Linda Sobek

About Linda Sobek

Linda Sobek's career as a model and actress was just taking off when she disappeared. The former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader had taken up modeling and landed a small part on the Fox series Married... with Children when she called her mom, Elaine, one Thursday morning in November 1995 to say she was running late to a photo shoot.

Elaine would never hear from her daughter again. Worried that she hadn't heard from Linda after the shoot, Elaine called one of her close friends the following morning. That's when she learned Linda had not shown up for three scheduled appointments — including a fitting for Married... with Children.

Elaine called the police, but with no idea where her daughter's shoot had been — or with whom — the authorities had few leads. By that Saturday, family and friends began contacting newspapers and television organizations, seeking the public's assistance in finding Linda.

Around that same time, a road-crew worker in the Angeles National Forest discovered a pile of photographs of Linda along with a date book and a receipt for the loan of a Lexus SUV in a garbage can near the highway. Once he saw photos of Linda on TV, he called police, who noted that the Lexus receipt was signed by a man named Charles Rathbun.

A December 1995 story for PEOPLE details what happens after police went to Rathbun's home that Wednesday: "There they found the suspect drunk, brandishing a pistol and threatening to kill himself. Moments before their arrival he had slightly wounded a female companion. Once in custody, Rathbun tearfully confessed that he had killed Sobek. As he told it, though, the whole thing had been a ghastly accident."

Rathbun claimed that that the shoot was for an advertisement for the new Lexus and he had been trying to teach Linda how to drive the car when he accidentally struck and killed her.

He then took authorities back to The Angeles National Forest, where they found her body in a shallow grave.

Rathbun's story fell apart when a medical examiner found no evidence that Sobek had been hit by a vehicle, and Rathbun was charged with murder and held on $1 million bail.

Nearly a year later, he was convicted at age 39 of sexually assaulting and strangling the model.

Investigators and police speculated that Rathbun (who had been acquitted of rape in a separate instance 17 years earlier) may have been responsible for other crimes, though a judge ruled prior to his trial that authorities could not introduce the testimony of four women who claimed that they had been sexually assaulted or nearly strangled by him prior.

Rathbun was sentenced to life in prison without parole and his 1999 appeal was denied.