My Brother Got Burned

Rafay, also 32, retains some of his former traits too. Most notably, he is still an intellectual. Klonsky, who has been corresponding with Rafay, reads a couple of his letters—dated with Roman numerals. Vilified for his love of Nietzsche, Rafay nurtures it nonetheless. "Certainly anyone with a penchant for quoting Nietzsche usually endears himself to me," he writes in a letter to Klonsky from this past March 23. It's a comment made in reference to a book he read by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

He goes on, in that same letter, to discuss the works of Dostoevsky, Primo Levi, and Louis Begley, who wrote a book about a Jewish boy in Poland during World War II.

Kevin P. Casey

Tiffany Burns left her job as a Cleveland newscaster to make a film about her brother’s case.

Details

Mr. Big: Harvard Exit, 7 p.m. Tues. June 3; SIFF Cinema, 4:30 p.m. Thurs. June 5. Read Brian Miller’s review.

Seattle International Film Festival Continues through Sun., June 15. Tickets, schedule, and information: www.siff.net and 324-9996.

See our SIFF Guide 2008 for other stories, reviews, and full coverage throughout the fest.

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• Tiffany Burns
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"So I am not wholly unfamiliar with the subject of extraordinary suffering," Rafay writes. "Often it is a relief from one's own degradation."

Klonsky and Carter, who together have visited Rafay at the Monroe Correctional Complex, where he is being held, both say he has a constant smile on his face despite his circumstances. Rafay, however, writes about his suffering. From that same letter:

"I am generally accused of a certain cheerfulness, to which I think I am temperamentally inclined. But it has been tried these past years in a terrible way. I feel I have been and continue to be damaged in irrevocable ways. And it is hard for me to envision ever now being anything other than profoundly unhappy."

Klonsky is moved by Rafay's letters. Where Konat saw cold-bloodedness in Rafay's intellectualism, Klonsky sees humanism.

He cautions that, no matter how much research you do on a case, "you can never know the absolute truth of anything." Nonetheless, he says he simply can't fathom that the Rafay he knows would watch his family be bludgeoned to death. "My gut feeling: No way. No way. In my mind, it just didn't happen."

nshapiro@seattleweekly.com