Rathbun Had No Motive, Lawyer Says

Dismissing the prosecution’s claim that his client is a brutal killer, the attorney for Charles Rathbun contended Tuesday that authorities not only concocted evidence but failed to prove one crucial element in their theory that the photographer strangled and sodomized model Linda Sobek:

Motive.

“The question is why? Why would Charles Rathbun rape and murder Linda Sobek?” attorney Mark Werksman said in an exhaustive summation to a Torrance jury that today may begin deliberating the fate of Rathbun, 39.

“This is not a garden-variety rape. This is not a garden-variety murder,” Werksman said of charges that Rathbun not only killed Sobek, 27, of Hermosa Beach, but also sodomized her, possibly with a .45-caliber handgun.

“They are saying this man became a savage animal,” Werksman said. “And yet they haven’t proved it.”

While authorities have described Rathbun as an icy killer who murdered Sobek to conceal the fact that he assaulted her during a photo shoot last fall in Angeles National Forest, Werksman claimed that prosecutors had failed to prove that Rathbun had a motive for either crime.

“This man had a great job. He had just bought a home. He had a girlfriend . . . he had the esteem” of friends and associates, Werksman said, recalling testimony during the monthlong trial. “Why would he do such a thing?”

To the contrary, Werksman argued, there was ample evidence that Sobek and Rathbun engaged in brief consensual sex during the photo shoot after drinking tequila. The evidence, Werksman said, includes a blood-alcohol test that showed Sobek was legally drunk, and sexually explicit photographs of a woman’s torso--a woman that Rathbun has testified was Sobek.

While the prosecution witnesses included a criminalist and a physician who said the body of the woman in the photos does not match photos taken of Sobek during her autopsy, Werksman noted that his witness--versed in photography rather than anatomy--concluded that the photos show the same woman.

Likewise, Werksman argued, evidence and testimony supported Rathbun’s claim that he accidentally asphyxiated Sobek during a struggle that followed an argument in the back seat of the vehicle he was assigned to photograph.

That account of an accidental death, Werksman reminded the nine-man, three-woman jury, was not only deemed possible--but actually demonstrated--by an independent forensic pathologist called as a witness for the defense.

But in their zeal to convict Rathbun, Werksman claimed, authorities not only ignored the possibility Sobek died by accident, but developed convenient--and questionable--scenarios to dispute Rathbun’s account.

Werksman noted that Dr. James Ribe, the deputy coroner who performed the autopsy on Sobek, initially concluded that she died from compression of her neck and chest but could not say how the fatal injuries occurred. But just weeks before the trial, Werksman added, Ribe modified his findings to assert that Sobek was strangled--a change, Werksman charged, that was made only to strengthen the case for the prosecution.

Similarly, Werksman said, the prosecution raised the sordid possibility that Sobek was sodomized with Rathbun’s .45-caliber revolver only to vilify him before a jury. (Rathbun has denied that charge, insisting he did not even have his gun during his encounter with Sobek.)

But Werksman insisted that such an assault would have caused far more injuries than were found on Sobek. And while a Sheriff’s Department criminalist testified that she spotted what appeared to be a tiny amount of blood on the gun, Werksman reminded the jury that the witness could not say conclusively that it was blood or whose it might be.

Significantly, Werksman added, it was illogical to believe that Rathbun would not have disposed of the weapon if it had been used in the crime because he testified to having discarded other evidence in what he described as a panic after Sobek’s death.

“He admitted to you he had made mistakes. He admitted to you that he caused the death of Linda Sobek,” Werksman told the jury.

But if he is guilty of anything, Werksman said, Rathbun is guilty of no more than involuntary manslaughter for accidentally killing Sobek and then initially lying to conceal his hand in her death.

“I am not up here telling you that you should give Charles Rathbun a medal for what happened,” Werksman said. “I am telling you there was no rape. There was no murder.”