Disappearance and murder of Linda Sobek by Charles Rathbun

The episode cited that the Lexus SUV had been thoroughly cleaned, but the blood and saliva evidence didn’t seem that hard to find. A “dark red stain” and the visible blood on the car cover showed me that Charles was simply not that thorough, or he didn’t think the police would connect him to the SUV. It reminded me of the terrible job Diana Haun did cleaning up the rental car in the episode Sign Here (s08e04). But even if authorities hadn’t found the rental receipt, he had contacted them. He should consider that if he were to be considered a viable suspect in Linda’s disappearance, they’d locate the car he’d admitted to renting for a photoshoot later that same day.

Charles’ brother Robert and his actions bothered me greatly in this episode. I was stunned that he wasn’t charged with evidence tampering. To be given information and a map to a remote location where evidence was to be located, and not go to the police was bad enough. But Robert and his girlfriend drove to the remote location, recovered five rolls of film, destroyed the map, and developed the film. The only reciprocity was that the photos on the fifth roll of film probably did more help convict Charles than to exonerate him.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

That ‘fifth’ roll of film was quite a curveball. Damaged by the elements and double-exposed, the 23 pictures it contained were unexpected. The episode indicated that half of them were simply of a vehicle’s dashboard, and the other half were quite explicit. Hoping the pornographic images would substantiate Charles’ claim that the sexual encounter Linda’s autopsy revealed was consensual. But there was so much nonsense in this line of thinking. Charles would have known the dashboard images would reveal the car wasn’t the Lexus SUV rented for the AutoWeek shoot. And why would he think that close-up images of female genitalia would indicate Linda’s willingness to participate in what was determined to be “forceable sodomy with a foreign object”? It was strongly suggested that the woman in the suggestive photos wasn’t Linda, which makes sense, considering it wasn’t the same vehicle.

One point of contention was the Blood Alcohol Concentration discovered at Linda’s autopsy. 0.13% is well above the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in most states, and it suggests significant impairment on Linda’s part. Linda was a professional model, and those close to her didn’t think she’d imbibe during a job. But Linda had also violated some of her other “professional” rules that morning: She’d taken the photoshoot gig outside of her agency, with an unknown photographer, and didn’t inform anyone where she was going or with whom. It was shown that Linda had a blank expression and disheveled clothing in the photos from that day’s shoot. The police suggested Linda may have been forced to consume alcohol, but was this done before the shoot? During?

Lastly, the discovery of the skeletal remains of Kimberly Pandelios had authorities considering that a serial killer might be at work. The previous murder from two years prior had occurred in the same area, and the remains were found just a couple of miles from Linda Sobek’s body. There was no evidence to charge Charles Rathbun with that crime, and later it was found that he was not involved. Kim Pandelios had been murdered by David Rademaker, as reported in a 2020 article from Medium.com.