New Woes for Siamese Twins’ Father : Tragedy: Estranged wife bails Kenneth Lakeberg, an admitted drug- and alcohol-abuser, out of jail for Angela’s funeral Monday. He faces trial on auto theft charges.

Clutching a few belongings to his chest in a brown paper bag, Kenneth Lakeberg froze in front of the cameras that met him as he walked out of another jail.

After an awkward, silent moment, a frail hand grabbed Lakeberg’s meaty forearm and pulled him toward the door.

“Just come on,” Reitha Lakeberg snapped, leading her husband quickly past the reporters Thursday moments after stuffing $500 in wadded-up bills through a slot in a wall in the jail foyer.

About 17 hours after their Siamese-twin daughter died in a Philadelphia hospital, the couple and their 6-year-old daughter drove away from the Jasper County Jail to mourn the latest tragedy in their calamitous lives.

“It’s been sad all along,” Fern O’Dor, the Lakebergs’ sister-in-law, said earlier in the day.

Angela Lakeberg died three weeks short of her first birthday, no family members at her side. She had lived 10 months since her twin, Amy, died in the operation that split them apart. Angela never made it out of the hospital.

Lakeberg, who began the day in a drug rehabilitation center, ended it free on bail and facing auto theft charges. The 27-year-old man hadn’t seen Angela since last fall, before he spent six months in prison for violating probation.

Reitha Lakeberg, 25, had not visited Angela since Christmastime. Separated from her husband, she has been living with her parents near the rural northwestern Indiana town of Roselawn.

“I would just like to thank everybody who has helped us and everyone who was concerned,” she said as she waited for her husband at the jail, her hand trembling as she waved reporters away.

Fern O’Dor, Angela’s aunt, said the last known visit to the girl from a family member was over the Easter weekend. Several family members were planning to drive to Philadelphia for a visit next month.

“We had kind of worked out a few vacation plans. We’re not a wealthy family and we just can’t afford to fly back and forth,” said O’Dor’s husband, Michael.

Given just a 1% chance of surviving after the operation, Angela surprised her doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She had been in serious but stable condition for months, using a ventilator to breathe.

But the oxygen level in her blood dropped in recent days, and her condition deteriorated sharply Wednesday.

“We knew she was sick, but we didn’t expect this,” Fern O’Dor said. “We thought the worst was over.”

Funeral services are set for Monday in Merrillville. Angela will be buried in the same cemetery where Amy was laid to rest in August.

“It’s going to be a bad time for a while,” said Mrs. Lakeberg’s mother, Reitha Studer.

The story of the twins, intertwined in each other’s arms after their birth June 29, 1993, has been juxtaposed against their father’s troubles.

An admitted drug- and alcohol-abuser, Lakeberg was given a year’s probation in May, 1993, after being accused of slashing a cousin’s hand with a butcher knife the previous Christmas.

A month later, Lakeberg tested positive for cocaine, a probation violation. He skipped a hearing on the violation in October--later saying he was too high to attend--and was sent to prison after turning himself in later the same day.

He was released in April, and has been staying with friends and relatives since.

He also admitted last year that he used about $1,300 in money donated to help defray the twins’ medical costs on a three-day cocaine binge around the time of the operation.

His latest problems began May 31, when he borrowed a friend’s car and did not return it. Lakeberg turned himself in June 3 at a drug rehabilitation center in Lafayette. He was transferred to jail on Thursday.