ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611040043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
Photographer guilty of model's murder
TORRANCE, Calif. - A free-lance photographer was convicted of murder Friday in the slaying of model and former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader Linda Sobek, and will be sentenced to life without parole.
Sobek, 27, vanished Nov. 16, 1995, after going out on a photography assignment. Charles Rathbun sodomized and strangled the petite blonde before burying her body, prosecutors said, and led police to her shallow grave along a remote road in the San Gabriel Mountains nine days later.
Rathbun, 39, told the jury she was accidentally asphyxiated when he sat on her in the back seat of the car after an argument, and that he buried her in a panic.
- Associated Press
Sixth-grader won't be prosecuted
COLUMBIA, S.C. - A sixth-grader who took a kitchen knife to school in her lunch box will not be prosecuted.
Prosecutor Barney Giese said Charlotte Kirk, an 11-year-old honors student at Hopkins Middle School, lacked criminal intent. He dropped the charge of carrying a weapon on school property.
Charlotte said she put the knife in her lunch box Oct. 18 so she could cut up her chicken. After asking a teacher if she could use the knife, Charlotte was suspended, threatened with expulsion and then arrested.
She returned to class Tuesday as a celebrity, signing autographs and discussing possible television interviews.
``Everyone kept saying, `You're famous,''' Charlotte said.
Giese said Charlotte would learn a better lesson from her parents and teachers than from a trial.
``Whoever dropped the charges is the person, and the only person in this whole thing, who has used any common sense,'' said Christine Moore, Charlotte's grandmother.
- Associated Press
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