‘94 Bellevue slaying suspect says another has confessed

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Lawyers for a Canadian man charged in the 1994 killings of a friend’s parents and sister say another person has confessed to the slaying.

In court papers filed this week in King County Superior Court, lawyers for Sebastian Burns said an informant told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that a member of a high-profile British Columbia crime family bragged about being paid to kill members of the Rafay family in their Bellevue home.

Burns’ lawyers, Theresa Olson and Neil Fox, said they don’t have the informant’s name and accused police in Washington of not aggressively following up on the tip.

King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel has set a hearing for Oct. 19. Olson and Fox have said they want Mertel to compel RCMP to turn over the informant’s name.

Burns and his high school classmate, Atif Rafay, are in the King County Jail, charged in the bludgeoning deaths of Rafay’s father, Tariq; mother, Sultana; and sister, Basma, at the family home on July 12, 1994.

Prosecutors say Burns and Rafay — who were 18 at the time of the killings — told undercover Canadian police officers that they killed the Rafays, offering minute details.

Olson and Fox say they can prove the agents used threats of violence to extract those statements.

They also say forensic evidence points to a third person.

Footprints at the crime scene and in the garden next to the Rafay home, for example, do not belong to either Atif Rafay or Burns, Olson and Fox said. And a hair found next to Tariq Rafay’s body does not match that of Atif Rafay or Burns.

Rafay and Burns, both Canadian citizens, fled to Canada shortly after the killings. They were held in a British Columbia prison from the time of their arrest in 1995 until their return to Seattle in March.

They pleaded innocent to aggravated first-degree murder charges after a six-year extradition battle that ended when King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng assured the Canadian government he would not seek the death penalty.

Trial is tentatively scheduled for next spring.

If convicted, the men, who are now in their mid-20s, would be sentenced to life in prison without parole.