Speaker 1: The Reffays were a Pakistani Canadian immigrant family who moved
Speaker 1: to Bellevue, Washington, while their son, a Teif, finished his
Speaker 1: freshman year at Cornell University. A Chief's father, doctor Tariq Reffey,
Speaker 1: was a prominent and outspoken moderate Muslim with controversial views
Speaker 1: in their old community in Vancouver. While Atif and his
Speaker 1: best friend Sebastian Burns were out for the night on
Speaker 1: July twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Atif's father, mother, and sister
Speaker 1: were brutally bludgeoned to death in their home. Neighbors on
Speaker 1: either side of the Refe's home independently reported hearing the
Speaker 1: sounds of the murders at a time for which the
Speaker 1: boys whereabouts were well known. Their vocal operation revealed no
Speaker 1: incriminating evidence. DNA evidence mixed with doctor Refae's blood belonged
Speaker 1: to neither the victims nor a Tief or Sebastian. Yet,
Speaker 1: despite all of this, as well as compelling leads implicating
Speaker 1: religious extremists, the Bellevue police never took their focus off
Speaker 1: of a Tief at Sebastian. While the boys went up
Speaker 1: to live with Sebashian's parents in Canada, investigators enlisted the
Speaker 1: help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform an
Speaker 1: undercover sting called Mister Big that extracted two false confessions
Speaker 1: that were riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. To solidify their case,
Speaker 1: they coerced a Tief and Sebastian's friend Jimmy Miyoshi 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
Speaker 1: flamm Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamman. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, where to why you even start? Because this
Speaker 1: case should have gone in an entirely different direction with
Speaker 1: what came from the initial investigation, But they took the
Speaker 1: really long, borderline crazy way around the right answer to
Speaker 1: get to this one. It's so convoluted, and luckily with
Speaker 1: us today to help tell the story, we have a
Speaker 1: true hero of the innocence movement, and of course I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Ken Klonsky. Ken is the director of Innocence International,
Speaker 1: an organization that he co founded with a legend, a
Speaker 1: boxing legend, and a civil rights legend, a man whose
Speaker 1: name you'll probably recognize, Reuben Hurricane Carter so Ken. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here today.
Speaker 1: We are compelled to shine a light on the horrendous
Speaker 1: case of A t fre Fe and Sebastian Burns, two
Speaker 1: nineteen year old boys back then twenty seven years ago,
Speaker 1: over nineteen, who were egregiously framed, persecuted in the court
Speaker 1: system and in the press. A Tief is with us today.
Speaker 1: Sebastian can't be unfortunately, but the case I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, they're both equally innocent and they're both framed
Speaker 1: in the exact same proceedings.
Speaker 2: You have a prepaid call.
Speaker 1: You will not be charged for this call.
Speaker 3: This call is from an inmate aunt Monroe Correctional Complex.
Speaker 3: 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, A t f Fe. A Tief,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you have to be here under these conditions,
Speaker 1: but hopefully not for too much longer. But I am
Speaker 1: happy you're here and thanks for calling in.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason. I'm so grateful, So Tief.
Speaker 1: Your story was covered by Kelly Laudenberg in the Confession
Speaker 1: Tapes on Netflix, and in a series that was one
Speaker 1: episode per case yours, she actually dedicated two episodes to it.
Speaker 1: So we've got had a lot of ground to cover.
Speaker 1: So let's start by going back to a time before
Speaker 1: this unspeakable tragedy befell your family. What was life like
Speaker 1: for you growing up?
Speaker 3: It was a remarkably happy and lucky life, I would think,
Speaker 3: in almost every respect. I grew up partly in the Karachi, Pakistan.
Speaker 3: The most of my life I had lived in Vancouver,
Speaker 3: and I had amazing, devoted, wonderful parents. I mean, my
Speaker 3: parents were extraordinary people, and I didn't really just love them,
Speaker 3: I admired them. My mom was a best friend to me.
Speaker 3: My dad was the kind of person who cared deeply
Speaker 3: about everything in the world and was able to continuously
Speaker 3: engage me in being interested in the world in a
Speaker 3: way that I think two people ever get to experience.
Speaker 3: It was a real enormous privilege to grow up like
Speaker 3: that and to be able to have the parents I did.
Speaker 1: So no one ever even claimed that there were any
Speaker 1: problems of any kind in your family, that there were
Speaker 1: any bad feelings, much less violence or strife. And I
Speaker 1: also want to highlight that your father, doctor Tarique Refey,
Speaker 1: was a prominent Sunni Muslim and was active in his
Speaker 1: religious and cultural communities, both in Vancouver and Bellevue, only
Speaker 1: a two and a half hour drive away from one another.
Speaker 1: By the way, he was the co founder and one
Speaker 1: time president of the very moderate interfaith friendship building organization,
Speaker 1: the Pakistan Canada Association, whose activities were frankly very upsetting
Speaker 1: to some more radical Muslims.
Speaker 2: And it's important to note that doctor Ifei also published
Speaker 2: a paper and developed a controversial computer program indicating that
Speaker 2: Muslims in British Columbia were mistakenly not facing Mecca when
Speaker 2: they prayed. The direction Muslims are meant to face is
Speaker 2: called Kiblah, which is the direction of the shortest possible
Speaker 2: path from any place to Mecca, and it has all
Speaker 2: sorts of important implications, not only daily prayers, but also
Speaker 2: Muslims are not permitted to urinate, spit or stretch their
Speaker 2: feet in the direction of Mecca, and when dead Muslims
Speaker 2: must be buried on their right hand side to face Mecca. Now,
Speaker 2: much later, during a chief's trial, this controversy came up,
Speaker 2: and the prosecution misquoted doctor Refae's paper stating that according
Speaker 2: to doctor A. Fay, the kibla in use in the
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest was only off by one degree, and how
Speaker 2: would anyone be angered by such a small degree. But
Speaker 2: the prosecutor had misquoted doctor Rafae, who said that the
Speaker 2: true kibla direction was one degree off from the north pole,
Speaker 2: which would mean that Muslims praying in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 2: were off by close to one hundred degrees. So imagine
Speaker 2: a ninety degree turn and then ten more degrees, and
Speaker 2: then imagine telling folks that their dead parents were facing
Speaker 2: the wrong direction forever.
Speaker 1: So atif the night when your parents and sister were
Speaker 1: tragically killed was July twelfth, nineteen ninety four, but you
Speaker 1: and your friend Sebastian Burns were setting out for the
Speaker 1: night while your mother, father, and sister stayed home, if
Speaker 1: you could give us the timeline for that night, Where
Speaker 1: did you go and what did you do?
Speaker 3: Sure so it was in any ways a typical night
Speaker 3: for us as teenagers, going out to a diner, then
Speaker 3: going to the movies, and then afterwards searching for a
Speaker 3: club and going for a dessert. We had an early
Speaker 3: light dinner at the Keg restaurant from around nine a
Speaker 3: clocks to about nine thirty ish, and at that time
Speaker 3: we went over for the nine to fifty showings of
Speaker 3: The Lion King, and so we were in the lobby
Speaker 3: for a while until the movie started at nine p fifty.
Speaker 3: They would play a large number of advertisements and trailers
Speaker 3: before the movie actually started. Those take several minutes, and
Speaker 3: then what happened that night was something quite unusual. The
Speaker 3: curtains closed after the advertisements and trailers were over, and
Speaker 3: the line King began and started to be projected over
Speaker 3: the closed curtains, and the movie went on like that
Speaker 3: for quite a while, enough so that Sebastian and I
Speaker 3: think some other patrons were in the audience got up
Speaker 3: and went and had to go get the manager. It
Speaker 3: took a while for them to get the movie restarted
Speaker 3: and the curtains opened again, and so you know, it
Speaker 3: was probably ten eight or something by the.
Speaker 1: Time all that was salved 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 KitKat and talked
Speaker 1: with him about his T shirt before the movie. Now
Speaker 1: both men Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan distinctly recalling 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 kidd and a white guy
Speaker 1: with blonde hair made a notable pair.
Speaker 2: So that covers a Chiefs and Sebastian's whereabouts from their
Speaker 2: arrival to the movie theater around nine forty pm to
Speaker 2: at least ten oh eight pm when the projector is
Speaker 2: shoe was fixed. Meanwhile, a thief's neighbors, Mark Sidell and
Speaker 2: Julie Rackley, who lived on either side of the Rafae household,
Speaker 2: whose houses were so close in fact, that they had
Speaker 2: complained sometime of the volume of the Rafae's TV. They
Speaker 2: independently reported and later went on to testify that they
Speaker 2: heard the exact same sounds, describing them as a hammering
Speaker 2: or banging sound, but hollow and muffled sounding, and they
Speaker 2: heard those sounds comfortably in the window of time. When
Speaker 2: Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan can place a tief in
Speaker 2: Sebastian in the lobby of the movie theater, you.
Speaker 1: Just can't be in two places at once. It's making
Speaker 1: me crazy because you had just about as good of
Speaker 1: an alibi as you could possibly have. So now you've
Speaker 1: just seen the Lion King right, and you hit a
Speaker 1: few other places. Just a typical night that millions of
Speaker 1: teenagers have every weekend all over the country. Then you
Speaker 1: go home and find yourself in a literal horror scene.
Speaker 3: So we got out of the car, not expecting anything unusual,
Speaker 3: walked into the living room, and I saw my mother
Speaker 3: lying in that room, and I could see stain on
Speaker 3: the carpet, and after that, I was in a daze.
Speaker 3: I rushed upstairs. The fashion was rushing everywhere around too,
Speaker 3: and it's a confusion of disbelief and bewilderment. I went
Speaker 3: over to my dad's room. Even though the lights were off,
Speaker 3: I could see what the Offsters would later describe as
Speaker 3: it looked like a shotgun blast over the back wall
Speaker 3: and it was. I was spinning around literally on my seat.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever really recovered from it. I
Speaker 3: felt frightened. I felt completely disoriented and in shock. Sash
Speaker 3: and I had just instinctively, I think, ran and ran outside,
Speaker 3: and he had already called the police. I could hear
Speaker 3: him calling, and as soon as the first police officer arrived,
Speaker 3: Gary Rimando, he actually drove past us while we were
Speaker 3: in the driveway, and we ran after them, trying to
Speaker 3: flag him down, and he had to actually pound on
Speaker 3: the trunk of the car because he was just driving off.
Speaker 3: And he got out and yelled at us to sit
Speaker 3: on the curb. I don't know whether he thought we
Speaker 3: were perpetrators or something, or somehow involved, but Jerry Rauda
Speaker 3: was very serious about us sitting down and being quiet,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know what to do other than to
Speaker 3: follow his directions. I think that changed the way everyone
Speaker 3: else looked at us and our behavior afterwards. I think
Speaker 3: the other detectives who came in with they were not
Speaker 3: as emotional as we would expect, They were not as
Speaker 3: concerned as we would expect. We gave them every cooperation
Speaker 3: we could. We gave them all our clothes, their shoes,
Speaker 3: my glasses, fingerprints and photographs. They did searches with lights,
Speaker 3: and they did a gunshot residue chat. You know, give
Speaker 3: them cartilage to search the house and do whatever else
Speaker 3: they wanted to do. They recorded statements, and then they
Speaker 3: bought us some sweats and jumped us off in the
Speaker 3: w mortelle without a phone.
Speaker 2: My assumption was always that they didn't want them to
Speaker 2: call a lawyer or mister Burns to get advice on
Speaker 2: what to do, but to keep them isolated.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they've got you confined in the CD motel room,
Speaker 1: poking and prodding you and Sebastian with a whirlwind of
Speaker 1: questions and examinations that you submitted to voluntarily, which lasted
Speaker 1: about fifty six hours and turned up exactly nothing.
Speaker 2: Neither did the physical evidence that the crime scene incriminate
Speaker 2: a Teeth or Sebastian, nor did the extensive testing that
Speaker 2: a Teeth and Sebastian voluntarily submitted to afterward. There was
Speaker 2: not a shred of bone, blood, tissue, or anything else
Speaker 2: found in either boy's body or clothing, or in their hair.
Speaker 2: The idea that you could just shower away all of
Speaker 2: that blood evidence. It's pretty remote.
Speaker 1: So they're pinning their hopes on the DNA test results
Speaker 1: to incriminate you too, because they had nothing else. But
Speaker 1: in the meantime, you're two teenage boys. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: face it, the responsible adults in your lives here in America.
Speaker 1: Your parents were simply gone, right, your sister was gone,
Speaker 1: and your house was a crime scene. You had no
Speaker 1: home here at all, right, nowhere to go, and I mean,
Speaker 1: now put yourself in Sebastian's parents' shoes, right, they were
Speaker 1: definitely going to try like hell to get you and
Speaker 1: their son back to their home in Canada. And all
Speaker 1: of this was happening while funeral arrangements were being made
Speaker 1: by your extended family. So at the.
Speaker 3: Time I didn't realize this, but my relatives were actually
Speaker 3: flying in and coming into town, and they kept the
Speaker 3: fact that that was happening from us. So that Ashian's
Speaker 3: parents had contacted the Canadian consulates, and the consulates contacted
Speaker 3: the police and informed themths if they wanted to return
Speaker 3: us to Canada. And I left a message with the
Speaker 3: Keechi Thompson saying that we would be leaving, and on
Speaker 3: that very day, my relatives were in Seattle, but the
Speaker 3: police were not disclosing to them where we were for
Speaker 3: how to reach us, and they weren't telling us that
Speaker 3: they were even in town. And so on the day
Speaker 3: that I went back to Canada, I didn't even know
Speaker 3: what the police did know, which was that the funeral
Speaker 3: was already being arranged completely without my knowledge or participation.
Speaker 3: And this would later be something that the police would
Speaker 3: then lie about and describe us as fleeing the country.
Speaker 2: They were saying, as I think a couple of wise
Speaker 2: guys who'd gotten away with something.
Speaker 1: So now they want to paint you as fleeing, right,
Speaker 1: even though you had given them everything they'd ask for
Speaker 1: over the course of those fifty six hours in that
Speaker 1: CD motel room. Now, one of the other bizarre things
Speaker 1: about the prosecution's theory in this case was that a
Speaker 1: thief had wanted the insurance money from his parents. But
Speaker 1: even that you would need to suspend a huge amount
Speaker 1: of disbelief because of the level of violence in these murders,
Speaker 1: and particularly of a chief's father, who the police estimated
Speaker 1: was bashed in the head forty times with a baseball
Speaker 1: pat and indications were and are that the first blow
Speaker 1: was the blow that ended doctor Affee's life. So why
Speaker 1: would a loving son who now supposedly suddenly out for
Speaker 1: money commit a murder in that manner?
Speaker 2: The amount of violence done could only have indicated fanaticism
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: So now, while there was still waiting on the DNA
Speaker 1: to incriminate you, or so they thought, more evidence was
Speaker 1: pouring in pointing instead toward religious extremists. You'll remember doctor
Speaker 1: Refee's efforts to improve relations with other religious communities and
Speaker 1: his controversial views on Kibla okay. So in the days
Speaker 1: following the murders, the Bellevue Police received not one, not two,
Speaker 1: but three tips from other law enforcement agencies. First Constable
Speaker 1: Jelinis with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told them that
Speaker 1: a confidential informant had warned them of a man who
Speaker 1: had been offered twenty thousand dollars to kill an East
Speaker 1: Indian family that had previously lived in Vancouver but had
Speaker 1: moved to Bellevue. The informant became aware of this two
Speaker 1: days before the murders were committed. Jelina's contacted investigators Robert
Speaker 1: Thompson and Jeff Gomes the lead Bellevue officers on the case,
Speaker 1: who then traveled to Vancouver and knocked on the door
Speaker 1: of the man in questions home twice. He didn't answer
Speaker 1: either time, and the officers returned to the US without
Speaker 1: making any contact. Secondly, the Intelligence division of the Seattle
Speaker 1: Police had information that Al Fukra, a radical and milletant organization,
Speaker 1: may have been involved in the homicides, but they didn't
Speaker 1: bother to follow up on that tip either, and five
Speaker 1: days after the murders, another tip came in from the FBI.
Speaker 1: Right so our CMP Royalty Mounted Police, Seattle Police Intelligence,
Speaker 1: and now the freaking FBI. They delivered an informant to
Speaker 1: Bellevue and he told them that a Milletant Islamic faction
Speaker 1: to which he was privy, said that doctor Tarique Reffey
Speaker 1: should die because of his beliefs and teachings about the Qur'an.
Speaker 1: The informant also said that in the days after the murders,
Speaker 1: a member of this same Milletant faction came to his
Speaker 1: house and was worried that he the informant had seen
Speaker 1: a baseball bat that the Milletan and others had had
Speaker 1: in their car. Because of this concern. The FBI informant
Speaker 1: came to believe that the murder weapon was a bat. Now,
Speaker 1: the Bellevue police already knew the murder weapon was a
Speaker 1: bad but that fact critically had not been made public yet.
Speaker 3: This guy was a reliable FBI informant. The police were
Speaker 3: given full addresses, names, places of work, telephone numbers, and
Speaker 3: they just ignored him. They didn't even spell the names
Speaker 3: that he gave them correctly. All of this information never
Speaker 3: came to our attention till years later because they said
Speaker 3: that they didn't have to turn over discovery until we
Speaker 3: were in the United States, and so for years we
Speaker 3: didn't know about any of this information and we couldn't
Speaker 3: investigate it.
Speaker 1: So if all of these credible and compelling leads couldn't
Speaker 1: break through the Bellevue investigator's tunnel vision, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and guess that conflicting DNA test results probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have made a difference either. So let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Investigators found DNA mixed with doctor Faye's blood in the
Speaker 1: downstairs shower, DNA mixed in with a bloody footprint in
Speaker 1: the garage made with doctor off Fay's blok blood, as
Speaker 1: well as a coarse body hair or pubic hair on
Speaker 1: the parents fitted sheet where Doctorfae's body was found. But
Speaker 1: none of the other DNA profiles that were discovered at
Speaker 1: the crime scene matched the DNA of the victims to
Speaker 1: Reek Sultana or Basma Rafae or the supposed alleged culprits
Speaker 1: in the case, Sebastian and a Tief. So there's DNA
Speaker 1: evidence at the crime scene clearly excluding a Tief and
Speaker 1: Sebastian and pointing at unknown perpetrators.
Speaker 3: One more thing about god Hare that you mentioned the
Speaker 3: texts initially when they found it, that it was in
Speaker 3: a position that could only be explained if it had
Speaker 3: been left by the killer. And they kept saying that
Speaker 3: right until the DNA proofs that hadn't belong to Sebastian.
Speaker 1: Ormy more inconvenient truths. So if they had no evidence
Speaker 1: of your guilt, which they didn't, in fact, they had
Speaker 1: evidence of someone else's guilt, but they were fixed on
Speaker 1: getting new in and I've go ahead and make shit up. Right.
Speaker 1: They pointed to books you had read and philosophy papers,
Speaker 1: saying that you two guys loved 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?
Speaker 3: Well, we had Jake id So, like most of under
Speaker 3: age kids at that time, to get into clubs and
Speaker 3: dig order drinks. But you know it had a different
Speaker 3: name on it, Edward Montero Eduardo Mantero. So I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how that would help us exactly.
Speaker 1: Right, for that theory about being remembered to hold water,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have id that wasn't fake, not idea
Speaker 1: that was. And then they attacked your alibi again, saying
Speaker 1: that you left the larger than usual tip just to
Speaker 1: be remembered. Okay, fifteen dollars on a bill of nine
Speaker 1: to fifty And if you think that's too much, and
Speaker 1: of course it is more than twenty percent, but try
Speaker 1: asking your server or bartender what they usually do when
Speaker 1: they go out. They're usually very generous to one another.
Speaker 1: And Sebastian used to be a server.
Speaker 3: Sebastian like to leave that he had been a server.
Speaker 3: He knew how much that meant to them. You can
Speaker 3: tell it server to keep the change. You're not going
Speaker 3: to just give them a fifty cent tip because you
Speaker 3: have ten even in your bills of nine fifty. You're
Speaker 3: going to give them the next billion house.
Speaker 1: Which I guess in this case was a five. But
Speaker 1: obviously this is all really weak and with the physical
Speaker 1: evidence all pointing away from you, plus all the media
Speaker 1: hype around your case, they had to come up with something.
Speaker 1: So it's January nineteen ninety five, months after the murders,
Speaker 1: you're both in Canada and Bellevue Investigators' list the help
Speaker 1: of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform a sting
Speaker 1: operation that was illegal in the US but legal in Canada,
Speaker 1: known as Mister Big.
Speaker 2: The Myster Big technique involves undercover officers playing roles as gangsters,
Speaker 2: thus gaining the trust of a police target. They seduce
Speaker 2: the target with a gangster mystique and the promise of
Speaker 2: big money schemes. They eventually ask about the target's criminal
Speaker 2: history under the guise of knowing whether any past criminal
Speaker 2: behavior poses a risk to future criminal operations that they're
Speaker 2: going to perform together. For example, you know, will you
Speaker 2: turn on me if you get pinched? And then, as
Speaker 2: with other methods of eliciting confessions and Jason, your network
Speaker 2: has covered this extensively on your show, wrongful conviction, false Confessions.
Speaker 2: The results are a mixed bag, some reliable confessions, some false,
Speaker 2: and the most reliable way one can tell the difference
Speaker 2: is by the evidence that does or does not corroborate
Speaker 2: the statements made by police targets.
Speaker 1: Now, in this case, the operation begins with setting up
Speaker 1: electronic and visual surveillance of the targets, which include the
Speaker 1: tief Sebastian and their friend Jimmy Miyoshi.
Speaker 2: And it's important to note that the authorities knew Jimmy
Speaker 2: wasn't even in any area at the time of the murders,
Speaker 2: but they were leaning on him as an alleged accomplish.
Speaker 2: Either before or after the killing. They would take either.
Speaker 1: So the game begins and over time there's a chance meeting,
Speaker 1: though well it's not really a chance meeting between Sebastian
Speaker 1: and these undercover agents, and a slow seduction process begins
Speaker 1: into making him believe in their assumed criminal identities. They
Speaker 1: let Sebashian in on some stage meetings and some fake
Speaker 1: victimless scenarios like moving a car he had been told
Speaker 1: was stolen, and then with a mix, a toxic mix
Speaker 1: of trust and fear, they hoped to elicit a confession.
Speaker 1: So this seduction process went on for about four months,
Speaker 1: and there's been talk about the murder in Bellevue, but
Speaker 1: Sebastian repeatedly denied it. Then around May through July, things
Speaker 1: start to come to a head.
Speaker 3: I had nothing he would be under carfer officers. First
Speaker 3: I knew Sash was getting involved in them. He was
Speaker 3: telling me about it, But by May sixth Sebashian didn't
Speaker 3: want to have anything to do with him. Every time
Speaker 3: Sebastian tried to say I don't want to have anything
Speaker 3: to do with you, he would say, who's you going
Speaker 3: to give up when the police come and arrest you?
Speaker 3: And I know from my inside information that the police
Speaker 3: are come to arrest you, And Sebashian would say, well,
Speaker 3: they must be fabricating something, they must be misrepresenting something.
Speaker 3: It can't be the case because we didn't do the crime.
Speaker 2: Now, if you're speaking to a police officer, you have
Speaker 2: the right not to incriminate yourself. You can plead the
Speaker 2: Fifth Amendment. But if you're speaking to gangsters, it's far
Speaker 2: more intimidating because you can't plead the Fifth Amendment. With
Speaker 2: these gangsters. You're afraid of what they're going to do
Speaker 2: to you or your family.
Speaker 3: And it didn't matter whether we thought or we were
Speaker 3: worried that we were about to be arrested, because what
Speaker 3: mattered was what mister Big believed. And he kept saying
Speaker 3: that what she believed is that we were being arrested,
Speaker 3: and that our being arrested was putting him in danger.
Speaker 3: And he says, I'm not going to take the risk
Speaker 3: of going down. You have to rem remember that you
Speaker 3: have to satisfy me that I can get rid of
Speaker 3: all the evidence sits down there so that you don't
Speaker 3: go to jail. So you're not putting my organization at rip.
Speaker 1: It's a corner that they paint you into from which
Speaker 1: there is no escape unless you do what they say.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, a thief in Sebastian never really
Speaker 2: came out and said, we killed them, and this is
Speaker 2: how we did it. What passed as a confession came
Speaker 2: from the bogus answers to the undercover agent's questions, questions
Speaker 2: that were aimed at filling in the large gaps in
Speaker 2: this investigation that had so far pointed away from a
Speaker 2: tief in Sebastian, for example, about how they had covered
Speaker 2: their tracks, and these bogus answers that a tief in
Speaker 2: Sebastian ended up giving to these questions are what ended
Speaker 2: up passing for an admission of guilt.
Speaker 1: For example, when Sebastian was asked about what you guys
Speaker 1: did with the bloody clothing, he said, we threw them
Speaker 1: in a dumpster, which one I can't remember. Well what
Speaker 1: happens when they find it panicked? He came up with, uh, no,
Speaker 1: we threw each piece of clothing out in different dumpsters.
Speaker 1: 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'd you get it? Well, first, s Abashian said,
Speaker 1: it was just laying around the refe household. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you can speak for all pakistanisatief.
Speaker 1: But isn't cricket more of the usual thing.
Speaker 3: We played cricket and pakoshon. I've never played baseball in
Speaker 3: 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, doesn't know.
Speaker 2: The undercover agents also asked Sebastian about how they were
Speaker 2: able to commit these murders if they were at the
Speaker 2: movie theater, and he said, oh, we left by the
Speaker 2: side door. And no one ever bothered to demonstrate how
Speaker 2: impossible it would be to commit the murders during the
Speaker 2: time frame supplied by the neighbors. So again, another implausible
Speaker 2: 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, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, we tried her best to provide a plausible story,
Speaker 3: but yes, we didn't come up with perfect stories because
Speaker 3: we didn't commit the murder. Then we couldn't keep our
Speaker 3: stories straight because we didn't practice them well enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, So eventually you're arrested July thirty first, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: You and Sebastador 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 in BC, British Columbia
Speaker 1: for six years, and in the fall of ninety five,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Miyoshi was threatened by the RCMP with a suggestion
Speaker 1: that he might face the death penalty if he didn't
Speaker 1: tell them what they wanted to hear, which is that
Speaker 1: you guys were guilty. So understandably, scared for his life,
Speaker 1: Jimmy signed an immunity agreement from his charge of conspiracy
Speaker 1: to commit murder and provided a number of statements incriminated
Speaker 1: you guys. But again we see the same pattern. Each
Speaker 1: statement contradicted the last one, and each one of them
Speaker 1: contradicted the physical evidence at the crime scene. So how
Speaker 1: many times did Jimmy initially deny that you and Sebastian
Speaker 1: had anything to do with it?
Speaker 3: Jimmy denied it twenty four times, and even after he
Speaker 3: made statements that were necessary to get an immunity agreement,
Speaker 3: he contacted our attorneys and he tried to find a
Speaker 3: way to tell the truth without being punished for it.
Speaker 3: Proscutors got out he was working for Lehman Brothers and
Speaker 3: put pressure on Lehman brothers, he was totally was going
Speaker 3: to be fired unless he fulfilled his obligations to the prosecutors,
Speaker 3: and then he was totally might face murder charges in additions.
Speaker 3: So Jimmy did what everyone does, I think, in a
Speaker 3: system that's designed to make people say what the prosecutors
Speaker 3: want you to say, Jimmy did, in fact go through
Speaker 3: with fulfilling his agreements, and then Leman fired him anyway.
Speaker 1: So, after six years in a Canadian maximum security facility,
Speaker 1: in March of two thousand and one, you were finally
Speaker 1: extradited to the United States, and in the lead up
Speaker 1: to trial in January of two thousand and three, something
Speaker 1: both horrifying and what should have been like the final
Speaker 1: alarm sounding your innocence occurred. If you're a member Atif's father,
Speaker 1: doctor Refai, co founded and led a Muslim group in
Speaker 1: Vancouver that sought to build bridges with other faith communities. Well,
Speaker 1: his co founder and successor in leading that group, Riasad
Speaker 1: Ali Khan, was murdered.
Speaker 2: He was murdered on his doorstep very close to the
Speaker 2: eve of the trial. Maybe it was a message, the
Speaker 2: killing of Riyasa d Ali Khan that a we still
Speaker 2: are here, and we're going to do what we can
Speaker 2: to keep these religions apart and be you have the
Speaker 2: wrong people, You're prosecuting the wrong people.
Speaker 1: Finally, the trial began November twenty third, two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: over eight years after the original arress. But the trial
Speaker 1: in some ways was as messed up as the rest
Speaker 1: of this nightmare scenario. I mean when I say that
Speaker 1: the trial Judge Charles Murtell ruled key evidence and admissible,
Speaker 1: so the jury never learned about the leads that were
Speaker 1: provided to the bellev Police by the FBI or the
Speaker 1: Seattle Intelligence Division informants. And those leads, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: would have been essential to prove your innocence as well
Speaker 1: as introduced the element of religious extremism that would have
Speaker 1: again been absolutely compelling to any jury. But they weren't
Speaker 1: permitted to hear that. And they also weren't permitted to
Speaker 1: hear from doctor Richard Leo. He's a leading expert on
Speaker 1: false confessions. He had agreed to present information regarding the
Speaker 1: false confessions that took place in order to provide the
Speaker 1: jury with relevant and reliable social scientific information about the
Speaker 1: psychologe logical phenomenon of interrogation and false confession so the
Speaker 1: jury could make an informed decision. The judge somehow determined
Speaker 1: that it was quote the province of this jury to
Speaker 1: decide whether or not, in their common experience and common sense,
Speaker 1: these statements made by these defendants of these undercover officers
Speaker 1: are voluntary or involuntary. You were doomed at that point.
Speaker 1: You were doomed.
Speaker 3: All the trial council, including my own and in the judge,
Speaker 3: were convinced that everything could be admitted from Canada on
Speaker 3: a silver platter without any American constitual scrutiny. You were
Speaker 3: wrong about that, but that wasn't discovered till years after
Speaker 3: the trial.
Speaker 1: Wow. So this technique that was illegal in the States
Speaker 1: but legal at the time in Canada was just sort
Speaker 1: of greenlit right in. And that is, of course the
Speaker 1: only 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, the large tip, and the
Speaker 1: nietzscha nonsense to try to bolster the false confessions, which
Speaker 1: they knew ran directly counter to the physical evidence, DNA evidence,
Speaker 1: alibi witnesses, and eyewitness accounts of the neighbors, as well
Speaker 1: as the leads that they didn't bother to follow up
Speaker 1: on involving religious extremists who were in all likelihood the
Speaker 1: real killers in this case. But it's really hard to
Speaker 1: overcome confession evidence, no matter how many inconsistencies and contradictions
Speaker 1: there are. So now, at this point, it's nearly ten
Speaker 1: freaking years after your family was murdered, and the jury
Speaker 1: came to what was probably a predictable conclusion, a guilty verdict,
Speaker 1: and you and Sebasha were sentenced to serve three consecutive
Speaker 1: life terms without the possibility of parole. Tell us about
Speaker 1: that moment.
Speaker 3: I don't think anything's as bad as the moment that
Speaker 3: I came home that night, but but that was certainly
Speaker 3: a close seconds. Even after everything that happened in this
Speaker 3: I didn't expect it. I believe somehow the jury would
Speaker 3: still be able to see that we were INNO since
Speaker 3: I was shocked.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've already been in jail for a decade.
Speaker 1: Now you're sent to prison, but you've continued, you know,
Speaker 1: your dedication to constantly learning and improving and growing.
Speaker 3: I was very fortunate to find myself amongst some prisoners
Speaker 3: who were really interested in education, and a great volunteer
Speaker 3: named Carole Estus who wanted to found a University Beyond
Speaker 3: bars program here, and so I was able to spend
Speaker 3: some of my time actually contributing to that and helping
Speaker 3: other people learn, which was felt satisfying and meaningful.
Speaker 1: And now you know multiple college education programs. Did you
Speaker 1: still working on and through the university beyond bars On
Speaker 1: loop on your undergraduate thesis, honor thesis from film, philosophy
Speaker 1: and literature. It's extraordinary. It's so much more than so
Speaker 1: many people on the outside have or ever will do.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your appeals and your prospects for
Speaker 1: free them.
Speaker 2: A Chief's appeals were underway by the time we got involved.
Speaker 2: I had seen a film made by Sebastian's sister Tiffany
Speaker 2: and Reuben Hurricane Carter and I were obviously floored by
Speaker 2: the facts here, and we joined David Coke, the appeals
Speaker 2: lawyer in support of Sebastian and a teeth and I
Speaker 2: actually attended his state appeal to a three judge panel
Speaker 2: in Seattle. And this was early on. I mean, we
Speaker 2: thought this would be a slam dunk. There's no forensic evidence,
Speaker 2: No alternative suspects allowed to be brought into the courtroom.
Speaker 2: There's no allowance of Richard Leo, who was an expert
Speaker 2: on false confessions, and Michael Levine, who was an expert
Speaker 2: on FBI sting operations. He wasn't allowed into the courtroom either.
Speaker 2: It was as if Judge Martell had simply decided, We're
Speaker 2: going to convict these guys in a kangaroo court. But
Speaker 2: it didn't seem to matter how much sense our arguments
Speaker 2: made as a chief in Sebastian were seen as guilty
Speaker 2: in the state of Washington, and the media coverage really
Speaker 2: made sure they were never going to receive a fair shake.
Speaker 2: And then Atief later got married to Loretta Fisher, who
Speaker 2: worked tirelessly on his behalf, and more appeals were filed
Speaker 2: on the back of her work, also to no avail.
Speaker 2: Then the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to limit the
Speaker 2: admissibility of evidence obtained through the Mister Big operation. So
Speaker 2: now even in Canada, where this evidence was conjured up,
Speaker 2: the admissibility of these confessions was brought into question. Where
Speaker 2: in the absence of forensic evidence, as was the case here,
Speaker 2: these so called confessions would not now be any longer admissible,
Speaker 2: and that should have been huge, but sadly it was not.
Speaker 3: It was a period when I didn't know where to turn, really,
Speaker 3: and out of the blue, Kellie Laudenberg decided to make
Speaker 3: my case the first one in her series of false
Speaker 3: confession documentaries, and Ken told me that someone who had
Speaker 3: watched the confession tapes had become so indignant and so
Speaker 3: impassionate about the case that she reached out to the
Speaker 3: person that everyone who knows about him thinks about first,
Speaker 3: and that's you. Jason.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I know who you're talking about, But are
Speaker 1: you at liberty or do you feel comfortable telling us
Speaker 1: about this amazing mystery woman.
Speaker 3: So Laken is someone with whom I didn't know her
Speaker 3: before last year, and now she's become someone very special
Speaker 3: to me to my talk every day. And it's because
Speaker 3: of her that you got involved, and of course it's
Speaker 3: because of her getting you involved that David Kim got
Speaker 3: involved in. David Kim has been a force of nature
Speaker 3: in my case. She wrote a seven hundred and two
Speaker 3: page analysis of this case that found things in it
Speaker 3: that even I hadn't found, And I thought I'd looked
Speaker 3: over absolutely everything in my case. And then because he
Speaker 3: thought I needed the best of palat attorney in the
Speaker 3: United States, he reached out to Tom Golfian, who's considered
Speaker 3: by everyone to be the tenth Supreme Court Justice, and
Speaker 3: certainly Google chose him as their lawyer when they needed
Speaker 3: to win a case of the Supreme Court of the
Speaker 3: United States. And it was a miracle to me when
Speaker 3: Tom got in, and then lar Zarowski, who leads the
Speaker 3: Washington Innocence Project, became involved in my case. All these
Speaker 3: things just have been building over the last year and
Speaker 3: that has completely transformed how I view 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 going to
Speaker 1: keep our audience surprised a bit. We're going to link
Speaker 1: to the petition use your power, Let's help a Chief
Speaker 1: and Sebastian get home. There's also a website rerafe Burns
Speaker 1: Appeal dot com. All of it will be linked in
Speaker 1: the bio so Ken and Natief. This is the part
Speaker 1: of the show that I know I look forward to
Speaker 1: the most that I think our audience does as well.
Speaker 1: It's called closing arguments. It's the part of the show
Speaker 1: where I, first of all have the privilege of thanking
Speaker 1: both of you for joining me and sharing this unbelievable story.
Speaker 1: And how this works is I'm going to turn my
Speaker 1: microphone off and leave yours both on, and kick back
Speaker 1: in my chair and just listen to whatever you have
Speaker 1: to say anything. We haven't covered anything you want to
Speaker 1: say at all about anything. And of course, a Tief,
Speaker 1: we're going to save you the best for last, all
Speaker 1: due respect to you, Ken. Yeah, so Ken, let's go
Speaker 1: to you first, and then you can just hand the
Speaker 1: mic off to a Tief and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: sit back and listen.
Speaker 2: So, as I said before, this case came to us
Speaker 2: as a result of the movie that Sebastian Burns's sister
Speaker 2: did back in two thousand and seven. It was at
Speaker 2: the Vancouver International Film Festival and I happened to be
Speaker 2: in the audience. I saw this and realized that the
Speaker 2: Burnses were in the audience. They had been introduced, So
Speaker 2: I went up to them and I said, I'm working
Speaker 2: for Reuben Hurricane Carter, and I think this case would
Speaker 2: be of interest to him. Do you want some help?
Speaker 2: And of course they did, and so I got this
Speaker 2: case in front of Ruben and he was infuriated by
Speaker 2: the way a pair of teenagers had been manipulated by
Speaker 2: people who should have known better but were trying to
Speaker 2: burnish their own reputations. And to me, this story is
Speaker 2: really about friendships, both the one that a Tief and
Speaker 2: Sebastian shared as well as the one between the Muslim
Speaker 2: community and other faith based communities in Canada that doctor
Speaker 2: Tariq Refae and later Riyasaid Ali Khan tried to foster
Speaker 2: an endeavor for which they paid with their lives. Well,
Speaker 2: the potential of these two young friends and the greater
Speaker 2: friendship between those communities both were snuffed out.
Speaker 1: A Tief refe over to you, Nasham, and I have
Speaker 1: been wrongly in person for over twenty seven years and the.
Speaker 3: Same age today my parents were when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: when they were raising me. I imagine looking back in my
Speaker 3: life with their eyes and every day is going to
Speaker 3: struggle to keep going. And I still hardly believe all
Speaker 3: that has happened. But what I feel most now is
Speaker 3: gratitude amazingly. When I was a child, my parents told
Speaker 3: me stories about the hard times they had in their
Speaker 3: early years in Vancouver when my dad was looking for work,
Speaker 3: how they would eat boiled potatoes off newspapers, sad on
Speaker 3: the floor. And I understood when I was a kid
Speaker 3: that life would involve struggles, but I didn't fathom them
Speaker 3: just how much the caring and generosity of others would
Speaker 3: need for my life, that this ground swell of support
Speaker 3: would make it possible for my struggle to matter. Still today,
Speaker 3: I owe so many people so much, not only Reuben
Speaker 3: and Ken, Tom and you, Jason, all of you people
Speaker 3: who were like Oscar Schindler's. You know, in our day
Speaker 3: and age of local convictions and massive fruserations, that feeling
Speaker 3: of gratitude is what carries me through every day, and
Speaker 3: I'm just grateful to have had the opportunity to feel
Speaker 3: that love and care for someone for some small life.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. Please support your
Speaker 1: local innocence organizations and go to the links in our
Speaker 1: bio to see how you can help. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn
Speaker 1: and Kevin wardis The music on this show, as always,
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one