Photographer Charles Rathbun Is Secretly a Savage
(‘Photo Finish,’ Forensic Files)
Before jumping into “Photo Finish,” I want to let folks who watch Forensic Files on HLN know that you can find a daily list of updates and recaps on Facebook and Threads. Those who watch the show elsewhere can use the table of contents to find related blog posts.
And speaking of devotees of the series, I think most would agree that “Photo Finish” is about as Forensic Files as an episode can get: The deceased had a sunny personality and was known for reliability. The suspect changed his story during the course of the investigation and ultimately settled on “she died by accident and I covered it up out of fear” (John Boyle). Oh, and the sex was consensual. (Thomas Jabin Berry).
But wait, there’s more: The criminal had been arrested years earlier for another horrible crime and either gotten a light sentence (Clay Daniels) or beaten the charge entirely (David Copenhefer).
Sweet and friendly. For this post, I checked into whether killer Charles Rathbun has won any leniency of his own with the criminal justice system. I also filled in some biographical details about him and victim Linda Sobek. So let’s get going on the recap of “Photo Finish” along with extra information from internet research:
On November 16, 1995, Linda Sobek, 27, vanished on her way to a photo shoot. She was a busy model and aspiring actress living in a house just off the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach, California.
Linda made friends easily and was outgoing, but sometimes could be “as vulnerable as a wounded fawn,” according to the book Death of a Model by Clifford L. Linedecker. At age 17, she slit one of her wrists amid romantic problems.
The LA Times reported that she called her cat, Boo, her best friend.
Calendar girl. She was also spiritual and belonged to Baycities Community Church in Redondo Beach. She called her mother, Elaine Sobek, who lived in Lakewood with her father, every day.
From 1989 to 1993, Linda worked as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders. A friend recalled that, as a Raiderette, Sobek “was able to dress more quickly than others because she was so beautiful she didn’t have to spend much time putting on makeup,” the Press-Telegram reported.
At no more than 5-foot-4-inches, she wasn’t tall enough for the runways of Paris or Milan, but she was well-proportioned and looked great in a swimsuit. The Brand Model Agency in Irvine represented her, and she got gigs posing in bikinis for calendars and auto magazines and appearing at conventions, according to Death of a Model.
A no-show. Not all of Linda’s career consisted of wearing sexy clothes. Shortly before she died, she had plans to appear in a catalog featuring fashions of the 1940s.
On the day she went missing, Linda got a page directly from a photographer — not through her agency — for a last-minute shoot. She left a message for Elaine, an administrative assistant at Bechtel Corporation, that she would call her later to talk about a barbeque they had planned.
But she never did.
Weight for her. And the usually dependable Linda also missed a date with Married With Children that day. Forensic Files said that it was for an audition, but Death of a Model wrote that she had already won a small part on the TV show and it was a wardrobe fitting that she missed. The sitcom about a crass family of four never received critical acclaim, but it launched the successful careers of regulars Katey Sagal, Ed O’Neill, and Christina Applegate as well as then-unknown bit players like Matthew LeBlanc and Pam Anderson.
For Linda to willingly skip out on an appointment like that would have been unthinkable.
The last place anyone remembered spotting Linda was at a Redondo Beach Gold’s Gym, where she worked out in the morning.
Huge response. Elaine immediately reported her daughter missing. Linda’s roommates worried that some dodgy person she might have met at a trade show lured her to a photo shoot to get her alone, according to Death of a Model.
Fortunately for the Sobeks, the disappearance of a popular and attractive young woman with long blond hair is no ordinary missing persons case, and they had plenty of help right from the start.
The Raiderettes publicist dashed off a press release asking for help. A reward fund for assistance finding Linda received $100,000 in pledges, the Associated Press reported. The boyfriend of Linda’s roommate Kelly Flynn made up 53,000 flyers. Tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair with Maury Povich ran segments about Linda.
Police started getting 100 calls an hour with tips, according to Oxygen. Law enforcement considered the Angeles National Forest ground zero for the search effort.
Final resting place. The National Forest Foundation describes the 700,000-acre expanse as the “backyard playground to the huge metropolitan area of Los Angeles.” But law enforcement knows it as a backdrop to homicide.
“Somebody once said, if all the bodies in the Angeles National Forest suddenly got up and walked out, the county population would jump by 10,000,” sheriff’s deputy Steve Crider told the Orange County Register.
Police mobilized dogs and helicopters to search the forest, but the first valuable clue came from a man serving community service as part of a work crew. Bill Bartling, 49, who was paying off traffic tickets by picking up trash, found discarded pictures of Linda as well as her day planner — with the date she went missing ripped out. A garbage can also held a contract to borrow a black Lexus prototype Lx 450 sport utility vehicle for an Autoweek assignment. The document bore the name of Charles Rathbun.
Suspect makes a slip. A 38-year-old freelance photographer, Charles Rathbun told police that he met Linda for breakfast at Denny’s in Torrance on the morning she disappeared to discuss her portfolio, but he decided she wasn’t right for the shoot. He claimed that she drove away in her car, but police found her white Nissan 240-SX at 182nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, right near the restaurant.
According to Real Murders of Los Angeles, while speaking with police, Charles blurted out that he was the last person to see Linda alive. How did he know that? Her body hadn’t turned up. A crime lab that checked out the Lexus he’d borrowed found small amounts of blood despite that someone had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly.
While under surveillance, Charles fired a gun toward his driveway and one shot ricocheted and hit the arm of a woman friend. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it gave LA police grounds for arresting him.
In his home, police found more than 100 firearms and a bag with cords, tape, and alcohol.
So who was this No. 1 suspect?
Harrowing story. Charles Edgar Rathbun was born the last of four children on October 2, 1957. He grew up in Worthington, a section of Columbus, Ohio. According to the Los Angeles Times, he became interested in photography early on and started taking pictures for the school paper, The Chronicle.
He later took classes at the Ohio State University while working at a Kroger grocery store.
Investigators discovered something alarming buried in his history: the alleged rape of a married co-worker in 1979. The woman, a clerk at Kroger, had given him a ride home from work because he had a flat tire.
No consequences. She was interested in photography and accepted his invitation to take a look at his work inside his home, where he attacked her, she said. She begged Charles to leave her alone, but he threatened to kill her if she cried out for help, and he raped her on the floor, she said.
But Charles claimed they’d had consensual sex, and the judge in the case believed him.
And, back in those pre-internet days, the story didn’t follow Charles. The young man, who loved cars as well as photography, moved to the Detroit area to get his fill of all things automotive. He then relocated to California circa 1987.
Charles gained a reputation as a talented photographer for car magazines. He could make sleek cars look even sleeker and he also understood the mechanics of the vehicles, according to the LA Times.
Man of dualities. The Ohio native’s work appeared in such publications as Car and Driver and Motor Trend. Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver, told the LA Times that nothing about Charles suggested he was in any way capable of murder. The two men had enjoyed a visit to Sicily together so Charles could test out the tires of a new Mustang on the Targa Florio race course.
Other associates described Charles as friendly and sociable, and comfortable around women.
Yet a few people who spoke to the LA Times characterized him as a loner, someone who lived in Hollywood for eight years and never seemed to have a girlfriend. After the murder, some models he’d worked with came forward to say he’d gotten out of line with them.
Serial revisionist. According to Forensic Files, Charles harbored some hostility toward women with blond hair and didn’t like Linda, whom he had previously worked with.
Investigators found out that he had a bad temper that had cost him some freelance work.
During police questioning, Charles changed his story, admitting that he had hired Linda as a model to pose with the Lexus around a dry lakebed called El Mirage in the Angeles National Forest. The assignment required her to kick up sand by making doughnuts with the car, he said. While demonstrating how to drive the car in circles, he accidentally hit her with the Lexus, then panicked and buried the body in the forest, Charles claimed.
Flowers and tears. He agreed to lead police to her body, but a series of spots he pinpointed yielded nothing. Charles was stalling for time, hoping the body would deteriorate enough so they couldn’t find evidence on it, according to Forensic Files.
Finally, investigators told him that they believed his story about the accident and that recovering Linda’s body would help prove his innocence. On November 25, 1995, from a helicopter, Charles identified her resting place. Police found Linda’s body buried in a shallow grave near a rock and a culvert.
Because of the cold temperatures there, her body hadn’t decomposed.
Tie to OJ. Meanwhile, mourners began leaving floral wreaths and sprigs outside Linda’s shared house. The Los Angeles News-Pilot published a photo of Kelly Flynn tending to them.
Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson — whose murder led to the O.J. Simpson trial of the century — attended Linda’s funeral. “I feel like I know her, and it’s just as tragic as it was ours,” Tanya told NBC News: Today.
In fact, the funeral, at the First Baptist Church of Lakewood in Long Beach, drew some 1,000 people, including friends from Linda’s modeling career, Raiderette alums, and former running backs Eric Dickerson and Christian Okoye. A violinist and guitarist played “Over the Rainbow” and “Yesterday.” White doves were released.
Medical examiner’s report. The media was there too. “She was an angel when she was with us and she is an angel now,” one friend told the Press-Telegram.
The minister spoke of how there should be a buddy system for models so they don’t have to meet photographers alone. (He’s right, it’s a good idea, but to me, that’s a form of blaming the victim. Not every woman has a friend available to accompany her anywhere anytime.)
Soon, Linda’s family had to bear disturbing news from the autopsy results. Linda died of asphyxiation, not injuries from a car accident.
Cover-up effort. Investigators believed that Linda had refused sexual advances from the 6-foot-3-inch photographer and he then hit her on the head and sodomized with a foreign object, perhaps a gun. Linda had internal hemorrhages. Bruising on her legs pointed to sexual assault as well. Ligature marks matched the size of the rope found in his house.
To eliminate evidence, Charles had washed her — she had no makeup on when police found her — and changed her clothes before disposing of her body, investigators believed.
Charles was charged with first-degree murder and sodomy with a foreign object. A judge set his bail at $1 million.
Play-acting? Los Angeles County put a heavy hitter in charge of the prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, who was part of the team that prosecuted Charles Manson.
By this time, Charles Rathbun had already tried — or wanted it to appear that he had tried — to shoot himself, according to CNN. He would later testify that he drank half a liter of Scotch, wrote suicide notes, cocked a handgun, and then passed out. When he awoke, his friends talked him out of it. He blamed the attempt on anguish over not finding good legal representation right away.
Then, while in custody, Charles cut his wrists with a razor and wrote in his own blood, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” But the cuts were superficial and not life-threatening, and police believed it was a sympathy-seeking stunt, according to Oxygen.
Surprise pictures. Next up, Charles revised his story about Linda’s death again. After he accidentally hit her with the car, she started kicking and screaming and, while subduing her, he accidentally choked her.
At the trial in 1996, the court got to hear Charles Rathbun’s final narrative: Linda consumed half a flask of tequila and seduced him by flashing him. They had consensual sex during which she was accidentally asphyxiated.
Robert Rathbun, brother of the accused, claimed to have found five rolls of film in the desert that would prove Linda had willingly participated in sex. While the first four rolls showed her posing in dresses, the fifth consisted of double-exposed photos of female genitalia, which Charles said Linda willingly posed for.
Alcohol involved. The prosecution, however, found evidence that the explicit photos were taken in an Oldsmobile, not a Lexus, and they didn’t come from Linda.
Prosecutors contended that Linda fought back against the photographer’s advances. He forced her to drink tequila, resulting in her blood alcohol level of 0.13% when she died. (According to those who knew her, it wasn’t like Linda to drink on the job, or drink at all.) After the rape, Charles strangled her to death.
And there was also the matter of what Autoweek publisher Leon Mandel said: Rathbun’s assignment was to photograph the Lexus in a rural setting — not a desert forest — and the shoot wasn’t supposed to include any models, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Strong convictions. Models Tiffany Richardson and Amy Weber, who had worked with Charles Rathbun, testified that a year before the murder he had referred to Linda as a bitch. He told Weber that Linda “deserved what she got coming to her,” as reported by the LA Times.
In what must have been excruciating for the Sobeks, portions of Linda’s diary were read in court. They mostly portrayed her struggle to find and maintain true love. It came out that she had recently had renewed thoughts of suicide and that she had once allowed an admiring stranger to buy her a $1,000 bed.
“I don’t want to drag Linda Sobek through the mud,” defense lawyer Mark Werksman said. “But the fact is my client is facing the death penalty.”
The trial lasted six weeks, and it took the jury six hours to finish deliberations.
Charles closed his eyes to brace himself before the verdict was read, and the Sobek family broke into cheers when they heard the decision, guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault.
The jury didn’t believe any of Charles’ story about the death resulting from consensual sex. “You couldn’t get me to believe that’s something any woman would agree to,” juror Greg Mars later said, as reported by the Daily Pilot, a news service owned by the LA Times.
Sheer scorn. The killer showed no reaction in the courtroom. Ann Rathbun, his mother, also stayed quiet, but she covered her mouth with her hand and the color drained from her face, and his father jerked, according to the Daily Pilot.
“I have never known what it was like to despise someone like I despise this person. God will punish you, Charlie,” Linda’s father, Bob Sobek, told the court, as reported by the LA Times.
As the jurors filed out of the courtroom, Linda’s parents and brother hugged each one, creating a “tearful, impromptu reception line,” according to the Daily Pilot.
Where the money went. Mark Werksman said his client had been afraid he would be wrongfully convicted. Robert Rathbun, himself a lawyer, said that his brother was a kind and gentle person who never wanted to harm others and that his family believed Linda Sobek’s death was a tragic accident.
The Sobeks thought that Robert Rathbun should have faced charges for providing false evidence to cover up the murder and rape. Sobek family lawyer Wayne Willette noted that Robert claimed to have destroyed maps that Charles had given him so that he could find the missing rolls of film. (I found nothing to indicate Robert Rathbun was ever criminally charged.)
The $100,000 in the reward fund would go toward helping abused women “so that Linda’s death will bring about positive change,” Willette said.
Remember the grocery clerk. Linda’s family took out an ad in the Mercury News a decade after the murder: “It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you left us. We’ll always remember your smile, contagious laugh, and the light you shed that is still spreading. The world will never be as good as it was before you left.”
It’s still galling today to remember that, had the judge believed the other, alleged rape victim back in 1979, Linda Sobek would probably still be alive.
Perhaps the Sobek family can also take comfort in the knowledge that Charles Rathbun’s life without parole sentence stands. The state corrections website notes that he remains incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.
For Forensic Files viewers, however, some loose ends to the story remain.
More felonies? The episode mentions that Charles Rathbun was at first suspected of involvement in the then-mysterious murder of another model, Kimberly Pandelios. She died after meeting a photographer at a Denny’s and her remains turned up not far from Linda’s.
Plus, the LA Times reported that authorities were investigating Charles for “unsolved slayings and disappearing young women from Michigan to California.” During the investigation into Linda’s death, police had found scores of photographs of models in “death poses” and attempted to contact them to ensure they were only play-acting for the camera, according to an Associated Press story.
For an upcoming post, I’ll check into an epilogue for those parts of the story.
In the meantime, you can watch the Real Murders of Los Angeles on the Oxygen network’s website if you create an account.
Until next time, cheers. — RR
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So sad.
It really is. Her mother seemed like such a nice person, too.