Disparate Views on Girl’s Starvation Death

No one doubts that Lindsay Gentry starved to death.

By the time her parents took her to the hospital, the disabled 15-year-old weighed only 46 pounds.

But a jury may have to decide whether Lindsay’s death was caused by her parents’ failure to feed her or a congenital illness that causes--among other often deadly effects--a loss of appetite. The central question jurors may have to decide: Should the couple be found guilty of murdering their daughter?

Michael, 54, and Kathleen “Katrina” Gentry, 44, were arrested Thursday at their rural ranch-style home and charged with murder and child abuse in the death of their daughter two years ago.

Homicide investigators say they brought charges only after gathering information from various sources, including interviews with school officials, medical experts and child-welfare workers and volumes of medical and other records. Lindsay gained weight when she ate in hospitals or at school, they said, but lost weight at home after her parents complained the school was “feeding her too much.”

The Gentrys say they are the victims of a vendetta by control-hungry school officials upset the parents had pulled their daughter out of special education classes in 1995, reducing the school’s allocation of state funds for pupils.

Central to the Gentrys’ claims of innocence--and to authorities’ suspicions--is the nature of Lindsay’s illness. Myotonic dystrophy, a rare neurological disease characterized by progressive weakness and wearing away of the muscles, was initially certified as the cause of Lindsay’s death.

In an interview with The Times, Michael Gentry denied wrongdoing. He and his wife did their best to care for their daughter, who doctors had expected to die years earlier, he said. The disease can cause chronic constipation and a loss of appetite, and Lindsay refused to eat, he said.

But sheriff’s investigators say the parents’ refusal to take the extra steps necessary to feed their daughter had more to do with her death than her crippling illness.

A physician familiar with the investigation said, “It takes a tremendous investment on the part of parents to make sure that children who suffer from this disease get enough nutrition on a day-by-day basis.”

Sgt. Ray Rodriguez of the sheriff’s homicide unit headed the investigation, and said the girl’s medical condition complicated matters, but did not change some basic facts of the case.

“When Lindsay was in a school environment, she gained weight,” he said. “And she would also gain weight whenever she was in a medical environment. When she was in the care of her parents she would thin out.

“It became very obvious that she was being neglected.”

Six months before Lindsay’s death, her parents pulled her out of special education classes at Challenger Middle School in Palmdale “because they were not training her right,” Michael Gentry said.

He said the couple’s decision to educate their daughter at home upset school officials, who called in social workers from the county’s Department of Children and Family Services to investigate.

“We took money from them--they don’t like it when you do that,” Gentry said. “The feeling from the schools is that she was their property and they are going to do whatever they can to make me look like a murderer. They don’t like the fact that I’m an individual who takes care of myself.”

But a source close to the investigation said Gentry expected his disabled and mentally handicapped daughter to take care of herself as well.

“The parents went to the school and told them they were feeding her too much,” the source said. “They said, ‘Either she eats on her own or she doesn’t eat.’ ”

“The issue here is neglect and serious interference with those who tried to give her the proper nutrition,” the source said.

But Gentry complained it was school officials who were unqualified to deal with his daughter’s special needs and often put her in danger. “She’d come home with bruises all the time,” said Gentry, saying the school never notified the couple of Lindsay’s frequent falls.

Rodriguez, however, has another explanation for Lindsay’s bruises. “Her disease oftentimes helped to mask abuse,” he said. “If she was scraped or cut, that would be explained away very easily by ‘She fell.’ ”

Initially, Lindsay’s death on Feb. 6, 1996, at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Fontana went largely unnoticed by authorities.

Kaiser doctors who performed an autopsy found no sign of foul play. Dr. Eric Henar, Lindsay’s pediatrician, signed her death certificate, which indicated a natural death from heart and lung failure caused by various complications of her illness. Other complications were listed as pneumonia and marasmus--wasting due to severe starvation.

Dr. Henar declined to be interviewed Friday.

Given the complexity of the medical issues, Rodriguez said he took his time working with the district attorney’s office to find reliable medical experts.

Times staff writer Brett Johnson contributed to this story.