Parents Charged With Killing Disabled Girl, 15

The parents of a disabled 15-year-old girl who died in a Fontana hospital two years ago were arrested at their home in Lake Los Angeles on Thursday morning for allegedly neglecting and underfeeding her.

Michael and Kathleen Gentry, 54 and 44, were taken into custody after a two-year investigation by Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives and the district attorney’s office into the death of Lindsay M. Gentry, who died in the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Fontana Feb. 6, 1996, the sheriff’s office said.

The Gentrys were being held on charges of child abuse and murder on $1-million bail each.

The girl’s San Bernardino County death certificate indicated a natural death from heart and lung failure caused by various complications due to a congenital illness.

Lindsay, who was 4 feet, 8 inches tall, was born with myotonic dystrophy that stunted her growth, caused curvature of the spine and severe cataracts on her eyes, said Lt. Ray Peavy of the sheriff’s homicide unit.

Family friends said Lindsay walked with leg braces because she was not strong enough to carry her own weight and wore knee pads to cushion her frequent falls. The girl’s grandmother, Helen Darrow, 77, said doctors initially told the family that Lindsay would not live more than three years.

Medical complications contributing to the girl’s death included pneumonia and marasmus--wasting due to malnutrition, her death certificate said.

Myotonic dystrophy is a rare neurological disease characterized by progressive weakness and wearing away of the muscles, especially those in the face and neck. Marasmus is the wasting disease that is the first sign of death for starvation victims. According to the American Medical Assn., it is defined as a severe form of protein and calorie malnutrition that occurs mainly in famine or starvation conditions.

Lindsay’s death went largely unnoticed by authorities--Kaiser doctors who conducted an autopsy found no sign of wrongdoing, Peavy said, and never contacted the San Bernardino coroner’s office.

But shortly after her burial, at least one friend of the family contacted the Sheriff’s Department and urged officials to look into the case, Peavy said.

Sheriff’s detectives reviewed the girl’s medical records with a Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center doctor and decided that Lindsay’s malnutrition was the result of criminal neglect. Those suspicions were supported by a careful review of medical and school records, and interviews with family acquaintances, Peavy said.

In a telephone interview with The Times from the sheriff’s Lancaster station jail, Michael Gentry denied any wrongdoing and said he and his wife wanted only the best for their daughter. Gentry, an electronics communications technician at Fox airport in Lancaster, said the deputies were responding to rumors spread by school officials and social workers upset about the family’s decision to school their daughter at home in the six months before her death.

“The benefit [of taking her out of school] was that we were the most familiar with her,” Gentry said.

He said he and his wife, who suffers from a mild case of myotonic dystrophy, invested tens of thousands of dollars in medical care for their daughter.

“I spent $60,000 of my own money to buy braces and . . . optical surgeries” for her cataracts, he said. “We went into debt to pay for a pool and spa for her to exercise in.”

Alarmed that their daughter weighed only 46 pounds, Gentry said he and his wife took Lindsay to the hospital to have her fed intravenously six days before her death.

The investigation is still incomplete, Peavy said, and authorities are considering whether to exhume the girl’s body.

“We’re counting on medical records from an autopsy,” he said. “Obviously, the best evidence would be the body itself.”

Times staff writer Margaret Ramirez contributed to this story.