Model’s Grave Believed to Be Found : Search: Suspect leads authorities to remote site in forest. Exhumation is planned today.

As darkness closed in Friday evening, investigators discovered what they believe to be the shallow grave of Linda Sobek in the rugged Angeles National Forest, bringing to an apparent end the grim, eight-day search for the missing calendar model.

Authorities were led to the remote site by automotive photographer Charles E. Rathbun, 38, who told police that he had panicked and buried the former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader with his bare hands after accidentally running her over with a luxury sports vehicle during a photo session in a dry lake bed.

Rathbun--his wrists bandaged from an early morning jailhouse suicide attempt--identified the location from a sheriff’s helicopter about 4 p.m. From the air, the grave was a heap of freshly turned rocks and earth just off a dirt road about 15 miles south of Palmdale.

At the command post where scores of searchers have congregated throughout the Thanksgiving week, law enforcement officials would only say that a body had been discovered; no identification was released. Officials said they would not exhume the body or attempt to identify it until today.

Huddled in the family’s Lakewood home, Sobek’s mother said through a lawyer that she was bedridden with “extreme grief.” At dusk, the model’s father, who had spent most of the afternoon on the search, said tersely, “It doesn’t look good.”

Later, after news of the discovery made its way to Sobek’s relatives, their lawyer addressed reporters gathered outside the home.

“The family has gone through a great deal of grief and they’re still coming to grips with what has happened,” attorney Wayne Willette said. “With the lack of further information, it makes it even more difficult.”

Sobek, 27, vanished Nov. 16 after leaving her Hermosa Beach home for a photo session. Friends and family said she had left a message on her answering machine indicating that she was on a modeling assignment.

On Tuesday, a road crew worker found photos of Sobek and her family in a trash can near the Clear Creek Ranger Station in the Angeles National Forest. Among those effects, investigators said, were papers for the loan of the Lexus sport utility vehicle that allegedly had been signed by Rathbun.

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It was unclear whether Rathbun was questioned that day, but he was taken into custody Wednesday, hours after Sobek’s white Nissan sports coupe was found in the parking lot of a Torrance restaurant where she met Rathbun to go to the photo assignment.

When deputies accosted him, Rathbun was in the driveway of his rented Hollywood home with his lawyer and a female friend, threatening to shoot himself, officials said. A struggle ensued, they said, and the gun went off, grazing the woman’s arm.

Rathbun told detectives his story, bit by bit. Weeping, he allegedly said that he had taken the model out to the dry lake bed Nov. 16 to have her pose with the vehicle he was shooting that day--a soon-to-be-issued Lexus 450 sport utility vehicle that is expected to carry a price tag of $40,000 or more.

Police said Rathbun told them that at the lake bed, he had tried to teach Sobek how to spin the vehicle in tight circles, known in the trade as “doughnuts.” He purportedly said that when she was unable to perform the stunt, he had her get out of the vehicle to watch him do it but lost control of the skidding Lexus and it clipped her.

“He panicked. He didn’t know what to do. He said he tried to revive her but he couldn’t,” Hermosa Beach Police Lt. Mark Wright said.

Hysterical, Rathbun drove aimlessly through the wilderness for more than three hours with the dead model before finally deciding to bury her in a gritty grave that he had pawed open with his hands, Wright said.

Unfortunately, however, Rathbun was not immediately able to give the detectives the precise location of the grave. Sheriff’s deputies said he told them he was so stricken by Sobek’s death that he could not remember where he had stopped. He said that later, the terrain all looked alike to him.

Booked on suspicion of murder and held on $1 million bond, Rathbun spent Thanksgiving night in the Hermosa Beach jail on a suicide watch. By Friday morning, Wright said, the suspect seemed to have recovered enough emotionally that guards were willing to give him a jail-issue razor with which to shave.

Moments later, Rathbun tried to slash his wrists, sheriff’s deputies said. He managed to cut himself twice, superficially, on each wrist before guards were able to wrest away the blade, officials said.

Rathbun was treated at a nearby hospital, and then was airlifted to the Angeles National Forest, where he and his lawyer joined a battalion of searchers combing the area for Sobek’s body.

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Finally, after a search that lasted for several hours, deputies located the mound of dirt and rocks believed to have been heaped over the model’s body in a shallow ravine above Sheep Camp Spring in the Pacifico Mountain area. The site is about five miles east of Angeles Forest Highway and about 15 miles south of Palmdale.

Friends and colleagues of Rathbun expressed shock at the purported involvement of the blond photographer, a well-known free-lancer with wide experience in the automotive media.

“He’s a pro. This had to have been a terrible, terrible mistake,” said a Montebello woman who served as Rathbun’s agent until about a year ago. “He’s been working very, very hard for a lot of years. He’s someone that in five years could be one of the 10 photographers doing the top stuff.

“He’s not someone that’s just a photographer out scamming for models. He’s a real-deal photographer,” added the agent, who asked not to be identified by name.

Another colleague who owns one of the several private agencies that help prepare and distribute new cars for road testing and photography by the automotive media said he had seen Rathbun on Monday--four days after Sobek’s disappearance--and the suspect seemed “very agitated.” The colleague, speaking anonymously, said that despite his agitation, Rathbun was lucid enough to complete his assignment to shoot a new Mitsubishi Montero.

Others involved in car photography said it was easy to see how a fatal accident could have occurred.

“These situations can be potentially dangerous,” said Volker Dencks, a Venice-based car-shoot production manager. “I know what he was trying to do, a doughnut running shot where you try to get the feeling of speed.”

Dencks said a dry lake bed like the one Rathbun reportedly has told investigators he was using at the time of the mishap can be particularly treacherous.

“There’s loose sand on top of compacted sand. It gives texture, but it makes it a lot more slippery,” Dencks said.

Professional driver Brad McCabe said near-miss camera shots--scenes in which a car moving 45 m.p.h. comes within six inches of the camera--are a staple of car commercials and advertising.

McCabe speculated Rathbun asked Sobek to stand where the camera was to be positioned while he climbed into the car to demonstrate how he wanted her to skid.

“If he’s placing her as the camera and saying, ‘Come slide up to the camera like this’--which we do all the time--this could happen,” said McCabe, of Northridge.

The discovery of the apparent grave was expected to help clear up much of the remaining mystery surrounding Sobek’s case. Even with the photographer’s admission of his involvement, investigators had been reluctant to dismiss their skepticism about Rathbun’s account without a body.

“This entire case is suspicious. Everything he’s done has been suspicious,” said sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Brian C. Jones.

Hermosa Beach Police Lt. Wright said a small amount of hair and blood had been recovered from the newly minted Lexus that Rathbun had been photographing. Wright said forensic evidence would determine whether Rathbun had told the truth.

Times staff writers Paul Dean, Bob Pool and Eric Slater contributed to this story.

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Search for Victim

Shown are the locations where model Linda Sobek was believed to have been killed, based on statements made by suspect Charles Rathbun, and where a body was found Friday afternoon. Investigators believe it is Sobek’s.