Rathbun Describes Failed Suicide Attempt

Photographer Charles Rathbun testified Monday that before his arrest in the slaying of model Linda Sobek, he drank half a bottle of Scotch and prepared to commit suicide but passed out.

“I loaded the gun, cocked it, laid down on the futon, and that’s the last thing I remember,” Rathbun said at his trial on charges of sexually torturing and strangling the 27-year-old former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader.

Rathbun, 39, was in his third day on the witness stand. In previous testimony, he said he accidentally suffocated Sobek while trying to restrain her during a fight the two had during a Nov. 16 photo assignment north of Los Angeles.

He said the two had consensual sex prior to the fight.

Rathbun testified Monday that he initially told a friend he accidentally struck and killed Sobek with a vehicle during the photo shoot.

Asked by his attorney, Mark Werksman, why he did not tell the friend that he had suffocated her, Rathbun replied: “It was easier to deal with than to admit what really happened.”

Rathbun said that when he was unable to locate an attorney friend to accompany him to a meeting with police, he decided to kill himself.

He said he went to his kitchen, got a liter of Scotch and a handgun from a cabinet, then went to his upstairs office to commit suicide.

Rathbun said he composed two suicide notes, including one to his girlfriend, while he drank the liquor. He said he also sent a fax about his suicide plan to a friend who was a reserve deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

After passing out, Rathbun said, he awoke to the sound of his telephone ringing. He said he could also hear two friends--the deputy and a lawyer--on his porch “yelling at me not to commit suicide.”

Rathbun said at that point he changed his mind.

“I lost my taste for it. . . . It seemed like a needlessly cruel thing to do to them,” he said.

Rathbun initially told police Sobek was killed when he accidentally struck her with a new Lexus he was photographing in the desert. He then led authorities to her body, buried in Angeles National Forest.

His defense attorneys had said Rathbun accidentally asphyxiated Sobek during consensual sex.

But on Friday he said he nearly struck her with the car while demonstrating a driving stunt and she became furious and kicked the vehicle. He said he sat on her back to restrain her and she stopped breathing.