Sobek Family’s Nightmare

For weeks now, they have come to the county courthouse in Torrance to relive their tragedy, to hear testimony that makes seasoned prosecutors wince, to see photographs of their loved one that are so graphic, so personal, that strangers look away in embarrassment.

Every day, Bob and Elaine Sobek and their son, Steve, have done this, they say, because they have to. Because as wrenching as it is to hear conflicting stories of how their Linda died, they cannot, will not, they say, abandon her memory.

“Wouldn’t you be here,” Elaine Sobek asked last week, “if this were your daughter?”

So the Sobeks have endured the words and photos presented in the trial of Charles Rathbun, the 39-year-old photographer accused of strangling and sexually assaulting Linda Sobek last November. And now, they know, the trial is almost over. With testimony concluded and the case about to be sent to the jury, their wounds can begin to heal.

But what they have been through these past weeks will not easily be erased.

“We went through hell in the beginning,” Bob Sobek said last week, referring to the time--almost a year ago--when his daughter was missing and then found dead in a shallow grave in Angeles National Forest. “And now, we’re still going through it.

“It is just like her dying over and over again,” he said, as the family left the courthouse.

The prosecution has blamed the defense for the graphic nature of the trial. The defense has insisted that it had no choice once Rathbun was not only accused of murder but of a brutal sexual assault.

The Sobek family has been caught in the middle.

During four weeks of trial, two theories have been presented--both of them sordid--on how the 27-year-old Hermosa Beach model was killed Nov. 16 during a photo shoot on a dry lake bed in the forest.

Prosecutors Steve Kay and Mary-Jean Bowman have alleged that Sobek was bound and sexually assaulted, possibly with a .45-caliber handgun, by a predator who then strangled her. After burying her body in a shallow dirt grave, they allege, Rathbun went on with his life as if nothing had happened.

But Rathbun has said that he accidentally asphyxiated Sobek during a struggle in the back seat of a luxury vehicle he was assigned to photograph. And, in testimony that has infuriated Sobek’s family and friends, Rathbun has said the accidental death followed a breezy afternoon of tequila and consensual sex in which he took explicit photographs of the former Raiders cheerleader.

More than anything else, perhaps, it is Rathbun’s claim of an intimate encounter with Sobek that has shaken the Sobeks and others who believe she was assaulted and slain. In an effort to prove Rathbun’s claim, defense attorney Mark Werksman has presented nude photos of a woman’s torso that Rathbun says is Sobek. And those photos, double-exposed with the interior of a vehicle, have been compared with anatomically explicit photos taken from Sobek’s autopsy.

So for days, in a courtroom so crowded at times that spectators have lined up at dawn for a seat, 8-by-12-inch photos of Sobek’s genitalia--and other photos purported to be of her--have been posted on a bulletin board for comparison as if they were no more than diagrams of a traffic accident.

And as if the photos were not enough, witnesses who are experts in sexual assault, anatomy and photography have been called in, one by one, to analyze the exhibits--all in an effort to prove or disprove competing theories that the photos show the same woman.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to sit through this kind of testimony,” an angry sheriff’s homicide Sgt. Mike Robinson said last week, echoing the comments of prosecutors who have visited the courtroom from time to time.

“During the course of this trial, we’ve lost Linda Sobek and I don’t know how,” said Robinson, who led the investigation into her death. “She has been reduced to two different parts of her anatomy.”

Throughout the trial, the most explicit moments of testimony and exhibits have been met in different ways by the Sobeks, a working class family that often shuns the news media and struggles for words to express their grief.

During those moments, Linda’s father, Bob, has sat in stony silence. His wife, Elaine, has bolted from the courtroom, accompanied by one or more family friends who have kept a vigil with the family. And their son, Steve, 33, has simply turned his eyes from the witness stand, often burying his head in his hands.

“[Allowing] everyone to see her when she’s naked,” a disgusted Steve Sobek said last week, not needing to finish the sentence. It especially hurts, considering the pride his sister took in her modeling, to have these be the last images displayed of her.

“It’s been very hard for them,” said the Sobek family’s attorney, Wayne Willette, who has joined family members each day in the front row of Judge Donald F. Pitts’ courtroom.

“Poor Linda,” prosecutor Kay said outside the court Friday. “I’m sure she never imagined . . . she would be modeling her body parts for a jury.”

While Kay and co-prosecutor Bowman have been critical of testimony and explicit photos put on display, Rathbun’s lawyer Werksman, a former assistant U.S. attorney, has insisted he had no choice.

“We didn’t ask to come to court and defend against charges of a brutal sexual assault,” Werksman said. “How can we defend against these charges without using terms of anatomy and pictures they [authorities] took from her autopsy?”

And although aware that the exhibits have been painful for Sobek’s family, Werksman said his duty as a defense attorney is to present all the evidence he can to prove that his client is innocent.

“They are bitter and understandably so,” Werksman said of the Sobek family. “But all I can care about is what the jury thinks.”

With closing arguments to begin Monday, attorneys for both sides will soon have that answer.

In the meantime, the Sobeks and their friends say, the family will continue to sit in the courtroom and listen, hopefully for one last time, to how competing sides account for what happened to Linda almost a year ago.

“They have got to be here for her,” attorney Willette said of the Sobeks, “because there is no one else to speak for her.”

“Hopefully,” a tired Elaine Sobek said outside court Friday, “we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

“This is an experience most families will never have,” she said. “And don’t want to have.”