Jury Told About Death of Model

Opening statements in the murder trial of Charles Rathbun began Monday with an emotional statement by the prosecution that the 38-year-old freelance photographer brutally sodomized model Linda Sobek and killed her to keep her from reporting the rape to authorities.

“Charles Rathbun did not have a photo shoot . . . in mind when he drove out of the Denny’s parking lot,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay said. “What he had in mind was taking Linda Sobek to an isolated area, taking photos until he got excited and then showing her what [he thought] she deserved.”

While Kay described how the photographer allegedly bound the model’s legs, tore an earring out of her ear when she tried to look back, and raped her, Elaine Sobek, the model’s mother, dabbed at her eyes, trying to hold back tears. The jury watched as the prosecution went into graphic detail about how the 27-year-old Hermosa Beach model was killed.

“Linda Sobek will come out of her grave, figuratively speaking, and into this courtroom and tell you what happened,” Kay said, noting he would show photos and medical drawings of her injuries and present testimony from senior Deputy Coroner James Ribe and from Laura Slaughter, an expert on sexual assault, to prove his case.

Kay maintained that Rathbun had hated Sobek ever since he worked with her on a 1993 shoot.

In July 1994, Kay said, Rathbun told model Amy Weber, with whom he was working on a swimsuit shoot, that Sobek “was a little bitch and she deserved whatever she gets.”

“I’ll never work with that woman again,” Kay said the photographer told Weber. Rathbun told another model the same thing a few months later, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Mark Werksman said he will show that the coroner’s report indicated Sobek’s blood-alcohol level was 0.13%, higher than the state limit for alcohol intoxication; that the sex was consensual; and that Rathbun had taken provocative photos of her in the nude.

“When all the evidence is before you, you will see a complete picture emerge instead of a partial picture,” Werksman said.

Rathbun, a photographer who specialized in automobile photography, is accused of murdering and sexually assaulting Sobek, who disappeared Nov. 16 while the two were on a photo shoot for Auto Week magazine. He has pleaded not guilty. Her body was discovered in a shallow grave Nov. 24 in the Angeles National Forest.

Rathbun had been arrested three days earlier, telling investigators he accidentally struck and killed Sobek while showing her how to do spins in a new sport utility vehicle he was photographing. With an attorney present, he led investigators to Sobek’s body.

Torrance Superior Court Judge Donald F. Pitts has ruled that the contents of a bag found in Rathbun’s Hollywood home Nov. 25 can be presented as evidence.

The prosecution says that the bag held 3.1 grams of marijuana, an opened bottle of tequila, rope and tape with strands of Sobek’s hair attached to it. Kay called the items “Rathbun’s little rape bag,” which he said was used to incapacitate the model.

The first of seven prosecution witnesses to take the stand Monday was the model’s mother, Elaine Sobek, who glared at Rathbun so hard that the prosecution adjusted the microphone so she would look away from the defendant.

She testified that the last time she talked to her daughter was on the morning of Nov. 16, when she called Linda to discuss a weekend barbecue.

The prosecutor asked Elaine Sobek to identify photos of Linda and her family and pages from a daybook that were found in a trash can not far from where the model’s body was discovered. When Kay showed Elaine Sobek a photo of her daughter and asked that she identify her, she covered her eyes and broke into tears. “Yeah, that’s Linda. Oh, God,” she said, sobbing. “My poor baby.”

Rathbun, dressed in a dark suit, flashed a smile to his parents and two sisters when he entered the courtroom Monday morning. It was the first time his parents, Horace and Ann Rathbun, and his sisters had been present at any of the hearings.

The prosecution said it will call 30 witnesses during the trial, which is expected to last until Oct. 25. The defense said it has nine or 10 witnesses ready to testify. One of those will be Rathbun.