IN 1994 in the upscale suburb of Bellevue, Washington, two brilliant young scholars – Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns – returned to the Rafay home after a night out carousing.
They found Atif’s mom, dad, and autistic sister murdered, their heads bashed in with a baseball bat.
Blood and guts covered every inch of the three separate rooms in which they were killed. Atif’s mother, Sultana, had been kneeling on her prayer rug when the killers came from behind and crushed her skull.
Within three minutes after entering the house, the boys called 911 and then ran outside and waited for the police to arrive.
Within a day or two, they headed across the border to Canada to Sebastian’s family.
Two years later, they were in jail awaiting trial for the murders, and 10 years later were convicted of triple murder and sentenced to consecutive life sentences.
Tonight’s “48 Hours” episode, titled, “Perfectly Executed,” is being repeated in an expanded version to coincide with the release of a book of the same name by CBS correspondent Peter Van Sant and producer Jenna Jameson. It’s the inside story of the crime, one of the bloodiest and most complex of our time (Bellevue, coincidentally is Van Sant’s hometown!)
Atif and Sebastian were totally different types, but with one thing in common: Overachievers who came from overachieving families.
Sebastian – popular, handsome, brilliant, a well-liked athlete and self-professed “smartest person in the world” – befriended the nerdier Atif, who was his intellectual equal. To this day, both boys still use complex logic and philosophy to answer even the most mundane questions.
There was not one drop of blood or any forensic evidence whatsoever that tied them to the crime. They were seen at the movies at the time the crime took place, and they had engaged in conversations at each place they’d visited all night.
In other words, they had an air-tight alibi.
The murder weapon has never been found.
What makes this even more intriguing is that their hidden-camera “confessions” were garnered through a bizarrely complex undercover sting run by the Canadian Mounted Police – using a technique that is illegal in the U.S. but was nonetheless allowed as evidence in the Washington court.
When I asked reporter Van Sant if he believes that the boys are guilty, he hesitated before admitting that if he was on the jury, he would have said “not guilty” but, in his heart, he believes otherwise.
And that’s understandable: The boys (now men) are arrogant, unlikeable and seemed unmoved by the scene they say they happened upon.
This one’s a must-see for true crime junkies – and the book from Simon & Schuster is just as good.
“48 Hours: Perfectly Executed”
Tonight at 9 on Ch. 2