Aug. 20, 2003 - 11:16 a.m.
Sebastian and Atif

In other news:

A CBS show 48hours wants to interview me for a story they're doing on Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay. I went to high school with them, though I only knew Sebastian. They murdered Atif's family in Bellingham for the insurance money. They were caught. They were extradited back to the United States on the condition that they would not be tried on the death penalty. So now they've been in jail almost 10 years in the states awaiting the end of their trial when they will both surely face life in prison.

Anyway, they want to interview people who went to highschool with them, and particularly those that were in a play with him, "Rope". (Alfred Hitchcock)

The premise of Rope was these two university kids who felt they were intellectually superior decided that people who were intellectually INferior were expendable. So they kill a fellow student who they felt was stupid, hid his body in a trunk and served dinner to the corpse's family and friends and a particular favourite professor off of this trunk.

THey think that because they're intellectually superiour, they'll get away with it. But the professor, who proves to be superior to both of them put together, by a landslide, figures them out and catches them.

I think this play could easily have given Seb an inkling of an idea. Seb was extremely intelligent, very charismatic, very good looking and charming. But that kind of personality easily breeds arrogance, and that kind of arrogance could easily be seduced by the idea that they could commit some crime, and not be caught because they were too smart, to clever, and above everyone else.

Another disturbing factor, in my opinion, is how he did it. He killed Atif's mother, father and autistic sister with a baseball bat. Now, I can fathom holding a gun, mustering up the courage and resolve to just twitch your finger and fire the gun. All it takes is a finger jerk and you're done. And I'm hard pressed to see that resolve being mustered three times in a row. A heat of the excitement action. Like work yourself up, pull the trigger and it's done.

But to kill a human with a baseball bat doesn't take just one swing. It takes several, enough swings to crush the skull and cause the brain enough damage to stop working.

Ok I can even see working yourself up into a frenzy to do that ONCE. Flip out and beat the shit out of someone with a bat till they die. Fine. But three times? You would have to take a break in between each one to set up for the next wouldn't you? You would have to stop for a second after you've killed one, get ready and start on the next. That's not done in the heat of passion or anger. That's cold. That's calculated. That's completely dissociated. That, to me is much more frightening.

We never looked at Sebastian and thought, that guy's going to kill someone one day. But in retrospect, it's not surprising that he did.

old bitching - random - new bitching

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