This call will be recorded and monitored.
Speaker 1: So on the phone with us now, calling in from
Speaker 1: prison in Washington State where he's been locked up for
Speaker 1: a triple murder he had nothing to do with. Is
Speaker 1: my friend and personal hero atif Rafe. Atif I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you have to be here under these conditions, but hopefully
Speaker 1: not for too much longer, but I am happy you're
Speaker 1: here and thanks for calling in. Thank you, Jason. I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful, So Tief. Your story was covered by Kelly
Speaker 1: Loudenburg in the Confession Tapes on Netflix, and in a
Speaker 1: series that was one episode per case yours, she actually
Speaker 1: dedicated two episodes to it. So we've had a lot
Speaker 1: of ground to cover. So let's start by going back
Speaker 1: to a time before this unspeakable tragedy befell your family.
Speaker 1: What was life like for you growing up? It was
Speaker 1: remarkably happy and lucky life, I was thinking almost every respect.
Speaker 1: I grew up partly in the Karachi, Pakistan, but most
Speaker 1: of my life I lived in Vancouver, and I had amazing, devoted,
Speaker 1: wonderful parents. I mean, my parents were extraordinary people, and
Speaker 1: I didn't really just love them, I admired them. My
Speaker 1: mom was the best friend to me. My dad was
Speaker 1: the kind of person who cared deeply about everything in
Speaker 1: the world and was able to continuously engage me in
Speaker 1: being interested in the world in a way that I
Speaker 1: think two people ever get to experience. It was a
Speaker 1: real enormous privilege to grow up like that and to
Speaker 1: be able to have the parents I did so no
Speaker 1: one ever even claimed that there were any problems of
Speaker 1: any kind in your family, that there were any bad feelings,
Speaker 1: much less violence or strife. And I also want to
Speaker 1: highlight that your father, doctor terk With, was a prominent
Speaker 1: Sunni Muslim and was active in his religious and cultural
Speaker 1: communities both in Vancouver and Bellevue, only a two and
Speaker 1: a half hour drive away from one another. By the way,
Speaker 1: he was the co founder and one time president of
Speaker 1: the very moderate interfaith friendship building organization, the Pakistan Canada Association,
Speaker 1: whose activities were frankly very upsetting to some more radical Muslims.
Speaker 1: And it's important to note that Dr Off they also
Speaker 1: published a paper and developed a controversial computer program indicating
Speaker 1: that Muslims in British Columbia were mistakenly not facing Mecca
Speaker 1: when they prayed. The direction Muslims are meant to face
Speaker 1: is called Kibla, which is the direction of the shortest
Speaker 1: possible path from any place to Mecca, and it has
Speaker 1: all sorts of important implications, not only daily prayers, but
Speaker 1: also Muslims are not permitted to urinate, spit or stretched
Speaker 1: their feet in the direction of Mecca, and when dead,
Speaker 1: Muslims must be buried on their right hand side to
Speaker 1: face Mecca. Now much later, during a Chief's trial, this
Speaker 1: controversy came up and the prosecution misquoted Dr Rafe's paper
Speaker 1: stating that according to Dr raf A, the kibla in
Speaker 1: use in the Pacific Northwest was only off by one
Speaker 1: degree and how would anyone be angered by such a
Speaker 1: small degree. But the prosecutor had misquoted Dr f A,
Speaker 1: who said that the true kibla direction was one degree
Speaker 1: off from the north pole, which would mean that Muslims
Speaker 1: praying in the Pacific Northwest were off by close to
Speaker 1: one hundred degrees. So imagine a ninety degree turn and
Speaker 1: then ten more degrees, and then imagine telling folks that
Speaker 1: their dead parents were facing the wrong direction forever, So
Speaker 1: a chief, the night when your parents and sister were
Speaker 1: tragically killed was July twelve, n But you and your
Speaker 1: friend Sebastian Burns were heading out for the night while
Speaker 1: your mother, father, and sister stayed home. If you could
Speaker 1: give us the timeline for that night, where did you
Speaker 1: go and what did you do? Sure? So it was
Speaker 1: in any ways a typical night for us as teenagers
Speaker 1: going out to a diner. Then going to the movies,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards searching for a club and going for
Speaker 1: a dessert. We had an early light dinner at the
Speaker 1: Keg Restaurant from around nine o'clocks to about nine thirty
Speaker 1: issues and at that time we went over for the
Speaker 1: nine fifty showings of The Lion King, and so we
Speaker 1: were in the lobby for a while until the movie started.
Speaker 1: At nine fifty. They would play a large number of
Speaker 1: advertisements and trailers before the movie actually started. Those takes
Speaker 1: several minutes, and then what happened that night was something
Speaker 1: quite unusual. The curtains closed after the advertisements and trailers
Speaker 1: were over, and The Lion King began and started to
Speaker 1: be projected over the closed curtains, and the movie went
Speaker 1: on like that for quite a while, enough that Sebastian
Speaker 1: and I think some other patrons were in the audience
Speaker 1: got up and went and had to go get the manager.
Speaker 1: It took a while for them to get the movie
Speaker 1: restarted and the curtains opened again, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it was probably ten o eight or something by the
Speaker 1: time all that was solved. And that manager's name is
Speaker 1: Jose Martinez, who spoke with Sebastian and handled this projector
Speaker 1: and curtain issue. He could place you both in the
Speaker 1: theater at that time, as could the concessions employee Jesse Kaplan,
Speaker 1: who's the guy who sold Sebastian his kid cat and
Speaker 1: talked with him about his T shirt before the movie. Now,
Speaker 1: both men, Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan distinctly recall you
Speaker 1: guys both in the lobby of the theater before the
Speaker 1: movie began and during this projector issue as well, because,
Speaker 1: according to them, a Pakistani kid and a white guy
Speaker 1: with blonde hair made a notable pair. So that covers
Speaker 1: a tief sense Sebastian's whereabouts from their arrival to the
Speaker 1: movie theater around nine PM to at least ten oh
Speaker 1: eight PM when the projector shoe was fixed. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: thief's neighbors, Mark Sidell and Julie Rackley, who lived on
Speaker 1: either side of the Raffae household, whose houses were so
Speaker 1: close in fact, that they had complained sometime of the
Speaker 1: volume of the Rafa's TV. They independently reported and later
Speaker 1: went on to testify that they heard the exact same sounds,
Speaker 1: describing them as a hammering or banging sound, but hollow
Speaker 1: and muffled sounding, and they heard those sounds comfortably in
Speaker 1: the window of time. When Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan
Speaker 1: can place a thief in Sebastian in the lobby of
Speaker 1: the movie theater, they just can't be in two places
Speaker 1: at once. It's making me crazy because you had just
Speaker 1: about as good of an alibi as you could possibly have.
Speaker 1: So now you've just seen the lion king right, and
Speaker 1: you hit a few other places, just a typical night
Speaker 1: that millions of teenagers have every weekend all over the country.
Speaker 1: Then you go home and find yourself in a literal
Speaker 1: horror scene. So we got out of the car, not
Speaker 1: expecting anything unusual, walked into the living room, and I
Speaker 1: saw my mother lying in that room, and I could
Speaker 1: see stain on the carpet, and after that, I was
Speaker 1: in a daze. I rushed upstairs. The fashion was rushing
Speaker 1: everywhere around too, and it's it's a confusion of disbelief
Speaker 1: and bewilderment. I went over to my dad's room. Even
Speaker 1: though the lights were off, I could be what the
Speaker 1: officers would later describe as it looked like a shotgun
Speaker 1: blast over the back wall, and it was I was.
Speaker 1: I was spinning around literally on my feet. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever really recovered from it. I felt frightened,
Speaker 1: I felt completely disoriented and in shock fast, and I
Speaker 1: had just instinctively, I think, ran and ran outside, and
Speaker 1: he had already called the police. I could hear him calling,
Speaker 1: and as soon as the first police officer arrived, Gary Motto,
Speaker 1: he actually drove past us while we were in the driveway,
Speaker 1: and we ran after them, trying to flag him down,
Speaker 1: and he had to actually pound on the trunk of
Speaker 1: the car because he was just driving off. And he
Speaker 1: got out and yelled at us to sit on the curve.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether he thought we were perpetrators or something,
Speaker 1: or somehow involved, but Garry Rata was very serious about
Speaker 1: us sitting down and being quiet, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do other than to follow his direction. I
Speaker 1: think that changed the way everyone else looked at us
Speaker 1: and our behavior afterwards. I think the other detectives came
Speaker 1: in would say they were not as emotional as we
Speaker 1: would expect, they were not as concerned as we would expect.
Speaker 1: We gave them every cooperation we could. We gave them
Speaker 1: all our clothes or shoes, my glasses, fingerprints and photographs.
Speaker 1: They did searches with lights, and they did a gunshot
Speaker 1: retibute chat, you know, given cart blash to search the
Speaker 1: house and do whatever else they wanted to do. They
Speaker 1: recorded statements and then they bought us some sweats and
Speaker 1: jumped us off in the w mortel without a phone.
Speaker 1: My assumption was always that they didn't want them to
Speaker 1: call a lawyer or Mr Burns to get advice on
Speaker 1: what to do, but to keep them isolated. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they've got you confined in the ceed motel room, poking
Speaker 1: and prodding you and Sebastian with a whirlwind of questions
Speaker 1: and examinations that you submitted to voluntarily, which lasted about
Speaker 1: fifty six hours and turned up exactly nothing. Neither did
Speaker 1: the physical evidence that the crime scene incriminate a Teeth
Speaker 1: or Sebastian, and nor did the extensive testing that a
Speaker 1: Tief and Sebastian voluntarily submitted to afterwards. There was not
Speaker 1: a shred of bone, blood, tissue, or anything else found
Speaker 1: in either boy's body or clothing or in their hair.
Speaker 1: The idea that you could just shower away all of
Speaker 1: that blood evidence, it's pretty remote. So they're pinning their
Speaker 1: hopes on the DNA test results to incriminate you too,
Speaker 1: because they have nothing else. But in the meantime, you're
Speaker 1: two teenage boys. I mean, let's face it, the responsible
Speaker 1: adults in your lives here in America. Your parents were
Speaker 1: simply gone, right, your sister was gone, and your house
Speaker 1: was a crime scene. You had no home here at all. Right,
Speaker 1: nowhere to go, and I mean now, put yourself in
Speaker 1: Sebastian's parents shoes right there. They were definitely going to
Speaker 1: try like hell to get you and their son back
Speaker 1: to their home in Canada. And all of this was
Speaker 1: happening while funeral arrangements were being made by your extended family.
Speaker 1: So at the time I didn't realize this, but my
Speaker 1: relatives were actually flying in and coming into town, and
Speaker 1: they kept the fact that that was happening from us.
Speaker 1: Sadashian's parents had contacted the Canadian consulates, and the consulates
Speaker 1: contacted the police and informants that they wanted to return
Speaker 1: us to Canada. And I left a message with the
Speaker 1: check Off Thompson saying that we would be leaving, And
Speaker 1: on that very day, my relatives were in Seattle, but
Speaker 1: the police were not disclosing to them where we were
Speaker 1: or how to reach us, and they weren't telling us
Speaker 1: that they were even in town. And so on the
Speaker 1: day that I went back to Canada, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what the police did know, which was that the
Speaker 1: funeral was already being arranged completely without my knowledge or participation.
Speaker 1: And this would later be something that the police would
Speaker 1: then lie about and describe us as fleeing the country.
Speaker 1: They were seen as, I think, a couple of wise
Speaker 1: guys who had gotten away with something, so now they
Speaker 1: want to paint you as fleeing, right, even though you
Speaker 1: had given them everything they'd asked for over the course
Speaker 1: of those fifty six hours in that CD motel room. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the other bizarre things about the prosecution's theory
Speaker 1: in this case was that a thief had wanted the
Speaker 1: insurance money from his parents. But even that you would
Speaker 1: need to suspend a huge amount of disbelief because of
Speaker 1: the level of violence in these murders, and particularly of
Speaker 1: a chief's father, who the police estimated was bashed in
Speaker 1: the head forty times with a baseball pad, and indications
Speaker 1: were and are that the first blow was the blow
Speaker 1: that ended doctor of Faye's life. So Why would a
Speaker 1: loving son who now supposedly suddenly out for money commit
Speaker 1: a murder in that manner? The amount of violence done
Speaker 1: could only have indicated fanaticism to me. So now while
Speaker 1: they were still waiting on the DNA to incriminate you,
Speaker 1: or so, they thought, more evidence was pouring in pointing
Speaker 1: instead toward religious extremists. You'll remember Dr Refay's efforts to
Speaker 1: improve relations with other religious communities and his controversial views
Speaker 1: on Kibla okay. So in the days following the murders,
Speaker 1: the Bellevue Police received not one, not two, but three
Speaker 1: tips from other law enforcement agencies. First Constable Jelina's with
Speaker 1: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told them that a confidential
Speaker 1: informant had warned them of a man who had been
Speaker 1: offered twenty thou dollars to kill an East Indian family
Speaker 1: that had previously lived in Vancouver but had moved to Bellevue.
Speaker 1: The informant became aware of this two days before the
Speaker 1: murders were committed. Joline's contacted investigators Robert Thompson and Jeff Combs,
Speaker 1: the lead Bellevue officers on the case, who then traveled
Speaker 1: to Vancouver and knocked on the door of the man
Speaker 1: in questions home twice. He didn't answer either time, and
Speaker 1: the officers returned to the US without making any contact. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the Intelligence division of the Seattle Police had information that
Speaker 1: Al Fucra, a radical and militant organization, may have been
Speaker 1: involved in the homicides, but they didn't bother to follow
Speaker 1: up on that tip either, And five days after the murders,
Speaker 1: another tip came in from the FBI. Right so OURCMP
Speaker 1: royally amount of police, Seattle Police Intelligence and now the
Speaker 1: freaking FBI. They delivered an informant to Bellevue and he
Speaker 1: told them that a militant Islamic faction to which he
Speaker 1: was privy, said that Dr Teriq Rafe should die because
Speaker 1: of his beliefs and teachings about the Koran. The informant
Speaker 1: also said that in the days after the murders, a
Speaker 1: member of this same militant faction came to his house
Speaker 1: and was worried that he the informant had seen a
Speaker 1: baseball bat that the militant and others had had in
Speaker 1: their car. Because of this concern, the FBI informant came
Speaker 1: to believe that the murder weapon was a bat. Now
Speaker 1: the Bellevue police already knew the murder weapon wasn't bad,
Speaker 1: but that fact critically had not been made public yet.
Speaker 1: This guy was a reliable FBI informant. The police were
Speaker 1: given full addresses, names, places of work, telephone numbers, and
Speaker 1: they just ignored him. They didn't even spell the names
Speaker 1: that he gave them correctly. All of this information never
Speaker 1: came to our attention until years later, because they said
Speaker 1: that they didn't have to turn over discovery until we
Speaker 1: were in the United States, and so for years we
Speaker 1: didn't know about any of this information and we couldn't
Speaker 1: investigate it. So if all of these credible and compelling
Speaker 1: leads couldn't break through the Bellevue investigators tunnel vision, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and guess at conflicting DNA test results
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have made a difference either, So let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Investigators found d NA mixed with Dr a Phay's blood
Speaker 1: in the downstairs shower, DNA mixed in with a bloody
Speaker 1: footprint in the garage made with Dr a face blood,
Speaker 1: as well as a coarse body here or pubic hair
Speaker 1: on the parents fitted sheet where Dr PA's body was found,
Speaker 1: but none of the other DNA profiles that were discovered
Speaker 1: at the crime scene matched the DNA of the victims
Speaker 1: to Reek Sultana or Bosma Rafe or the supposed alleged
Speaker 1: culforts in the case Sebastian and a Tief. So there's
Speaker 1: DNA evidence at the crime scene clearly excluding a Tief
Speaker 1: and Sebastian and pointing at unknown perpetrators. One more thing
Speaker 1: about that hair that you mentioned the detective initially when
Speaker 1: they found it, that it was in a position that
Speaker 1: could only be explained if it had been left part
Speaker 1: to killer. And they kept saying that right until the
Speaker 1: DNA proove that have didn't belong to Sebastian. Army more
Speaker 1: inconvenient truths. So if they had no evidence of your guilt,
Speaker 1: which they didn't, In fact, they had evidence of someone
Speaker 1: else's guilt, but they were fixed on getting new, then
Speaker 1: why and I've go ahead and make shut up right.
Speaker 1: They pointed to books you had read and philosophy papers,
Speaker 1: saying that you two guys love Nietzsche and subscribe to
Speaker 1: his superman theory, and in their slanted understanding, implied that
Speaker 1: you and Sebastian were capable of callously taking what you
Speaker 1: wanted from those who you deemed weaker than yourselves. Then
Speaker 1: they went after your alibi, saying the Sebastian ordered wine
Speaker 1: at the restaurant you had gone through that night. The
Speaker 1: keg so specifically so that he would be carded right
Speaker 1: in order to solidify his alibi. But what's wrong with
Speaker 1: this theory? Well, we had, like most of under age
Speaker 1: kids at that time, to get into clubs and order drinks.
Speaker 1: But you know you had a different name on it,
Speaker 1: Edward Montardo Mantaro. So I'm not sure how that would
Speaker 1: help us exactly right, For that theory about being remembered
Speaker 1: to hold water, you'd have to have I d that
Speaker 1: wasn't fake, not idea that was. And then they attacked
Speaker 1: your alibi again, saying that you left the larger than
Speaker 1: usual will tip just to be remembered. Okay, fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: on the bill of nine fifty. And if you think
Speaker 1: that's too much, and of course it is more, but
Speaker 1: try asking your server or bartender what they usually do
Speaker 1: when they go out. They're usually very generous to one another.
Speaker 1: And Sebastian used to be a server. Sebastian likely that
Speaker 1: he had been a server. He knew how much that
Speaker 1: meant to them. You can tell a server to keep
Speaker 1: the change. You're not gonna just give them a fifty
Speaker 1: cent tip because you have ten even in your bill,
Speaker 1: the nine fifty you're going to give them the next
Speaker 1: will you have, which I guess in this case was
Speaker 1: a five. But obviously this is all really weak, and
Speaker 1: with the physical evidence all pointing away from you, plus
Speaker 1: all the media hype around your case, they had to
Speaker 1: come up with something. So it's January, months after the murders,
Speaker 1: you're both in Canada and Bellevue investigators and list the
Speaker 1: help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform a
Speaker 1: sting operation that was illegal in the US but legal
Speaker 1: in Canada and is known as Mr Big. The mist
Speaker 1: Big technique involves undercover officers playing roles as gangsters, thus
Speaker 1: gaining the trust of a police target. They seduce the
Speaker 1: target with the gangster mystique and the promise of big
Speaker 1: money schemes. They eventually ask about the targets criminal history
Speaker 1: under the guise of knowing whether any past criminal behavior
Speaker 1: poses a risk to future criminal operations that they're going
Speaker 1: to perform together. For example, you know, will you turn
Speaker 1: on me if you get pinched and then, as with
Speaker 1: other methods of eliciting confessions and Jason your network has
Speaker 1: covered this extensively on your show Wrongful Conviction, false Confessions.
Speaker 1: The results are a mixed bag, some reliable confessions, some false,
Speaker 1: and the most reliable way one can tell the difference
Speaker 1: is by the evidence that does or does not corroborate
Speaker 1: the statements made by police targets. Now, in this case,
Speaker 1: the operation begins with setting up electronic and visual surveillance
Speaker 1: of the targets, which include of the tief, Sebastian and
Speaker 1: their friend Jimmy Miyoshi. And it's important to note that
Speaker 1: the authorities knew Jimmy wasn't even in any area at
Speaker 1: the time of the murders, but they were leaning on
Speaker 1: him as an alleged accomplished either before or after the killing.
Speaker 1: They would take either. So the game begins and over
Speaker 1: time there's a chance meeting, well it's not really a
Speaker 1: chance meeting between Sebastian and these undercover agents, and a
Speaker 1: slow seduction process begins into making him believe in they're
Speaker 1: assumed criminal identities. They let Sebastian in on some stage
Speaker 1: meetings and some fake victim of scenarios like moving a
Speaker 1: car he had been told was stolen, and then with
Speaker 1: a mix, a toxic mix of trust and fear, they
Speaker 1: hoped to elicit a confession. So this seduction process went
Speaker 1: on for about four months, and there's been talking about
Speaker 1: the murder in Bellevue, but Sebastian repeatedly denied it. Then
Speaker 1: around May through July, things start to come to a head.
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do would be underconf for officers. First,
Speaker 1: I knew fashion was getting involved with them. He was
Speaker 1: telling me about it. But by May sixth Sebastian didn't
Speaker 1: want to have anything to do with them. Every time
Speaker 1: Sebastian tried to say I don't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with you, you would say, who you're going
Speaker 1: to give up when the police come and arrest you?
Speaker 1: And I know from my inside information that the police
Speaker 1: are come to arrest you, And Sebastian would say, well,
Speaker 1: they must be fabritating something, they must be misrepresenting something.
Speaker 1: It can't be the case because we didn't do the crimes. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're speaking to a police officer, you have the
Speaker 1: right not to incriminate yourself. You can plead the Fifth Amendment.
Speaker 1: But if you're speaking to gangsters. It's far more intimidating
Speaker 1: because you can't plead the Fifth Amendment with these gangsters.
Speaker 1: You're afraid of what they're going to do to you
Speaker 1: or your family. And it didn't matter whether we thought
Speaker 1: or we were worried that we were about to be arrested,
Speaker 1: because what mattered was what Mr Big believed. And he
Speaker 1: kept saying that what he believed is that we were
Speaker 1: being arrested, and that are being arrested was putting him
Speaker 1: in danger, and he says, I'm not going to take
Speaker 1: the risk of going down. You have to rem remember
Speaker 1: that you have to satisfy me that I can get
Speaker 1: rid of all the evidence that's down there so that
Speaker 1: you don't go to jail, so that you're not putting
Speaker 1: my organization at risk. It's a corner that they paint
Speaker 1: you into it from which there is no escape unless
Speaker 1: you do what they say. And to be clear, a
Speaker 1: thief and Sebastian never really came out and said we
Speaker 1: killed them and this is how we did it. What
Speaker 1: passed as a confession came from the bogus answers to
Speaker 1: the undercover agent's questions, questions that were aimed at filling
Speaker 1: in the large gaps in this investigation that had so
Speaker 1: far pointed away from a Chief and Sebastian, for example,
Speaker 1: about how they had covered their tracks. And these bogus
Speaker 1: answers that a Chief and Sebastian ended up giving to
Speaker 1: these questions are what ended up passing for an admission
Speaker 1: of guilt. For example, when Sebastian was asked about what
Speaker 1: you guys did with the bloody clothing, he said, we
Speaker 1: threw them in a dumpster, which one I can't remember.
Speaker 1: Well what happens when they find it panicked? He came
Speaker 1: up with, uh, no, we threw each piece of clothing
Speaker 1: out in different dumpsters, you know, so two socks, two shoes, pants, underwear, shirt,
Speaker 1: that's seven pieces of clothing each. How many dumpsters could
Speaker 1: you even find in Bellevue? Right? You need to have
Speaker 1: a Google map of dumpsters which didn't exist back then.
Speaker 1: These are just childish lies. The next time the undercover
Speaker 1: agent asked him about the bloody clothing, he changed his
Speaker 1: story again. No, no, no, we did it naked, so
Speaker 1: there were no bloody clothes. But then there were also
Speaker 1: no bloody footprints leading to the shower or blood that
Speaker 1: had dripped off of their supposedly naked bodies. It's a miracle.
Speaker 1: Then later on, when they ask you a tief, the
Speaker 1: same question about the disposal of any bloody clothing, you said, oh,
Speaker 1: we just hucked them out the window. So now that's
Speaker 1: four different fucking stories just about the clothing. Then there's
Speaker 1: the utter nonsense with the murder weapon, the baseball bat.
Speaker 1: Right where did you get it? Well, first, Abashian said,
Speaker 1: it was just laying around the raffet household. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you can speak for all Pakistani's
Speaker 1: the thief, But isn't cricket more of the usual thing?
Speaker 1: We played cricket. I've never played baseball in any form whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The next time, Sebastian comes up with a completely different lie,
Speaker 1: which is that you guys bought the bat the murder
Speaker 1: weapon in a sporting goods store, but which store you
Speaker 1: couldn't remember where it doesn't know. The undercover agents also
Speaker 1: asked Sebastian about how they were able to commit these
Speaker 1: murders if they were at the movie theater, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: we left by the side door, and no one ever
Speaker 1: bothered to demonstrate how impossible it would be to commit
Speaker 1: the murders during the time frame supplied by the neighbors.
Speaker 1: So again, another implausible answer is given to please these gangsters.
Speaker 1: So there's only one reason why these stories contradicted the
Speaker 1: facts and each other, and that's because they were all
Speaker 1: made up stories. You would have literally needed to rehearse
Speaker 1: this because there's no way that the two different minds
Speaker 1: are going to come up with the same story independently
Speaker 1: when the whole story is made up out of whole cloth.
Speaker 1: All right, I mean, we tried the best to provide
Speaker 1: a plausible story, but yes, we didn't come up with
Speaker 1: perfect stories because we didn't commit the murder. Then we
Speaker 1: couldn't keep our stories straight because we didn't practice them
Speaker 1: well enough. Okay, So eventually you're arrested July thirty one,
Speaker 1: you and Sebaschelor charged with three counts of aggravated first
Speaker 1: degree murder, and your friend Jimmy Miyoshi was charged with
Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit murder. And you guys were locked up
Speaker 1: in maximum security pre trial facilities INBC British Columbia for
Speaker 1: six years, and in the fall of Jimmy Miyoshi was
Speaker 1: threatened by the RCMP with a suggestion that he might
Speaker 1: face the death penalty if he didn't tell them what
Speaker 1: they wanted to hear, which is that you guys were guilty. So, understandably,
Speaker 1: scared for his life, Jimmy signed an immunity agreement from
Speaker 1: his charge of conspiracy to commit murder and provided a
Speaker 1: number of statements incriminated you guys. But again we see
Speaker 1: the same pattern. Each statement contradicted the last one, and
Speaker 1: each one of them contradicted the physical evidence at the
Speaker 1: crime scene. So how many times did Jimmy initially deny
Speaker 1: that you and Sebastian had anything to do with it?
Speaker 1: Jimmy denied it twenty four times. And even after he
Speaker 1: made statements that were necessary to get an immunity agreement,
Speaker 1: he contacted our attorneys and he tried to find a
Speaker 1: way to tell the truth without being punished. Forth, prosecutors
Speaker 1: goad he was working for Lehman Brothers and for pressure
Speaker 1: on Lehman Brothers. He was told he was going to
Speaker 1: be fired unless he fulfilled his obligations to the prosecutors,
Speaker 1: and then he was toldly my face murder charges in addition,
Speaker 1: So Jimmy did what everyone does, I think in the
Speaker 1: system that's designed to make people say what the prosecutors
Speaker 1: want you to say. Jimmy did in fact go through
Speaker 1: with fulfilling his agreements, and then Lehman fired him. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So after six years in a Canadian maximum security facility,
Speaker 1: in March of two thousand one, you were finally extradited
Speaker 1: to the United States, and in the lead up to
Speaker 1: trial in January of two thousand three, something both horrifying
Speaker 1: and what should have been like the final alarm sounding
Speaker 1: your innocence occurred. If you remember, a Thief's father, Dr Rafe,
Speaker 1: co founded and led a Muslim group in Vancouver that
Speaker 1: sought to build bridges with other faith communities. Well, his
Speaker 1: co founder and successor in leading that group, Riya sat
Speaker 1: Ali Khan, was murdered. He was murdered on his doorstep,
Speaker 1: very close to the eve of the trial. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a message, the killing of Riyasad Ali Khan that A,
Speaker 1: we still are here and we're going to do what
Speaker 1: we can to keep these religions apart and be you
Speaker 1: have the wrong people, You're prosecuting the wrong people. Finally,
Speaker 1: the trial began November two thousand three, over eight years
Speaker 1: after the original arrest, but the trial in some ways
Speaker 1: was as messed up as the rest of this nightmare scenario.
Speaker 1: I mean when I say that the trial judge Charles
Speaker 1: Myrtel ruled key evidence and admissible, so the jury never
Speaker 1: learned about the leads that were provided to the Bellevy
Speaker 1: Police by the FBI or the Seattle Intelligence Division informants.
Speaker 1: And those leads, for obvious reasons, would have been essential
Speaker 1: to prove your innocence as well as introduced the element
Speaker 1: of religious extremism that would have again been absolutely compelling
Speaker 1: to any jury. But they weren't permitted to hear that.
Speaker 1: And they also weren't permitted to hear from doctor Richard Leo.
Speaker 1: He's a leading expert on false confessions. He had agreed
Speaker 1: to present information regarding the false confessions that took place
Speaker 1: in order to provide the jury with relevant and reliable
Speaker 1: social scientific information about the psycholo logical phenomenon of interrogation
Speaker 1: and false confessions so the jury could make an informed decision.
Speaker 1: The judge somehow determined that it was quote the province
Speaker 1: of this jury to decide whether or not in their
Speaker 1: common experience and common sense, these statements made by these
Speaker 1: defendants of these undercover officers are voluntary or involuntary. You
Speaker 1: were doomed at that point. You were doomed. All the
Speaker 1: trial council, including my own and in the judge, were
Speaker 1: convinced that everything could be admitted from Canada on a
Speaker 1: silver platter without any American constitudual scrutiny. You were wrong
Speaker 1: about that, but that wasn't discovered till years after the trial. Wow.
Speaker 1: So this technique that was illegal in the States but
Speaker 1: legal at the time in Canada was just sort of
Speaker 1: greenlit right in And that is, of course the only
Speaker 1: evidence in this case against you. I say that because,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, the prosecution did present the ridiculous brain
Speaker 1: fart about the fake ideas a large tip and the
Speaker 1: Nizka nonsense to try how to bolster the false confessions,
Speaker 1: which they knew ran directly counter to the physical evidence,
Speaker 1: DNA evidence, alibi witnesses and eyewitness accounts of the neighbors,
Speaker 1: as well as the leads that they didn't bother to
Speaker 1: follow up on involving religious extremists who were in all
Speaker 1: likelihood the real killers in this case. But it's really
Speaker 1: hard to overcome confession evidence, no matter how many inconsistencies
Speaker 1: and contradictions there are. So now at this point, it's
Speaker 1: nearly ten freaking years after your family was murdered, and
Speaker 1: the jury came to what was probably a predictable conclusion,
Speaker 1: a guilty verdict, and you and Sebashi were sentenced to
Speaker 1: serve three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that moment. I don't think anything as
Speaker 1: bad as the moment that I came home that night,
Speaker 1: but that was generally close seconds. Even after everything that
Speaker 1: happened in this I didn't expect it. I believe somehow
Speaker 1: the jury would still be able to see that we
Speaker 1: were innocence. I was shocked. Okay, so you've already been
Speaker 1: in jail for a decade. Now you're sent to prison,
Speaker 1: but you've continued, you know, your dedication to constantly learning
Speaker 1: and improving and growing. I was very fortunate to find
Speaker 1: myself amongst some prisoners who were really interested in education,
Speaker 1: and a a great volunteer named Carolstas who wanted to
Speaker 1: found a university beyond Bars program here, and so I
Speaker 1: was able to spend some of my time actually contributing
Speaker 1: to that and helping other people learn, which was felt
Speaker 1: satisfying and meaningful. And now you know multiple college education programs.
Speaker 1: Did you still working on and through the university beyond
Speaker 1: bars on loop quick on your undergraduate thesis honors thesis
Speaker 1: of film philosophy of literature. It's extrudinary, so much more
Speaker 1: than so many people on the outside have wherever will do.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your appeals and your prospects for
Speaker 1: free them. A Chief's appeals were underway by the time
Speaker 1: we got involved. I had seen a film made by
Speaker 1: Sebastian sister Tiffany and Ruben Hurricane Carter and I were
Speaker 1: obviously floored by the facts here, and we joined David Coke,
Speaker 1: the appeals lawyer, in support of Sebastian and a teeth
Speaker 1: and I actually attended his state appeal to a three
Speaker 1: judge panel in Seattle. And this was early on. I mean,
Speaker 1: we thought this would be a slam dunk. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: no forensic evidence, no alternative suspects allowed to be brought
Speaker 1: into the courtroom. There's no allowance of Richard Leo, who
Speaker 1: was an expert on false confessions, and Michael Levine, who
Speaker 1: was an expert on FBI sting operations. He wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: into the courtroom either. It was as if Judge Martell
Speaker 1: had simply decided, We're going to convict these guys in
Speaker 1: a kangaroo court. But it didn't seem to matter how
Speaker 1: much since our arguments made as a Chief and Sebastian
Speaker 1: were seen as guilty in the state of Washington, and
Speaker 1: the media coverage really made sure they were never going
Speaker 1: to receive a fair shake. And then a Chief later
Speaker 1: got married to Loretta Fisher, who worked tirelessly on his behalf,
Speaker 1: and more appeals were filed on the back of her work,
Speaker 1: also to no avail. Then the Supreme Court of Canada
Speaker 1: ruled to limit the admissibility of evidence obtained through the
Speaker 1: missed Big operation. So now even in Canada, where this
Speaker 1: evidence was conjured up, the admissibility of these confessions was
Speaker 1: brought into question, where in the absence of forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: as was the case here, these so called confessions would
Speaker 1: not now be any longer admissible. And that should have
Speaker 1: been huge, but sadly it was not. It was apperiod
Speaker 1: when I didn't know where to turn, really, and out
Speaker 1: of the blue, Kellie Laudenberg decided to make my case
Speaker 1: the first one in her series of false confession documentaries,
Speaker 1: and Ken told me that someone's who had watched the
Speaker 1: confession tapes had become so indignant and so impassionate about
Speaker 1: the case that she reached out to the person that
Speaker 1: everyone who knows about him thinks about first, and that's you. Jason. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I know who you're talking about, But are you
Speaker 1: at liberty? Do you feel comfortable telling us about this
Speaker 1: amazing mystery woman so later into someone with whom I
Speaker 1: didn't know her before last year, and now she's become
Speaker 1: someone very special to me to my talk every day.
Speaker 1: And it's because of her that you got involved, and
Speaker 1: of course it's because of her getting you involved that
Speaker 1: David Kim got involved. And David Kim has been a
Speaker 1: force of nature in my case. She wrote a seven
Speaker 1: hundred and two page analysis of this case that found
Speaker 1: things in it that even I hadn't found, and I
Speaker 1: thought I'd looked over absolutely everything in my case. And then,
Speaker 1: because he thought I needed the best to pelt attorney
Speaker 1: in the United States, he reached out to Tom Goldstein,
Speaker 1: who was considered by everyone to be the tenth Supreme
Speaker 1: Court Justice, and certainly Google chose him as their lawyer
Speaker 1: when they needed to win a case at the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of the United States, and it was a miracle
Speaker 1: to me when Tom got involves and then Larsovski, who
Speaker 1: leads the Washington Instance Project, became involved in my case.
Speaker 1: All these things just have been building over the last
Speaker 1: year and that has completely transformed how I do the future.
Speaker 1: Now amen to that, and now we're all awaiting the
Speaker 1: Habeas Corpus proceedings in the Ninth Circuit Court in the
Speaker 1: United States District for the Western District of Washington. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff going on. We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: our audience surprised of it. We're gonna link to the
Speaker 1: petition use your power, Let's help a Thief and Sebastian
Speaker 1: get home. There's also a website refite burns appeal dot com.
Speaker 1: All of it will be linked in the bio so
Speaker 1: Ken and the Thief. This is a part of the
Speaker 1: show that I know I look forward to the most,
Speaker 1: that I think our audience does as well. It's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments. It's a part of the show where I
Speaker 1: first of all have the privilege of thanking both of
Speaker 1: you for joining me and sharing this unbelievable story and
Speaker 1: how this works is I'm going to turn my microphone
Speaker 1: off and leave yours both on and kick back in
Speaker 1: my chair and just listen to whatever you have to
Speaker 1: say anything. We haven't covered anything you want to say
Speaker 1: at all about anything. And of course, a tif we're
Speaker 1: going to save you the best for last, all due
Speaker 1: respect to you, Ken. Yeah, so Ken, let's go to
Speaker 1: you first, and then you can just hand the mic
Speaker 1: off to a Tief and I'm just gonna sit back
Speaker 1: and listen. So, as I said before, this case came
Speaker 1: to us as a result of the movie that Sebastian
Speaker 1: Burne's sister did back in two thousand and seven. It
Speaker 1: was at the Vancouver International Film Festival and I happened
Speaker 1: to be in the audience. I saw this and realized
Speaker 1: that the burns As were in the audience. They had
Speaker 1: been introduced. So I went up to them and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm working for Reuben Hurricane Carter, and I think this
Speaker 1: case would be of interest to him. Do you want
Speaker 1: some help? And of course they did, and so I
Speaker 1: got this case in front of Ruben and he was
Speaker 1: infuriated by the way a pair of teenager had been
Speaker 1: manipulated by people who should have known better. But we're
Speaker 1: trying to burnish their own reputations, and to me, this
Speaker 1: story is really about friendships, both the one that a
Speaker 1: thief and Sebastians shared as well as the one between
Speaker 1: the Muslim community and other faith based communities in Canada
Speaker 1: that Dr Tariq Rafe and later Ryasa Ali Khan try
Speaker 1: to foster and endeavor for which they paid with their lives. Well.
Speaker 1: The potential of these two young friends and the greater
Speaker 1: friendship between those communities both were snuffed out Atif Rafe.
Speaker 1: Over to you, Vashum and I have been wrongly in
Speaker 1: prison for over twice seven years and the same age
Speaker 1: today my parents were when I was a kid, when
Speaker 1: they were raising me, I imagine looking back in my
Speaker 1: life with their eyes and every day it's been a
Speaker 1: struggle to keep going, and I still hardly believe all
Speaker 1: that has happened. But what I feel most now is gratitude,
Speaker 1: amazingly rough. When I was a child, my parents told
Speaker 1: me stories about the hard times they had in their
Speaker 1: early years in Vancouver when my dad was looking for work,
Speaker 1: how they would eat boiled potatoes off and uspapers spread
Speaker 1: on the floor. And I understood when I was a
Speaker 1: kid that the life would involve struggle, but I didn't
Speaker 1: fathom then that's how much the caring and generosity of
Speaker 1: others would need for my life, that this grounds while
Speaker 1: the support would make it possible for my struggles to matters.
Speaker 1: Still today, I owe so many people so much, not
Speaker 1: only Ruben and Ken and Tom and you, Jason, all
Speaker 1: of you people who were like Oscar Schindler's you know,
Speaker 1: you know our day and age of nciple convictions and
Speaker 1: mass and persuations. That feeling of gratitude is what carried
Speaker 1: me through every day, and I'm just grateful to have
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to feel that love and care for
Speaker 1: someone for some small life. Thank you for sing to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. Please support your local innocence organizations and go
Speaker 1: to the links in our bio to see how you
Speaker 1: can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall,
Speaker 1: Justin Golden, Jeff Cleburne, and Kevin wardis. The music on
Speaker 1: this show, as always is by three time Oscar nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction, and on
Speaker 1: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good podcast in association with signal Company
Speaker 1: Number one