SEATTLE – A 10-year legal marathon ended Friday when Atif Rafay and Glen Sebastian Burns were each sentenced to three consecutive life prison terms without parole for the bludgeoning death of Rafay’s parents and sister.
A King County Superior Court jury convicted the two men of three counts of aggravated first-degree murder in May after a six-month trial.
The odyssey began when the two Canadians fled north across the border two days after reporting the deaths in 1994.
Before sentence was imposed, Burns addressed the court for nearly two hours – a testimonial of sorts that included references to mobster and murder movies such as “Good Fellas” and “American Beauty.”
“We’ve been tried, we’ve been convicted for something we didn’t do. We’re still waiting for our day in court,” Burns said, keeping his back to King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel and prosecutors.
Mertel chastised Burns for lack of remorse and the “selective memory” that his version of events suggested.
“It’s chilling, your recitation of what you feel has occurred,” Mertel said.
“Mr. Burns, you are not immoral, you are amoral. You are an arrogant, convicted killer.”
Rafay also maintained his innocence but choked back tears as he addressed the court, saying the loss of his parents and sister has caused him great anguish.
“I considered having my family the greatest of privileges,” he said, speaking of his admiration for his father’s brilliance and generosity and the wit and charm of his mother, to whom he said he was closest. He said he regretted his “youthful embarrassment” of his autistic sister “who I lost to silence.”
Mertel ordered both men to repay the costs of the Rafay family’s burial, as well as legal expenses and costs of the investigation in both Canada and the United States.
Neither man is allowed contact with the remaining Rafay family members, who live in Canada, Florida and Pakistan, nor can they profit in any way from the crimes.
Lawyers for the two men said they planned to appeal. They have 30 days from the time of sentencing to do so.
Burns’ lawyer, Brian Todd, was an eleventh-hour hire by the family and said he needed time to review all the evidence.
“There’s a lot of issues that need to be looked at here,” Todd said. “There certainly should be a review of it.”
At a news conference after sentencing, Burns’ family and several supporters criticized prosecutors and detectives, whom they say “railroaded” Rafay and Burns.
“These boys did not kill anyone,” said Burns’ sister, Tiffany. She characterized the case and the subsequent media reports as a “campaign to demonize” the two men.
“I’m sick of my brother being portrayed as a monster,” she said.
“My son has never been a violent person,” Dave Burns added.
Teens at the time, Burns and Rafay fled to Vancouver shortly after reporting they had found Tariq and Sultana Rafay and their 20-year-old daughter, Basma, beaten to death in the Rafays’ suburban Bellevue home on July 12, 1994.
The two were charged with aggravated first-degree murder, punishable in Washington by either death or life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors alleged that Burns, now 29, wielded the aluminum bat used in the killings, and that he and Rafay, now 28, planned the murders for money.
The two were arrested in Vancouver in August 1995, the same month that the family estate, valued at about $300,000, was turned over to Rafay, who had just completed his first year at Cornell University.
For years, Canadian authorities refused to send them back to Washington because of the chance of their execution. The two were finally returned in 2001 after King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Defense lawyers insisted throughout the trial that the two merely found the bodies when they returned from a movie and that police focused too much on Burns and Rafay and not enough on other suspects.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police planted bugs in the defendants’ home and car – tactics legal in Canada but which wouldn’t have been allowed in the United States – and agents posed as gangsters to obtain taped confessions from the two before arresting them.
Burns’ then-lawyer, Song Richardson, sought to bar the videotaped confession from trial, but Mertel allowed it, saying if the methods were legal in Canada, they were admissible under international treaty.
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