Rathbun Tells of Events Before Sobek Was Killed

Almost a year after he was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and murder in the slaying of model Linda Sobek, photographer Charles Rathbun took the witness stand Thursday and said that it was a combination of coincidence and events beyond his control that led to their fateful encounter last November in the Angeles National Forest.

In a calm, almost detached account of how he met the 27-year-old Hermosa Beach woman and came to use her for a photo shoot for a car magazine, Rathbun, 39, of Hollywood told a packed Torrance courtroom that he not only did not plan on photographing her for the assignment but also drove to a dry lake bed in the forest because threatening weather convinced him not to use a ranch site in Santa Barbara County.

Rathbun’s first day of testimony ended before he could offer his account of what happened between him and Sobek before her death. Initially, Rathbun told authorities he accidentally hit Sobek with a car while showing her driving stunts in the lake bed. But his attorney Mark Werksman has since said that Sobek was accidentally asphyxiated after she and Rathbun engaged in consensual sex--an account that authorities have called preposterous.

With his and Sobek’s families seated on opposite sides of the courtroom, Rathbun testified that while he had first met Sobek several years before the photo shoot, they had rarely worked together and that he knew her only as a model who specialized in swimsuit poses for car magazines.

Last October, Rathbun testified, he saw Sobek at an auto convention in Las Vegas and told her about a photo assignment for a truck magazine. But that opportunity fell through, he told the court, and he had no other plans to use Sobek as a model until the morning of Nov. 16, the day she disappeared.

On that day, Rathbun said, he had planned to photograph a new Lexus luxury sports utility vehicle in Santa Barbara using his then-girlfriend, Glenda Elam, as a model. But the manufacturer of the vehicle wanted it returned earlier than he had hoped, Rathbun said. And as Elam had previously testified, she was unavailable, Rathbun said, forcing him to quickly find another model who could drive the car for so-called action photographs of its performance.

So, Rathbun testified, he called Sobek. He had her home phone and pager numbers, he testified, because she had given them to him and had expressed a willingness to take whatever modeling assignments came up. “She was a little bit flustered because it was last minute,” Rathbun said of the assignment. But, he added, she agreed to take the job for $300 and told him to meet her in an hour at a Denny’s restaurant in Torrance.

When she arrived, Rathbun said, Sobek brought not only dresses for the photo shoot but a portfolio that she wanted him to review. “She wanted my opinion on what changes she should make to stop being stereotyped as a pinup model,” Rathbun testified.

With that, he added, the two set off for Santa Barbara. But en route, Rathbun said, he noticed the skies were overcast along the coast and worried that the haze would interfere with the photo shoot. Instead, he testified, he decided to drive to the lake bed after asking Sobek if that would be OK.

“She said she didn’t have any problem with that whatsoever so long as she got back to the Torrance area” by early evening for another appointment, Rathbun testified.

“Did you have murder on your mind?” Werksman asked Rathbun as testimony came to a close.

“No,” Rathbun answered.

“Did you have rape on your mind?” Werksman asked.

“No,” Rathbun answered.

What was he thinking? Werksman asked Rathbun, who throughout the 2 1/2 hours of questioning looked only at his attorney.

“That instead of having to push real hard to get a photo shoot . . . it was going to be a nice, relaxed day,” Rathbun said.