Rathbun’s Defense May Focus on Victim’s Life

Until now, the story of Hermosa Beach model Linda Sobek and the case against her suspected killer, Charles Rathbun, have focused largely on the murky events that led to their fateful encounter last November in the Angeles National Forest.

But as jury selection begins today in Torrance Superior Court, Judge Donald Pitts may face some critical decisions about allowing evidence that will focus not only on what happened between Rathbun and Sobek the day she died, but on previous troubles in the victim’s life.

Although the district attorney’s office has declined to seek the death penalty against Rathbun, it has alleged that the 39-year-old photographer not only murdered Sobek but sexually assaulted her. The additional charge could bring him life in prison if he is convicted on both counts.

Even as his client has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, defense attorney Mark Werksman has said he will attempt to show that any sexual activity between his client and Sobek was consensual, and that her image as a bubbly, born-again Christian does not tell the whole truth.

In a strategy that legal experts warn has its risks, Werksman said he will seek to prove through information about Sobek--including a failed suicide attempt--that the 27-year-old former Raiderette was a troubled young woman who was likely to get drunk and be sexually involved with a photographer on a shoot. It is a contention that the attorney hopes would undermine the prosecution’s claim that Rathbun lured her to her death.

“We are searching for the truth here. And you can’t get to the truth of what happened between Mr. Rathbun and Ms. Sobek by ignoring the feelings, the intentions and the actions that Ms. Sobek brought to bear during the time they were together,” Werksman said.

But as surely as Werksman will try to recast the images of his client and Sobek, prosecutor Steve Kay has promised that he will prove the Hollywood photographer sexually assaulted and murdered Sobek during a photo shoot.

“We have charged that she was murdered during a non-consensual [sexual] attack,” Kay said. And, Kay has said, he will resist any attempts to link Sobek’s private life to her fate.

“It is not relevant,” he said.

When Rathbun was bound over for trial in February, his attorney first planted the notion that whatever happened between his client and Sobek before her death was with her consent. Then and now, the argument has been pivotal to the defense of Rathbun, who has claimed Sobek died when he accidentally ran over her after a driving stunt went awry.

“The two go hand in hand,” Werksman said in a recent interview. His contention is that if the sex was by consent, Rathbun would not have an obvious motive to kill Sobek because there would be no crime to cover up.

“As a legal matter, it is alleged rape that makes this a special circumstances case. And as a factual matter, if he violently assaulted her sexually, that would give credence to the theory that he intentionally strangled her as well,” he said.

“On the other hand, if her sexual involvement with Mr. Rathbun was consensual, then it is more understandable that her death was an accident rather than a murder.”

*

Ever since his arrest, authorities have insisted Rathbun’s story is a lie. And their position, they say, has only been strengthened by an autopsy showing Sobek died from asphyxiation and was sodomized.

But the autopsy also found that Sobek’s blood-alcohol level was 0.13%, above the legal limit for intoxication. And that has added some mystery to what happened before her death.

For his part, prosecutor Kay insists that the autopsy is proof enough that Rathbun forced himself upon Sobek sexually and then murdered her.

“All you have to do is look at the injuries,” Kay said in a recent interview. “Tell me, where does consent come in? Ligature marks around the ankles. The injuries to her private parts. [They] are absolutely inconsistent with a consensual case.”

To date, the prosecution has not discussed the issue of alcohol in Sobek’s bloodstream, but Kay promises to address it at trial. “I think the jury will get an explanation about what happened with the alcohol,” Kay said Friday, declining to elaborate.

Werksman, however, has insisted he will show that her alcohol level would be consistent with a voluntary--and intimate--encounter with Rathbun during the photo session.

“To prove the sexual assault allegation, they have to show that she didn’t consent to sexual conduct. And there are no witnesses to what happened and Ms. Sobek is not around to testify,” Werksman said. “So we are left with only the hindsight speculation of forensic pathologists and the accusation the D.A. has framed around that speculation.

“In order to understand what really happened, the jury is going to have to know more about both Linda Sobek and Charles Rathbun. It cannot be ignored.

“I am relying on what happened between them that day, and that will graphically demonstrate her willingness to become intimate with Charles Rathbun. And also the fact that she was intoxicated,” Werksman said.

Then there is the issue of the diary.

To date, Judge Pitts has consistently rebuffed Werksman’s efforts to introduce Sobek’s diary, or at least excerpts from it, into evidence to underscore her state of mind in the weeks before her death. Werksman would not say what additional evidence he still hopes to enter in the case.

In the diary, a copy of which has been reviewed by The Times, Sobek often writes of her disappointments with love.

To be sure, the diary does detail some moments of sweet anticipation or unbridled bliss with a new romance or the prospect of one.

But other entries reveal a sadness over romances that fizzle. Or memories that still burn.

*

In one entry in particular--July 11, 1995, two days after her 27th birthday, when she had been baptized a born-again Christian--she explored her feelings at length:

“I want to love and be love so bad, but it has to be right. I need to write this because I need to tell someone my secret that will not be afraid of it: sometimes I want to die--I mean to kill myself. Now. Well soon,” Sobek added.

“Sometimes, I hurt so bad inside,” she wrote, recalling how she had “been saving” sleeping pills and the sedative Halcion.

Later, when one budding romance ended suddenly, she was embarrassed and angry.

“I feel like such a fool. I was so excited. I really believed in this man and opened my heart. What a f---- liar,” she wrote, later explaining how she went to buy a new bed and allowed a stranger--”some stupid idiot man,” she calls him--to buy a $1,000 bed for her.

Along the way, there are other entries of unrequited loves. Some cause her pain. “He’s the devil,” she wrote about one boyfriend. Others left her resigned. “OK. Give him credit. He’s honest,” she says about another man who eventually revealed that he already had a girlfriend.

The diary, or parts of it, are relevant to Rathbun’s defense, Werksman has argued--so far unsuccessfully.

Likewise, Werksman has referred to the coroner’s testimony about wrist marks showing a suicide attempt by Sobek some 10 years before her death. And that, coupled with her alcohol level at the time of death, raise clear questions about what took place the day she died, Werksman said.

“These are obviously issues that bear on her state of mind,” he said.

Prosecutor Kay, of course, disagrees.

“I think in just about every murder case the defense attorney will try and . . . dirty up the victim, hoping that jurors won’t like [the person],” Kay has said.

*

And law professor and former federal prosecutor Laurie L. Levenson warned that Rathbun’s defense will be treading on precarious ground if it delves too deeply into Sobek’s past, including troubled romances.

“I think it is dangerous to put the victim on trial. After all, she is the one who was found buried,” Levenson said.

The difficulty, Levenson said, will be “to raise a doubt about her consent [with Rathbun] without looking like he is attacking the victim for a second time.

“This is not just an accusation of rape. She is dead. And even if it is true she was disturbed and trying to find companionship, it is very hard to make the leap that she somehow contributed to her own demise,” Levenson said.

“It may be the only defense they have to present,” she said, “but it is one of the most difficult defenses to present and prevail on.”

But Werksman insists his defense will not be a gratuitous examination of Sobek’s private life.

“Any evidence I bring out is going to be about her relationship with Rathbun and what happened with him that day. I am not interested in the past except to the extent that it is relevant to what happened that day and to her state of mind,” Werksman said.

“But there is evidence that we have not been able to introduce publicly that has to do with what happened between them that day,” he said. “And that is extremely relevant and appropriate, no matter how offensive it may seem to Linda Sobek’s friends and family.”