Friends, Others Offer Complex View of Rathbun : Profile: Descriptions of the top auto photographer, suspected in the slaying of a Hermosa Beach model, range from a nice, social guy to a loner with a temper. Investigators find it equally difficult to pin down simple aspects of his life.

Charles E. Rathbun is a skilled automobile photographer who was on his way to the top in his highly specialized field.

He has a talent for making sleek, new cars look sleeker, fast trucks appear faster and for posing buxom models on the hood in alluring ways. Rathbun is especially knowledgeable about automobile performance, say those who worked with him, and he can bring to life the cars in his still-frame photos.

“There’s probably about two dozen people in the United States who are good,” said veteran auto journalist Mike Anson, “and he is one of them.”

Yet as Rathbun sits in Men’s Central Jail downtown--charged with murdering model Linda Sobek--a more complex portrait of the 38-year-old is beginning to emerge, one of a man who seemed to have different facets of his personality that he showed to different people--friendly and easygoing to some; a loner who had difficulties with women to others, and an aggressive hothead in some eyes.

As difficult as it is to define the “real Rathbun,” it is an equally complicated task, even for investigators, to pin down fairly simple aspects of his life, such as where he lived when. He frequently moved back and forth between California and Michigan, holding multiple driver’s licenses in both states, police said.

As a young college student in Ohio, court records show, he was charged and then acquitted of raping a female friend in 1979.

Moving to California eight years ago, Rathbun had no run-ins with the law until he was arrested in Sobek’s death and led investigators to her shallow grave in a remote mountain area on Nov. 24.

Rathbun has pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering the 27-year-old former Raiders cheerleader. He told police he accidentally ran over her during a photo session, then panicked and buried her body in Angeles National Forest.

Since Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block called Rathbun a “possible serial killer,” those who know the bespectacled photographer have been trying to reconcile their “Charlie” with the one being investigated by police departments across the country. Investigators are looking at Rathbun for possible connections to the unsolved slayings and disappearances of young women from California to Michigan.

“There is nothing about this guy that would ever suggest that he is in any way capable of this,” said Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver magazine.

“I can’t tell you about a more normal-appearing guy on the surface,” added Spence, who spent several days during the summer with Rathbun driving a Mustang to test tires on the famed Targa Florio racecourse in Sicily.

The son of a management consultant, Rathbun was born on Oct. 2, 1957, and was raised in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Worthington, a suburb of Columbus. He was the youngest of four children. His sisters, Mary Ann and Louise, are 40 and 44, respectively. His brother, Robert, is 42.

At Worthington High School in the early 1970s, Rathbun developed an interest in photography, taking photos for the school’s biweekly newspaper, the Chronicle.

A photo in a Worthington high school yearbook shows a stern-faced Rathbun, with shaggy hair, and 14 other mostly smiling students on the newspaper staff.

In 1977, Rathbun entered Ohio State University under its continuing education program, which was established so older students could take a wide variety of classes and ease into college. For the next 11 semesters, Rathbun stayed in the program--far longer than the average student, a university spokeswoman said, because the program does not lead to a degree.

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While attending college, Rathbun worked at Kroeger’s, a neighborhood grocery store in Worthington. On June 14, 1979, he asked a married, 21-year-old co-worker for a ride home because he had a flat tire.

After she entered Rathbun’s apartment to look at some photos he had shot, the woman alleged, he attacked and raped her, according to a Columbus police report.

“Please don’t do this,” the woman told Rathbun as he allegedly attacked her, the report states. “He forced her to the floor, removed all her clothing, told her he didn’t want to hurt her but would kill her if she made any noise,” the report said.

During the trial in the Court of Common Pleas in Franklin County, Rathbun’s lawyer argued that the alleged rape was really a consensual act and that his client’s initial statement to police was illegally obtained because investigators denied him the right to have legal counsel present.

On Feb. 12, 1980, Judge Paul P. Martin rendered his verdict: not guilty.

In 1981, Rathbun dropped out of college, a university spokeswoman said.

Within two years, he was in the car-manufacturing center of Detroit, an ideal place for an ambitious automobile photographer to make his mark.

Jim Haefner, an automobile advertising photographer in nearby Troy, Mich., said he hired Rathbun as an assistant in 1985.

“He was a nice enough guy . . . there was just something a little bit different about him,” Haefner recalled. “It was just an anger that would come out from time to time. If something frustrated him, he might pick up [a piece of photo equipment] and throw it across the studio.

“I don’t know what was bothering him,” Haefner said.

But others in Michigan did not see Rathbun that way.

Pamela Powell of Lansing, Mich., who along with her husband William has been a friend of Rathbun’s for 10 years, said he was a well-adjusted man who liked old rock ‘n’ roll and adventure movies, and had a much-beloved cat named Butt-Head who died earlier this year. Contrary to some reports, Powell insisted Rathbun was comfortable around men and women alike, and dated as frequently as could be expected of someone who was constantly traveling for his work.

“He was not an outcast loner,” said Powell, who met Rathbun in 1985 when she and her husband also worked in the auto photography business. “He was very social. He liked being around people. I knew of at least three different women who he had close relationships with since I knew him. And they were long relationships, eight months, a year.”

Rathbun worked at Haefner Photography for nearly a year and then for other Detroit-area studios before packing up and heading for Los Angeles. Rathbun’s attorney, Mark J. Werksman, said the photographer moved here eight years ago.

According to Department of Motor Vehicles records, Rathbun received a California driver’s license on Oct. 2, 1989. It has since expired, the records show, but Rathbun was issued a state ID card on March 15, 1995. The records show that he has never registered a vehicle in California, and neighbors near Rathbun’s Hollywood home said all his personal vehicles sported Michigan license plates.

In California, Rathbun worked for publications and companies ranging from AutoWeek to Lexus. Along the way, said Bill Porter, president of automobile magazine publisher McMullen-Argus, he became skilled in the ways of the computerized darkroom, electronically manipulating photos to make stationary vehicles appear to be spinning their wheels or bounding across the desert.

“If anything, he was very mild-mannered and very quiet,” Porter said.

One auto journalist who worked with Rathbun on a number of assignments said: “He was a guy’s guy, one of the boys.”

The journalist said Rathbun often socialized with other male auto photographers and writers, swapping jokes and talking about high-performance automobiles.

But when it came to dealing with women, others say, Rathbun had a problem.

He “didn’t have very great relationships with women,” recalled his former boss, Haefner. “He didn’t seem to have any girlfriends.”

One of Rathbun’s current Hollywood neighbors, Bill Flanagan, said that in the eight years the photographer had lived next door, he had never known him to have a girlfriend.

One woman, a public relations executive with a major automobile manufacturer, said that she never had any problems with Rathbun but that he made her feel uncomfortable.

“[Rathbun] just gave me bad vibes,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

“Charlie never made any comments to me, never made a pass,” she recalled. But “[I] always had this instinct: Gee, I’m not really comfortable with this person,” she said.

Since Rathbun’s arrest, according to Sheriff Block, several models and other women who knew the photographer have come forward with more disturbing allegations.

“A number of women . . . say that he has made overtures for sexual favors . . . sometimes on photo shoots, sometimes in other relationships,” the sheriff said. “He became pretty pushy, I guess, would be the word. He didn’t like to take no for an answer.”

Yet those descriptions of Rathbun contrast with the experience publicist Nancy Hoogenhuis said she had when he asked her out in June during an automobile event she helped organize.

Hoogenhuis said Rathbun politely told her he had an extra ticket to “Phantom of the Opera.” She turned him down, saying she was tired after a long day of work, and he accepted her answer.

“He seemed like a normal guy,” Hoogenhuis said.

Rathbun approached another woman working at the event and asked her to the play, according to several people who were there.

The woman, they said, agreed to go out with Rathbun.

On Rathbun’s street, at the base of the Hollywood hills, several neighbors said the photographer kept to himself--and, even after eight years of living nearby, many scarcely knew the man.

Fred Wejbe, who lives next door, said Rathbun came and went “like a ghost” at odd hours of the night, and planted trees in his backyard during the wee hours of the morning.

“He was a loner, a strict loner,” said Dean Simpson, who lives across the street. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen him in conversation.”

In a written statement from Rathbun’s family, his older brother, an attorney, said: “The Charles Rathbun we’ve read about in the papers and seen on the news is completely at odds with the Charles Rathbun we know.

“The Charles Rathbun we know is a sensitive and gentle person who would never cause harm to another. We, and those who know him, are standing by him throughout this tragedy. We believe this was a tragic accident, and support him and love him.”

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Times staff writer Paul Dean contributed to this article.