Jury Convicts Rathbun of Model Sobek’s Murder

Nearly a year after he led authorities to her shallow grave in Angeles National Forest, photographer Charles Rathbun was convicted Friday of sexually assaulting and strangling model Linda Sobek during a photo shoot on a dry lake bed.

As he sat almost motionless in a hushed Torrance courtroom, a nine-man, three-woman jury found the 39-year-old guilty of first-degree murder and of sodomizing Sobek, 27, of Hermosa Beach. Although prosecutors decided months ago that it would be hard to win a death penalty for Rathbun because he had no felony convictions and had led searchers to Sobek’s body, the verdicts mean that Rathbun will face a no-parole life sentence when he returns to court Dec. 16.

“All right!” Sobek’s mother, Elaine, shouted as the first verdict, on the murder charge, was read.

At the same moment, Rathbun’s mother, Ann, murmured “Oh, God,” and bowed her head. Her husband, Horace, cupping his left hand to his ear, was silent.

The conviction of Rathbun capped a wrenching five-week trial in which prosecutors portrayed the lanky, blond defendant as a sadistic predator who murdered Sobek to conceal the fact that he had sodomized her, possibly with his .45-caliber revolver.

Although Rathbun testified, sometimes in tears, that he had accidentally asphyxiated the former Los Angeles Raiderette last November, Deputy Dist. Attys. Steve Kay and Mary-Jean Bowman presented more than 40 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits in what they described as a macabre tale of sexual perversion and remorseless murder.

Paradoxically, the jurors who convicted Rathbun after six hours of deliberations said that while they believed his actions were monstrous, they could not say for sure--based on the evidence--he was a monster who set out to savage Sobek.

“We don’t believe he went out there to rape and murder her,” said a 37-year-old juror from Redondo Beach, who declined to give his name. “But somewhere along the line, something snapped.”

Juror Don Hoffman, 63, said: “It was hard for me to believe a human being could do that.”

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For the jurors, perhaps. But not for authorities, who once described Rathbun as a serial killer--a notion some still believe.

“The jury did a great job with half the evidence they could have had,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Robinson. “There’s a lot more to him than they know.”

In a hearing that preceded Rathbun’s trial, prosecutors were blocked from presenting any of his original confession to police because detectives ignored his repeated requests for an attorney. Likewise, a judge ruled in May that authorities could not introduce the testimony of four women who claimed that they were sexually assaulted or nearly strangled by Rathbun, who was acquitted of rape 17 years ago in Ohio.

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Even without that evidence, prosecutors presented what jurors described as more than enough proof that Sobek was brutalized and that Rathbun lied about his fateful encounter with her.

“It just seemed he was lying on the stand about everything,” said juror Greg Mars, a 35-year-old employee at Cal State Long Beach. “He changed his story too many times.”

After his arrest Nov. 22, a weeping Rathbun told detectives that he had accidentally struck and killed Sobek with a vehicle that he was assigned to photograph while practicing driving stunts on the El Mirage dry lake bed near Palmdale. In a panic, he claimed, he buried her body off a dirt road in Angeles National Forest.

But during 2 1/2 days of testimony that outraged Sobek’s family and friends, Rathbun offered a different story, claiming that he accidentally asphyxiated the model during an argument that escalated into a fight in the back seat of the vehicle. Before Sobek’s death, he testified, he and the model drank tequila and engaged in consensual sex. In his defense, he offered double-exposed photographs of a nude woman’s torso that he said was Sobek’s.

With a parade of criminalists and other witnesses to rebut Rathbun’s story, however, prosecutors insisted that the photographer’s version of events could not explain away Sobek’s numerous injuries or his own consciousness of guilt in burying her body and lying to authorities.

The senior deputy coroner who performed the autopsy on Sobek testified that her injuries were the result of strangulation, not accidental asphyxiation.

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“He killed her,” prosecutor Kay said in an emotional, four-hour summation Wednesday. “[And] the motive for killing her was to avoid detection.”

When the first guilty verdict was announced, the 6-foot-3 Rathbun sat almost motionless in his chair, staring straight ahead and arching his back slightly at the word “guilty.”

“I was afraid this would happen,” attorney Mark Werksman said he was told by Rathbun.

Sobek’s family and friends, who had maintained a painful, weeks-long vigil in Superior Court Judge Donald F. Pitt’s courtroom, broke into tears at the verdicts, hugging one another or simply joining hands.

As the jury filed out, Elaine Sobek swept an arm around the jury forewoman, Pauline Stokely 66, of Hawthorne, and then thanked or hugged every juror. “God bless you guys,” she told them. Around her neck, Sobek wore a gold pendant in the shape of a heart, framing her daughter’s picture.

“Now he is going to pay for what he did to our beautiful daughter,” she said, as she, her husband, Bob, and their son, Steve, embraced the co-prosecutors.

“Everybody knows she was a beautiful person and this should never have happened to her. . . . But I feel sorry for his family,” Elaine Sobek said.

Added Bob Sobek: “I hope Rathbun gets his due and he suffers.”

Kay and Bowman, who labored the last year on the case, said they were not surprised by the verdicts.

“No jury in the world would acquit Rathbun with the powerful evidence we had,” Kay told reporters outside the courthouse. “Nothing can bring Linda back, but this verdict will bring some closure.”

“I think we did the best that we could have,” added Bowman, who, like Kay, choked back tears during final arguments to the jury.

As they hurriedly left the courthouse, Rathbun’s parents were shaken and taciturn. “No comment,” Rathbun’s mother said. “I’m sorry.”

Rathbun’s attorney said his client was “very upset” but “resigned” to the prospect he would be found guilty in the case.

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“There was a public perception that he was guilty from the very beginning,” Werksman said. “Naturally, I am disappointed with the verdict. But I have a lot of respect for the jury system and the jury. And I accept the verdict.”

In interviews after the verdicts, jurors said they did not take a vote during their first day of deliberations Thursday. Instead, they said, they pored over the evidence and testimony, asking to see the gun allegedly used in the attack as well as the double-exposed photos that Rathbun claimed were of Sobek. They decided on the murder conviction, they said, after agreeing that Sobek had been sexually assaulted by Rathbun.

“Once we started deliberating, we figured out how much he was lying,” said Doug Loos, 38, a Northwest Airlines employee. “We just picked him apart. We didn’t set out to do that.”

Forewoman Stokely, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant, said it was initially shocking to look at the autopsy photos of Sobek’s nude body, especially in the jury room. But after a while, she said, the jury got used to it.

But it was the graphic pictures that swayed the jury into believing that there was no consensual sex between Rathbun and Sobek. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say he was a monster,” said Loos, who like other jurors said he did not believe he set out to murder her. “But I would say he has a serious problem.”

Jurors also said Rathbun’s actions were not those of an innocent man.

“There were too many questions,” said Andy MacLean, 35, a mechanic who lives in Carson. “Why did he drive back and forth with the body? Why did he make a phone call to his girlfriend? Why did he throw things out along the way? He went on a photo shoot with his girlfriend the next day in the same Lexus.

“He had no remorse.”

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Times correspondent Tracy Johnson contributed to this story.

* KEY TO INVESTIGATION

Man collecting litter for county pointed police to Rathbun. A17