Sobek’s Death Not an Accident, Coroner Testifies

The deputy coroner who performed the autopsy on Hermosa Beach model Linda Sobek testified Wednesday that she could not have died from accidental asphyxiation in the manner claimed by her alleged killer, photographer Charles Rathbun.

Instead, Dr. James Ribe stood by his earlier conclusion that the 27-year-old woman was sodomized and strangled.

But under cross-examination, Ribe acknowledged that his opinion on how Sobek died evolved over months and that he initially could not say with certainty what caused her fatal injuries. As late as February, almost four months after Sobek’s autopsy, Ribe said she died by asphyxia but could not determine the exact method.

Ribe further agreed with defense attorney Mark Werksman’s assessment that his analysis of certain injuries to Sobek had been influenced by the opinion of another prosecution witness who specializes in sexual assault cases.

But as testimony ended for the day, Ribe suggested that neither that influence nor his earlier uncertainty about how Sobek died were significant. To the contrary, he maintained that they were part of a logical and evolving analysis of evidence in a homicide case.

During his direct examination by Deputy Dist. Atty Steve Kay, Ribe challenged many key elements of Rathbun’s contention that Sobek died in a struggle during a photo shoot in November in Angeles National Forest.

In his testimony, Rathbun, 39, said he and Sobek had a brief, consensual sexual encounter during the photo session and that they later argued after she was slightly injured in a driving stunt that went awry. The argument, Rathbun said, turned into a struggle that ended with Sobek accidentally being asphyxiated when the 6-foot, 3-inch photographer sat on the back of the 5-foot, 3-inch model in an effort to subdue her in the back seat of the vehicle.

But Ribe, during questioning by Kay, testified that Sobek’s windpipe and carotid arteries were not injured in a manner consistent with Rathbun’s account. Nor, Ribe said, could he find any injuries to Sobek’s spinal cord or the back of her neck.

The injuries he found during Sobek’s autopsy, among them hemorrhages in the front of her neck, “all point . . . away from an accidental death,” Ribe said.

And when asked by Kay if he had ever read any medical literature describing an accidental asphyxiation as described by Rathbun, the veteran coroner said he had not. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said.

Earlier, Heidi Robbins, a senior criminalist for the Sheriff’s Department, disputed Rathbun’s assertion that he took nude photos of Sobek during their encounter.

The photographs, which Rathbun’s brother said he recovered in undeveloped film he found in the desert months after Sobek’s death, do not match the coroner’s photos of Sobek’s lower body, Robbins said in testimony as graphic as it was often clinical.

But during his cross-examination, Werksman repeatedly challenged Robbins’ assertion that the nude photos of a woman’s torso--photos that were double-exposed with shots of a car’s interior--were clear enough for her to reach any conclusion about whether they were of Sobek.

Even if they were clear enough, Werksman maintained, it was ludicrous to compare the autopsy photos of Sobek with the body of a woman who was alive.

But Robbins also countered that argument, telling the jury that there was no way to say with certainty if the woman in the nude photos was alive.