Did They Get it Right? The Rafay Family Murders

Explicit content warning

04/26/21 • 76 min

Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Episode 167: On July 13, 1994, just after 2:00 am, police responded to a 911 call from Sebastian Burns, 18. Sebastian and his friend, Atif Rafay, also 18, claimed they had discovered ‘some kind of break in’ and multiple deaths at Atif’s family home in Bellevue, Washington. A bloody crime scene awaited the first responders. All three of the victims, Tariq and Sultana, Atif’s parents and his sister, Basma, had been bludgeoned to death. Right away, something felt off to the Bellevue Police, who focused their attention on the pair of young men who’d reported the crime. But did they get it right?
Sources:
United States of America v. Burns, 1997 CanLII 3271 (BC CA), <https://canlii.ca/t/1dzl0>
United States v. Burns, 2001 SCC 7 (CanLII), [2001] 1 SCR 283, <https://canlii.ca/t/523r>
[168 Wn. App. 734, STATE V. RAFAY]
[Rafay Burns Appeal Site]
[Sebastian Burns 911 Call - YouTube]
[On the Margins of Freedom | The Walrus]
[Written In Blood - CBS News]
[Confessions of Murder ; Exposing the False Confessions Created from the Mr. Big Stings by Alan R. Warren | eBooks - Scribd]
[The wrongful convictions of Sebastian Burns and ... - En Vero]
[Give Them Enough Rope - Shawn Blore]
[YouTube - Sebastian Burns Pre-Sentence Statement Part 1 of 6]
https://fuqrafiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/WMFuqraWash.pdf

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Previous Episode

Hate Crime: The Murder of Aaron Webster

In the early morning hours of November 17, 2001, officers from the Vancouver Police were dispatched to the Second Beach area of Stanley Park. Several callers to 911 indicated that there had been some kind of altercation and a group of man had badly beaten another man.

Two VPD constables arrived at the Second Beach parking lot within minutes of being called to find a distraught man frantically providing CPR to a bloodied man on the ground. The man on the ground was naked except for socks and shoes. Police assessed the man’s condition and immediately called for an ambulance. The paramedics from the BC Ambulance Service arrived quickly, but determined that it was too late.

Aaron Zane Donald Webster, 42-year-old and a member of Vancouver’s gay community, was dead. He had been brutally beaten with a blunt instrument and his killers had skittered off into the night leaving Aaron to die. Aaron’s death would be come to be recognized as Canada’s most well-known and notorious cases of ‘gay bashing’.

Guest Host: Mathew Stockton (Steve the dog's dad)

Sources:
R. v. J.S., 2003 BCPC 442 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1g7d2>
R. v. A.C., 2003 BCPC 508 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1hd4j>
R. v. Cran and Rao, 2004 BCSC 1635 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1jfdp>
R. v. Cran, 2005 BCSC 171 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1jr5n>
R. v. J.S., 2005 BCPC 556 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1m420>
R. v. Cran, 2006 BCCA 464 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/1ps4p>
[Wright, N. (2011). Murder in the park : civic identity-making and space in Vancouver. University of British Columbia.]
[Aaron Webster | Xtra Magazine]
[The murder that changed us | Xtra Magazine]
[Ten Years After Aaron Webster’s Death, What’s Changed? | The Tyee]
[Stanley Park Rawlings Trail, Gay Vancouver Cruising Areas]
[Stanley Park | City of Vancouver]
[Search - Aaron Webster - 2001 - Newspapers.com]
[Aaron Webster - CHF BC]
[Aaron Webster Housing Co-operative – Original Site – Community Land Trust]
[QMUNITY — BC’s Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Resource Centre]
[Pflag Canada]