It was July 13, 1993. Just after 2 AM, a call came into 911 from a residence in the Somerset area of Bellevue, Washington asking for an ambulance. The caller said there'd been some type of break in, and that he thought his friend's parents were dead. The caller was 19 year old Sebastian Burns, and the friend he mentioned was 18 year old Atif Rafay. They’d been best friends since high school, and he and Sebastian were visiting his parents in Bellevue during the summer break. They’d been there for 5 days when this happened.

They came home that night to find Atif's entire family murdered. A triple murder is not something often seen in Bellevue, and tips started pouring in from law enforcement agencies suggesting the murder might have been committed by religious extremists. But investigators only had eyes for Sebastian and Atif.