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breathtaking beaches and beautiful bodies explain why southern california is often the first choice for motion
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picture and still photographers in 1995 linda sobek a busy model with a growing reputation
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vanished on her way to a photo shoot linda's photographic images helped launch her career
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and would also solve the mystery of her disappearance [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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[Applause] hermosa beach california is just 15 miles south of downtown los angeles
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the sun surf and sand attract the young and beautiful linda sobek a 27 year old blonde model
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and actress lived right off the boardwalk she was a cheerleader for the los angeles raiders football team and was a
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popular bikini lingerie and calendar model she also aspired to be an actress at five foot three 103 pounds and 24
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inch waist she was too short and athletic for high fashion work but her good looks and well-toned body
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brought many assignments on thursday morning november 16 1995 linda was paged for a last-minute photo
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shoot linda grabbed some clothes left a message with her mother that she'd call
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later and headed off she was never seen or heard from again hey don't worry you know linda's got
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things to do she's out working she probably just took off and was doing something and mom kept saying no no i
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know something else is wrong later that day linda had an audition for the married
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with children television series but she failed to show up anyone that knew linda knew there's no
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way she would ever have missed that interview or that audition and that really was a signal to her parents to
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start an intensive search the family had been distributing numerous flyers i think like 53 000
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flyers with a 20 000 reward i had one of her address books and i just started making phone calls to all
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of the girls apparently linda had broken some of her own rules about modeling assignments no
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one knew where she was or the name of the photographer since she took this assignment outside
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of her modeling agency they had no information either two days later in a trash bin
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a worker in the angelus national forest found some pictures of a beautiful woman
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he took them home because they were so well done he went home he had the pictures in his
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in his backpack and he forgot about it until monday night and he was watching television and he
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saw the tv coverage of the sobek investigation when the man realized the photos were of
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the model reported missing he immediately called police two years earlier just a short distance
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away the skeletal remains of another blonde model twenty-year-old kimberly pandelios were
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discovered like linda kim had been called at the last minute for a modeling assignment with an
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unknown photographer her murder was never solved but the thought that linda was somewhere
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in the angelus national forest was daunting it's an area approximately a thousand square miles about the size of
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the state of rhode island [Music] as the days passed investigators suspected foul play
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[Music] a few days after linda sobek's disappearance charles rathbun a commercial freelance
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photographer called police with some information [Music] he said he was with linda at a denny's
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restaurant on the morning of her disappearance [Music] he said they discussed her portfolio and
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after the meeting rathbun said the two went their separate ways linda's car was found in the parking lot
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of the restaurant tests on the vehicle found no evidence of foul play but police were starting to get
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suspicious among the items found in the trash bin and angelus national forest along with
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linda's photographs and date book was a rental agreement for a lexus sports utility vehicle
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the name on the document was charles rathbun rathbun said the rental agreement probably got mixed up with linda's
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portfolio during their meeting [Music] rathbun shot photographs of the lexus later that day for auto week magazine
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and he returned the car the next day even though the lexus had been washed thoroughly inside and out police found a
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number of clues in the back seat was a suspicious red stain a phenolphthalein test revealed the
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stain was blood further tests showed it was human blood [Music] in the cargo area was a car cover which
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tested positive not only for blood but traces of human saliva with no other leads
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investigators wanted to know if the lexus had been in the angelus national forest where linda's photographs were
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discovered basically we put vaseline on a tire roll it across poster board and then
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use magnetic fingerprint powder to enhance that tire track that's on the poster board
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and it essentially makes a tire print on this board that's indicative of the tire
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tread that might have been left back at a particular scene but finding a tire impression in a
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forest covering over a thousand square miles wouldn't be easy not surprisingly
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charles rathbun was interrogated again and this time he changed his story rathbun now said he hired linda to model
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for him in the photo shoot with the lexus sports utility vehicle rathbun and sobek drove to el mirage a
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dry lake bed about two hours north of hermosa beach [Music] linda's assignment was to drive the
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vehicle in tight circles while rathbun took photographs can you show me do you think i got a
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feel for it aren't you no you want me all right yes i'll take a second [Music]
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rathbun demonstrated the maneuver while linda stood by and watched [Music] rathbun said he lost control of the
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vehicle and accidentally hit linda killing her [Music] according to rathbun he panicked
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put linda's body in the vehicle drove to a deserted location in the angelus national forest
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and buried the body somewhere there he was very vague he kept saying i can't
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remember he would break into tears and say i'm not sure i'm not sure i don't
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know where she is exactly but i can take you there alexa showed no signs of exterior damage
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consistent with an accident investigators thought linda might still be alive and pressed rathbun to lead
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them to her grave but the search was unsuccessful he's leading him on a wild goose chase
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he knew exactly where she was and he was trying to stall to buy more time hoping
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that linda's body would be decomposed by the time we did find it investigators pushed rathbun yet again
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for information this time touring the forest in a helicopter after a number of failed attempts
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rathbun finally led them to linda's body she was buried next to a tree in a shallow two-foot grave
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the left tire impression of the lexus was found in the soft sand nearby she surprisingly was perfectly preserved
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for a nine-day burial i was i was not optimistic that we would have a lot of soft tissue left to diagnose exactly
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what happened and i was i was surprised a forensic archaeologist was brought in to retain anything of evidentiary value
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the autopsy would reveal the true cause of death whether it was an accident or homicide
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linda sobek's autopsy revealed an enormous amount of information about her death
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except for blood above her right ear her body showed no external signs of an automobile injury
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her blood alcohol level was .13 well above the state limit for intoxication she died not from an automobile accident
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as charles rathbun claimed but by asphyxiation [Music] she struggled against it it caused a
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hemorrhage in the lungs as well as all in the neck and the eyes which is typical for somebody who's being
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asphyxiated against their will so she was aware awake struggling for her life at that time
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asphyxiation is the most common mechanism used in homicidal sexual assault and there were other injuries
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bruises a twisted wrist and ligature marks on her ankles that showed that her legs had been
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forcibly spread apart and and held in that position she struggled against those restraints
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because there were abrasions up and down her legs indicating a struggle and the body appeared to have been
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washed she was not wearing makeup and it appeared that her clothing had been changed before burial
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i call this a girl thing but i was very troubled with the position of her clothing
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the position of her zipper was such that it was all the way up to her neck and this concerned me because i don't
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think that's a natural position most women wear clothing sort of in the in the mid chest
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region and this was an unnatural position there was also evidence of forcible sodomy
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a look into charles rathman's past revealed a man with a mercurial personality which had cost him a number
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of freelance projects he could be very personal and charming he could lose his temper and
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almost go ballistic throw things around a photo shoot he could talk to models and be very personable
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and polite to them and then go behind the camera and say very derogatory things about them
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a few years earlier in columbus ohio charles rathbun was arrested and charged with the rape of a married co-worker
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rathbun claimed the encounter was consensual and he was acquitted the search of rathbun's home
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revealed a collection of over 200 guns of particular interest was a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol
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the gun was examined for the presence of blood due to the the hypothesis that the sexual assault
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expert had that this was used in the sexual assault of the victim in doing so you initially examined the
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weapon with just regular room lighting and no blood was observed but when i tested the
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gun chemically or i used presumptive blood tests and examination of the gun i did detect a positive presumptive test
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for blood on the breach face surface of that weapon well we found a lot of evidence from his
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house and from talking to his friends that he did have a dislike for blondes and that he did have
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a dislike for some women in particular that he had referred to linda as a little [ __ ] and being difficult to work
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with charles rathbun was arrested and charged with first degree murder and sodomy with
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a foreign object rathman continued to maintain that linda's death was an accident
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he said linda was drinking that day and after striking her accidentally with the
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lexus she began kicking and screaming while trying to subdue linda rathbun accidentally suffocated her
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almost ludicrous to think that she would drink while on a photo shoot especially
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when you think that she had an interview with a television program scheduled for
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later that evening that she would compromise herself then rathbun delivered a bombshell
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he claimed his sexual encounter with linda that day wasn't forced at all that it was consensual
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and he claimed to have nude photographs to prove it charles rathbun claimed that linda sobek
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willingly engaged in sex with him before the automobile accident and had taken photographs of linda that day which
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would prove it [Music] the defendant told his brother that there were some photographs in the
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desert that would prove his innocence and prove that linda consented to sexual relations with him
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drew him a map of where to find these rolls of film and that the defendant's
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brother robert rathbun and his girlfriend drove out up into the mountains and were
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able to find these five rolls of film in the middle of the desert after months of exposure to the sun and the
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wind and the rain robert rathbun found five rolls of film but instead of turning them over to
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police he developed the film himself four roles contained g-rated pictures of linda posing at el mirage in two
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different outfits in some of the pictures linda's outfit looked disheveled and there was a hole in her thigh-high
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stockings raising questions about whether linda posed willingly the fifth roll was water damaged double
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exposed and pornographic the fifth roll of film was a series of double exposed pictures
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12 images of a dashboard of a vehicle and 11 images which were fairly x-rated and pornographic of female genitalia you
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could see no head no face really no body just hands and a couple shots and primarily a
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close-up of a female genitalia [Music] the mystery of this was it was clouded by the water damage so we're only seeing
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bits and pieces of these various frames or various photographs according to the defense those pictures
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indicated that linda sobek had engaged in consensual sexual behavior with the defendant on the day that
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they took the pictures in the vehicle and the day she disappeared and died but were the photographs
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of linda sobek with the help of the sheriff's photo lab and an aerospace company the pictures
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were enhanced the aerospace corporation scanned these images in and assisted me for three days
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going over pixel by pixel the significance of what we were seeing in the background you could see some of
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the elements of the automobile's dashboard but the logo on the steering wheel
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was not that of a lexus it was an oldsmobile prototype rathbun photographed on a previous project
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the steering wheel on the question vehicle has an entirely different logo than the lexus it has cruise controls
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that are in the steering wheel that the lexus vehicle does not have but were the nude pictures of linda
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investigators compared the body of the woman in the photographs to pictures taken during linda's autopsy
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it was clear that this was not linda sobak and in no way did it show any type of consensual act
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the dress was wrong the car seat was wrong the hands that you see within the pictures have a very masculine
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appearance and don't appear to be consistent with our victim you know the list goes on and on
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and prosecutors did not believe rathbun's accident scenario they suspected that when rathbun was
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taking photographs that day for linda it was a job directon an opportunity [Music]
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the forensic evidence suggested that rathbun struck her on the right side of the head twisted linda's arm tied her
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ankles and sexually assaulted her possibly with his gun he may have forced her to consume the
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alcohol the deep bruises on her ankles indicated linda desperately tried to escape
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after the assault rathbun caused linda's death by asphyxiation linda's blood and saliva were found on
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the car cover in the cargo area and evidence suggests rathbun washed linda's face
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and redressed the body in an effort to conceal what happened he later disposed of linda's personal
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items in a dumpster but made the mistake of including the lexus rental agreement in his name
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[Music] charles rathbun was convicted of first-degree murder and sodomy and was sentenced to life in prison
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without parole i think mr rathbun had not emotionally matured past probably the age of 18 or
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19 years old and was able not able to handle rejection by women and acted out those poor feelings in very
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inappropriate ways ranging from inappropriate comments to sexual advances to touchings to actual rapes
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and finally culminating in linda's murder the forensic evidence in this case i think was all important
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those photographs that he introduced to to save him and provide his defense were
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in fact what caused his conviction the sobek family believes that robert rathbun should have been charged with
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evidence tampering for his role in the discovery of the film robert rathbun admitted on the stand
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that he had destroyed the map that his brother had drawn and that had led him to these canisters of film
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of its own accord he is admitted to his own guilt prosecutors suspect that charles rathbun also may have been
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involved in kimberly pandelios's death kim met an unidentified photographer at a
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denny's restaurant on the day she disappeared and her remains were discovered just a
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few miles from linda sobeks to date no one has been charged with kim pandelios's murder
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[Music] [Music] [Applause] you