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In November 1995, 27-year-old Linda Sobek was trying to get her modeling career off the ground when she suddenly vanished. Earlier that morning, she’d told her mom that she was rushing out the door for a photo shoot, but she hadn’t said where she was going or which photographer she was working with. When she learned that her daughter had missed her audition for a much-anticipated guest role on Married with Children, Elaine Sobek immediately knew that something was terribly wrong.
Linda Sobek was born on July 9, 1968 in Los Angeles County to parents Bob & Elaine Sobek. She & her brother Steve were raised in Lakewood, California 21 miles southeast of Los Angeles in a loving, tight-knit family. According to Steve, they lived a very normal life & as a young girl, his sister was more of a tomboy at heart who loved camping & anything to do with the outdoors.
Since Linda had always been on the shy side as a child, as she reached middle school, her mom suggested that she consider modeling. After she got her daughter in with an agency, it was quickly clear that Linda was a natural in front of the camera. Throughout high school, she competed in pageants & did modeling work for amateur photographers. Over time, she began doing more professional photoshoots with magazines.
At 20-years old In 1988, when Linda tried out for the Los Angeles Raiders’ cheerleading squad, she was chosen from thousands of other young women. Four years later in 1992, she was voted by her peers as the squad’s Raiderette of the Year & remained on the squad until 1993.
By 21-years-old, she was able to move out of her parent’s home into her own apartment as the exposure she’d received on the squad tremendously boosted her modeling career. Standing no taller than 5’4”, she wasn’t tall enough for the runways of Paris or Milan, but she was a highly ambitious, determined person & she was soon featured on the covers of fitness & car magazines. While she mingled with celebrities at various parties, she was able to meet influential people who had connections to push her even farther in her career.
As the doors for larger shoots began opening, Linda got increasingly comfortable & confident in front of the camera. She had the passion & grit to make it big, working long hours, doing as many as three shoots a day. She was in constant contact with photographers, managers & magazines to boost her business.
Through it all, Linda remained humble, kind & down-to-earth She was never swept up in the limelight of Hollywood & always kept her family at the center of her world. She spoke with her mom about three times a day & her family always celebrated her successes alongside her.
Although the modeling industry may have seemed glamorous from the outside, it was a challenge to be expected to look your best at all times. Linda often worked out at the gym for hours a day to stay in shape. She was always focused on caring for her hair & skin so she would be ready for a photo shoot at any moment. She knew that if she faltered, there were hundreds of girls ready to step in & take her place in an instant.
Since modeling would carry her for only so long, she began setting her sights on acting. She hoped to have stability in her life since she adored being an aunt to her brother’s children & she dreamed of one day settling down, getting married & having children of her own.
Thursday, November 16, 1995 was a big day in Linda’s career as she had her first major audition with the hit sitcom, Married with Children. She hoped that this role would be her big break to open the doors to many more roles.
She was contacted about a last-minute photo shoot that morning & since it fit into her schedule, allowing her to make it to her audition, she accepted. When Elaine spoke with her daughter at 10:45 am, she was still at her Hermosa Beach apartment, but she told her mom that she was rushing to make her photo shoot. She told her mom that she’d call her later that evening to let her know how her audition went.
When Linda left her apartment that morning, she didn’t tell anyone where her photo shoot was being held or what photographer she was working with. As evening rolled into night, Elaine kept waiting for her daughter’s call, but it sadly never came.
Linda & Elaine routinely spoke every morning, but as Friday rolled around & Elaine still hadn’t heard from her daughter, her worry only grew. When she called her home line, she found that Linda had left a message on her answering machine for any potential callers, saying that it was 11 am on Thursday & she was going to be on location all day without access to a phone.
When Elaine spoke with her daughter’s agent, true panic set in as she learned that Linda hadn’t shown up for her audition. Her daughter was so professional & driven so her family knew that something was terribly wrong since she would have never blown off something so important.
Elaine talked to Linda’s roommates & friends, but no one knew where she was. Since it was only 1995, she didn’t have a cell phone, but she wasn’t responding to any of their pages. When they hadn’t heard from Linda for 24 hours, the Sobeks filed a missing person report with the Hermosa Beach Police Department.
As the investigation began, family & friends distributed more than 50,000 fliers with Linda’s photo & information around town, hoping that someone would come forward to shed light on where she could be, offering a $20,000 reward. The 27-year-old had blond hair, blue eyes, she stood at 5’4” & weighed 105# & she drove a 1992 white Nissan 240 SX.
Linda’s case was featured on many news channels in hopes of generating more tips or leads. A tip line was opened, but sadly, little to no information was coming in. The only information they had was that Linda was going to a last-minute photo shoot on Thursday morning. Since she’d spoken with the photographer directly rather than through her agency, there was little to go on.
As a model, police knew that Linda was a target who could have been stalked after someone saw her in a photo or had been at a photo shoot with her. Since Los Angeles county was so expansive, it felt like searching for Linda was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Since she’d been working with an array of different photographers all over southern California, trying to figure out where she’d gone or who she’d gone with on Thursday morning was proving to be difficult, if not impossible. She had been sharing a large house on Hermosa Beach with three other models, but they hadn’t seen her since she left.
Linda routinely tracked her schedule in her day planner, documenting her TV auditions & modeling shoots, but when they combed over her bedroom, they realized it wasn’t there & was likely with her.
Investigators wanted to know what a typical day for Linda looked like & who she associated with. Her roommates indicated that she was constantly at the Gold’s Gym, oftentimes twice a day. When they went to speak with members & staff, no one had seen her at the gym in the past few days. They checked her favorite restaurants, the places she typically went shopping, but they were no closer to finding her or her car.
As they looked into her romantic life, although she had dated various men, she was more so looking for true love & someone to settle down with & have a family. They gradually ruled everyone associated with her from the inside out as a suspect. Leads began to dry up & the case had grown stagnant.
Four days had passed since she went missing & the search for Linda continued. Her case remained a feature on many news channels in hopes of generating tips or leads which paid off.
On Tuesday, November 21, 1995, five days after Linda was last seen, a man named Bill Bartling contacted police to report finding something relevant to Linda’s case. While he’d been doing community service in the Angeles National Forest three days earlier on Saturday, November 18, he was emptying garbage cans along Angeles Crest Highway at about 3 pm when he found about a dozen photos of a strikingly gorgeous woman inside.
After he put four of the photos into his backpack, he moved on with his tasks, thinking nothing of it. It wasn’t until he saw Linda’s image featured on the news that he realized she was the woman in the photos he’d found so he contacted authorities.
The Angeles National Forest is an expansive, remote, rugged area that’s over 700,000 acres or roughly 1,100 square miles 45 miles northeast from Linda’s apartment, about an hour’s drive away. Since it’s so massive & remote, it unfortunately also has the reputation of being a dumping ground for bodies.
When investigators rushed to the park on Tuesday morning, November 21, they met Bill Bartling at 10 am so he could show them where he’d found the photos three days earlier. When they realized that the garbage can was empty, they were told that the contents had been transferred to large dumpsters behind a ranger’s station.
A person at the ranger’s station told investigators that this trash would be hauled away to a landfill in ten short minutes. They instructed them to put guards at that location to prevent the garbage from being taken.
All of the trash from the park was to be transferred to the Hermosa Beach Police Station where investigators combed through four full dumpsters worth of garbage, bag by bag. Not only did they find additional photos of Linda, but they also found her daily planner.
When an investigator turned to the page for November 16, the day she went missing, he realized it had been torn out. It was at this point he believed that Linda wasn’t a missing person, but sadly, had likely been a victim of a homicide.
The area was searched where Bill Bartling found Linda’s photos, thinking her body may have been buried in this location. As helicopters scanned from above, searches rode horses through the vast trails of the park. There were also three search teams with sniffer dogs that had some clothing that belonged to Linda.
Angeles National Park has 557 miles of hiking & equestrian trails that are part of the Pacific Crest Trail with lakes, streams, mountains & forest. Authorities, family, friends & volunteers combed over as much of the area as they could until the sun set on Tuesday.
With the trash now at the police department, investigators continue to sift through it for evidence, working long into the night. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 22, they found an owner’s manual for an Oldsmobile Bravada with a piece of paper inside for a lease agreement for a rare, prototype Lexus SUV dated November 16, the day that Linda disappeared. Investigators knew that Linda often modeled for car magazines.
The agreement had a name, phone number & an address written & indicated that the car was being leased for Autoweek magazine. The photographer who’d rented the car was 37-year-old Charles “Charlie” Rathbun.
An investigator who contacted Lexus headquarters in Torrence was told that they were familiar with Rathbun, who was employed by Autoweek magazine. He came over on Thursday, November 16 to borrow the Lexus LX 450 for a photo shoot & he returned it four days later on Monday, November 20.
Investigators instructed Lexus to preserve the car in question & when the SUV was brought down to the crime lab, detectives asked the Lexus rep about Charles Rathbun & his reputation.
They came to find that Rathbun was a freelance photographer who specialized in car photography. He worked at a major publishing house, Peterson Publishing Company, which is home to over 30 magazine titles, including Motor Trend magazine. Those who worked with Rathbun at Peterson raved about his photography skills & described him as an overall great guy who was very charming & social.
Since Rathbun’s contact information had been listed on the lease agreement, Detective Raul Saldana called him on Wednesday, November 22. He indicated that he knew Linda Sobek as he’d done a photo shoot with her a couple years previously for All Chevy magazine. He said he last spoke with her on Thursday, November 16 when they met up at a Denny’s restaurant in Torrence after he picked up the SUV at the Lexus corporate headquarters for a photo shoot.
Since he still needed to book a model for the shoot, he met up with Linda, hoping she might be a good fit for the job. She climbed into the SUV in the parking lot of Denny’s so he could review her portfolio, but after he determined he couldn’t utilize her for the shoot, they parted ways. She got in her car, drove off & he hadn’t seen her since.
Detective Saldana asked him to come down to the station for a formal statement & he agreed with plans to meet at noon. Noon came & went & Rathbun was a no-show so Saldana called him & he apologized & agreed to come down at 2 pm, saying, I guess it’s really important that you talk to me considering I was the last person to see her. Saldana was taken aback by this comment as he’d never told Rathbun that he’d been the last person to have seen Linda. His gut instinct told him that Rathbun was responsible for whatever had happened to her.
When detectives went to the Denny’s restaurant in Torrence that was less than five miles from Linda’s house, they found her white Nissan sedan in the parking lot. It was locked & based on the dust that coated the car, it had been sitting there since she parked it there on Thursday which was in contrast with what Rathbun had said about seeing her drive away.
Linda’s car was taken for processing at the crime scene while detectives got ready for their 2 pm meeting with Rathbun. As was the case with their scheduled meeting at noon, Rathbun was once again a no-show. It was clear he was evading them & he became their sole suspect.
Hours after a surveillance team was dispatched to his home in Hollywood, detectives received a call from the team, informing them that Rathbun had just come outside & shot someone. The LAPD responded to the home on a shots fired call & Rathbun was taken down to the police station in Hollywood.
Hermosa Beach detectives came to learn that as Wednesday progressed, rather than coming to meet Detective Saldana at the police station, Rathbun had been at home getting increasingly drunk. He called his friend Jim Nichols who was also an attorney, as well as another friend, Sharon Myers. Now intoxicated, he told them that he had something to do with Linda’s disappearance. He said he needed advice & asked them to come to his house.
While the trio was outside Rathbun’s house together, the surveillance team watched as Rathbun held a .45-calibur automatic pistol & fired down at the driveway. The bullet ricocheted up, accidentally striking Sharon Myers in the arm which was when he was arrested by the LAPD for assault with a deadly weapon.
Hermosa Beach detectives immediately drove 20 miles north to LAPD’s Hollywood station where they found Rathbun in an interview room, slurring his words, but aware of what was going on.
As they began discussing Linda, he was clearly nervous & had a look of guilt plastered across his face. When Detective Saldana asked him what happened, he told him that it had been an accident.
He went on to say that after they met at Denny’s on Thursday, November 16, they drove out in the Lexus SUV to El Mirage Lake which is a dry lake in the Mojave Desert. This area is 85 miles northeast of the Angeles National Forest where her photos & day planner had been found, an hour & 40 minute drive away.
Rathbun said they went there for a photo shoot with the Lexus SUV. He wanted to take photos of the car essentially doing donuts through the dirt, driving in circles with Linda behind the wheel as he snapped photos. Since she wasn’t doing it properly, he wanted to show her what he was looking for so he got behind the wheel while she stood outside. As he spun the car, he accidentally struck her, likely killing her.
The detectives remained calm as the questioning continued while they were certain that Rathbun was lying. He claimed that he tried to revive her & in his state of panic, he considered taking her to the hospital, but he decided to bury her in the desert instead.
They felt that there was likely some element of truth to his story. Linda had likely been murdered in the desert & then her belongings were tossed in the trash at the Angeles National Forest on his way back home to Hollywood.
After Rathbun agreed to show Detective Saldana where Linda had been buried at the El Mirage dry lake bed, they drove off into the darkness of night at 9 pm on Wednesday night. As they got closer, he began taking him on a wild goose chase & after six hours of searching the desert, they still hadn’t found Linda’s body. Detectives believed he was lying & Linda’s body likely wasn’t in the desert at all.
He was then taken down to the Hermosa Beach Police Department where he was booked for Linda’s murder on Thursday, November 23, 1995, on what just so happened to be Thanksgiving Day & one week since Linda went missing.
Linda’s brother, Steve Sobek, recalls it as the worst Thanksgiving of their lives as they were updated on Linda’s case that morning & told of Rathbun’s arrest. Thanksgiving has never been the same for the Sobek family.
As the Lexus was being processed, no dents or damage was seen on the body of the car which suggested that Linda hadn’t been accidentally hit with it as Rathbun claimed.
When Rathbun’s home was searched on Thursday night, over 100 firearms were found as well as a black bag filled with alarming contents, including a towel, a roll of tape that had hairs attached to it, string & some alcohol, items that may have been used for whatever happened to Linda.
As investigators dug deeper into Rathbun’s past, they learned that although he had initially been touted as an extremely talented, professional photographer, that wasn’t entirely the case. He was known to have a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde personality among his colleagues, one minute taking amazing shots, the next having a temper tantrum as he threw chairs around the room.
Rathbun was born the youngest of four children on October 2, 1957 & he grew up near Columbus, Ohio. From a young age, he became interested in photography & began taking photos for his school paper, The Chronicle. While attending Ohio State University, he worked at a Kroger grocery store.
It was at Kroger where he was accused of raping a married coworker in 1979 after she’d given him a ride home because he had a flat tire. Since she was also interested in photography, she agreed to go inside his house to look at his work which is when he attacked her. She begged him to stop & during the rape, he threatened her life.
During the trial, Rathbun claimed that their sex had been consensual & the judge sadly believed him.
He eventually relocated to Detroit before he made his big move to California in 1987, gaining his reputation as a talented photographer for car magazines.
After Linda’s murder, models he’d previously worked with began coming forward to say that he’d harassed them, making unwanted sexual advances during photo shoots. Investigators spoke with model Angelika Storm who’d worked with Rathbun on a previous photo shoot. When she drove out to the set, she found him in the back of the equipment truck & right from the start, her gut instinct kicked in & she felt uncomfortable in his presence, describing him as extremely creepy.
While they’d been alone together during the shoot, he suddenly lunged at her, but she was thankfully able to duck from under his arms, running out of the room. Angelika had been very outspoken about what he’d done, warning everyone how dangerous he was, but unfortunately, her concerns were brushed away & basically ignored.
It appeared that he had something against women with blonde hair & according to other models, he didn’t like Linda, allegedly referring to her as a stuck up little b!tch who was difficult to work with. This was in contrast to what family, friends & colleages knew of Linda’s character, that she was a kind, cheerful person who would drop a card in the mail just so the other person knew she was thinking of them.
On Friday morning, November 24, detectives were told that after Rathbun had asked for a shaving kit at the jail, he disassembled the razor & used the blade to slit his wrists in an attempt at ending his life. In his own blood, he wrote on the white wall of his cell, I’m sorry I didn’t ever mean to hurt anyone.
The shallow wounds to his wrist were stitched & what he’d done was seen as more of an attempt to gain sympathy. While he was at South Bay Medical Center for treatment, Saldana met with Rathbun for one last attempt at information before he would be transferred to the sheriff’s department for lockdown under suicide watch.
While they were in the ER, Saldana urged him to tell them where they could find Linda’s remains so she could be returned to her family & properly laid to rest. He agreed & at 1 pm, they boarded a helicopter with Rathbun as seven media helicopters followed, the coverage being broadcasted live.
He directed investigators to the Angeles National Forest & after flying around for nearly three hours, nightfall began to approach. Although he’d directed them to land in various locations, they worried that he was once again toying with them.
They told him that they believed that Linda’s death had been an accident & the only way to prove it was by finding her remains. He sat thinking before he suddenly directed them to land near a culvert off of a dirt road high in the Angeles National Forest.
After pushing a large rock aside & brushing away some dirt, investigators finally found Linda’s body. Her family watched this moment live on the news alongside anyone else who happened to be watching. They hugged as they all cried together, now knowing for sure that Linda would never be coming home.
The CSI team of forensic archeologists carefully exhumed her remains & by late Saturday, her body was transferred to the coroner’s office for an autopsy, nine days after she was buried. The medical examiner was shocked by how well preserved Linda’s remains were since it was so cold up in that area of the forest.
Because her body hadn’t even begun to decompose, it told the story of what her last moments entailed. It was clear that she had not been hit by the SUV as Rathbun had claimed, instead, she had been violently assaulted.
There were deep ligature marks to her ankles that proved she’d been bound & had struggled greatly against her restraints. The markings matched the rope that was found in the black bag in his home. Based on the markings, her legs had been tied apart & attached to something. She was violently sexually assaulted & had been sodomized, likely with the barrel of Rathbun’s pistol.
Linda suffered blunt-force trauma to the left-side of her head & her cause of death was strangulation while the manner of death was clearly homicide.
With these findings, Charles Rathbun was charged with first-degree murder & sexual assault.
Rathbun’s trial began one year later in October 1996 & lasted five weeks. The injuries to Linda’s body allowed prosecutors to paint a picture of what led to her death, beginning with the arrangement of the last-minute photo shoot.
Linda first met Rathbun three years before her murder while she was at an auto show in L.A. in 1992. Since he was a photographer & she was a model, they had each been there for business & they were both known for their consistency & expertise. Rathbun quickly became an asset to Linda, booking her into several shoots, including one for Chevy trucks.
Through her friends & colleagues, authorities came to learn that Linda had reconnected with him at an auto show in the two weeks before she vanished. Since she had her day planner with her at the time, she jotted down his updated contact information.
When they drove out to El Mirage Lake together in the Mojave Desert on Thursday, November 16, 1995, Linda assumed it was for a professional photo shoot while Rathbun had much darker plans. When his sexual advances were denied, he became angry & struck her on the right side of her head with the butt of a pistol.
There was bruising to her thighs as well as twisting ligature marks to her ankles that suggested her legs had been forcibly spread apart & held in that position, using the rope he carried in his kit. There were not only deep markings to her ankles where the skin had been rubbed almost raw, but also markings & bruises up & down her legs. She had been sexually assaulted via forcible sodomy with a foreign object, likely a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol.
Toxicology reports found her blood alcohol level to be 0.13% which meant that Linda, who rarely drank, had been intoxicated at the time of her death. It’s very possible that she was forced to consume the alcohol since not only did she rarely drink, but she never drank while working.
Since hemorrhaging was seen in her neck, eyes & lungs, the medical examiner determined she’d died from asphyxiation from neck & chest compression by someone sitting on her back, pushing her throat against something that cut off her air supply.
After she was deceased, he put her body in the Lexus & drove to the Angeles National Forest where he buried her & discarded her belongings.
According to Leon Mandel, a publisher of Autoweek, Rathbun’s assignment with the Lexus was not supposed to include any models.
When Rathbun testified in his own defense, his story changed now for the fourth time. Although he first claimed to have just briefly met Linda in the Denny’s parking lot in Torrence before parting ways, he changed his story a second time to say that he accidentally struck & killed her with the SUV before burying her body in the Mojave Desert. Since her remains were found in the Angeles National Forest, this had also been a lie.
Now on the stand, he claimed that he dared Linda to take a drink of tequila, betting her $60 that she couldn’t chug the rest of the bottle. He claimed that as she got increasingly intoxicated, she started to come on to him which is when they had consensual sex.
When they were done, they continued their photo shoot & after he nearly struck her with the SUV, she jumped & fell backwards, cutting her head. He helped her up & into the back of the Lexus so he could get her help, but she became agitated & started kicking at the interior of the car.
He said he grabbed her foot to stop her from further damaging the car & they began struggling together. Rathbun, who was 6’3” & 210# sat on Linda’s back, choking her until her body became still. Forensic evidence found human blood in the back seat of the Lexus as well as human blood & traces of human saliva on a car cover in the cargo area.
When he climbed off of her, he said he realized that she wasn’t moving so he removed her body from the backseat, placing her on the dry lake bed where he tried to revive her. Unable to do so, he tried to get her back in the car, tying her ankles together with an ace bandage to help her to balance.
Because her face was free of makeup when her remains were recovered, investigators knew he scrubbed her clean & redressed her body to conceal evidence. When he disposed of her belongings in trash bins around the Angeles National Forest, he mistakenly threw away the Lexus rental agreement as well as her day planner, both of which had his name written on them.
According to Rathbun’s defense team, they had evidence to prove that their sexual encounter had been consensual based on photos. Rathbun had drawn a map for his brother, Robert Rathbun, who retrieved five rolls of film that Rathbun had hidden in the Angeles National Forest. Rather than immediately handing the rolls of film over to authorities, Robert had taken it upon himself to have them developed.
The shots of Linda from the day she was murdered were basic modeling poses that weren’t particularly provocative. She wore two different outfits that didn’t match what she’d been buried in. Based on the look on her face, she seemed highly uncomfortable during the shoot.
The black thigh-high stockings she wore had been found within the trash from the park that was recovered in her makeup bag. When tested at a lab, they were positive for traces of blood.
The fifth roll of film was double exposed & showed images of a nude woman in the front seat of a car in provocative poses. Rathbun claimed that the photos had been taken in the backseat of the Lexus after he & Linda had consensual sex.
The woman’s face had been cropped out of the frame & the photos were described as pornographic in nature. Rathbun’s defense team argued that Linda had gone to great lengths to get ahead in her career, painting the picture of a sexually promiscuous woman.
As forensic experts enhanced the photos, they were able to see that the car’s insignia was of an Oldsmobile rather than a Lexus & the person depicted wasn’t Linda at all. This meant these photos had nothing to do with her case which crumbled the defense’s story.
On November 1, 1996, after six hours of deliberation, jurors found Rathbun guilty of first-degree murder & rape. One month later in December 1996, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is serving his sentence at the California Institution for Men in Chino, California.
Investigators wondered if they were dealing with a serial killer as Linda’s murder had been eerily similar to that of 20-year-old Kimberly Pandelios. In 1992, three years before Linda’s murder, Kimberly had been living in Southern California, taking business classes & working part-time as a model. On February 27, 1992, she disappeared after going to meet a man for a photo shoot.
One year later on March 3, 1993, hikers were walking in the Angeles National Forest when they found Kimberly’s partial skeletal remains. However, in 2006 registered sex offender, 42-year-old David Rademaker was sentenced to life in prison in connection to Kimberly’s murder after he lured her to the park under the premise of a photo shoot.
He also became a suspect in the 1993 murder of 19-year-old Rose Larner who lived in Lansing, Michigan & hoped to become a model. At the time of her disappearance, Rathbun was living in Lansing & Rose had last been seen in a Delphi Township neighborhood near his home. However, in 1997, Rose’s ex-boyfriend, John Ortiz-Kehoe, was convicted of the murder & dismemberment.
Anyone just glancing at 27-year-old Linda Sobek could see how beautiful she was on the outside, but more importantly, she had a kind & loving soul. She had broken into a world where very few get noticed thanks to her incredibly hard work & determination. Through it all, she never lost touch of her roots & what was truly important in life; family & those she loved.
Sadly, her name became tied to the terrifying, degrading way that her life ended after she trusted someone in a professional setting. When she left her home on Thursday, November 16, 1995, she believed she was going to a legitimate job opportunity. Because of Charles Rathbun, a sick, violent, cowardly man, Linda never came home & her family has been left to feel her loss every day.
Ten years after her murder, her family took out an ad in the Mercury News writing, It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you left us. We’ll always remember your smile, contagious laugh & the light you shed that is still spreading. The world will never be good as it was before you left.
References:
- National Forest Foundation: Angeles National Forest
- SCRIBD: Summary of Linda Sobek case
- ID: Crimes of Fashion: Killing of Linda Sobek
- Los Angeles Daily News: Killer gets life term in model’s 1992 death
- Murderpedia: Charles Edgar Rathbun
- Unsolved Mysteries: Kimberly Pandelios
- Apple TV: The Real Murders of Los Angeles: Final Photograph (S1, E2)
- Forensic Files Now: Linda Sobek: Model gone in a flash
- Medium: The Last Photo Shoot: The murder of model Linda Sobek
