A Quirk of Fate Led Police to the Killer

Bill Bartling and his trash collecting partner were interested in culling empty beer cans, but out of the container chained to Call Box No. 309 on Angeles Crest Highway, the 49-year-old plucked four glossy photos of a sculpted blond model instead.

Which is how a “hapless schlep,” as Bartling puts it, out of work and paying off traffic tickets by picking up trash for the county, became the linchpin in the investigation of the death of model Linda Sobek. By such slender threads, a quick rummage for a few cents worth of recyclables and a misplaced remote control, police were led to Charles Rathbun.

“I firmly believe that we wouldn’t have a case if not for Bill,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay said Friday, hours after a jury convicted the photographer of murder.

On Nov. 15, 1995, one day before the Hermosa Beach model vanished, Bartling trudged into court near his Glendale apartment to wangle a deal because he lacked the $500 needed to pay off his tickets.

Pick up trash, the judge offered.

Three days later, the search for Sobek was still a low-key matter, and Bartling was starting his tour of trash duty--and plucked out the four photos.

“I said, ‘Hey, take a gander at this,” said Bartling, who has since found work as a hospital maintenance man. Then, with a chuckle and a slightly embarrassed smile: “I put them in my backpack, to make sure my girlfriend didn’t see them. And I forgot about them.”

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He saw more papers, but ignored them, throwing the trash can liner into the back of the Forest Service pickup and later into a giant dumpster with dozens of others.

By Monday, media coverage of Sobek’s disappearance was increasing, and images of her were on every channel. But at Bartling’s house what was on was “something about the stock market . . . enough to put a guy like me to sleep.”

He went to turn off the set but couldn’t find the remote control. As he searched the crevices of the sofa, the images of stock prices were replaced by that of a woman.

“I thought, I’ve seen her before. And then it was like somebody hit me with a laser right in the middle of my forehead.”

After a brief moment of hesitation (“I have all these photographs with my fingerprints all over them.”), he called the Hermosa Beach police. A woman said a detective would call him back in the morning.

He didn’t sleep that night, and called back at 7 a.m. He described the photos to Lt. Mark Wright.

By late morning, Bartling held their sports coats as the officers tried to keep their neckties clean while searching the dumpster.

Twenty minutes before a truck came to empty the dumpster, they found the pages of Sobek’s day planner, photographs of her and a document.

It said that Charles E. Rathbun had borrowed a prototype Lexus 450 LX sport utility vehicle from the Lexus Corp. of Torrance.

It listed his Hollywood address and phone number.