No Signs Ill Teen Was Abused, Official Testifies

Despite reports by school employees that Lindsay Gentry was abused, a social worker who investigated her home testified Tuesday that the disabled girl seemed fine, and that the allegations may have been imagined.

“No marks or bruises to indicate physical abuse,” said Celeste Frye, of the Los Angeles County Department of Family and Children’s Services, reading from notes she wrote during her 1992 investigation, during the retrial of Lindsay’s parents, Michael and Kathleen “Katrina” Gentry.

Based on inconsistencies between what Lindsay told her and what she observed, Frye also wrote that the girl, who was mentally retarded, “could not distinguish the real from the unreal.”

Frye’s statements, along with testimony from two nutritional supplements company representatives that Lindsay’s father bought liquid minerals for his rail-thin daughter, painted a picture of the Gentrys that starkly contrasted with allegations that they abused her and starved her to death.

The Gentrys are charged with involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and conspiracy for allegedly failing to provide enough food for their daughter, who suffered from myotonic dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease. The 4-foot-10 Lindsay weighed 44 pounds when she died in 1996 at age 15.

The prosecution in the trial before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John S. Fisher contends the couple physically abused and neglected the girl over a period of years, and that she died from starvation.

Defense attorneys for the Lake Los Angeles couple said the girl died from her disease. The Gentrys provided food for Lindsay and spent tens of thousands of dollars on her medical care, their attorneys said.

Last year, a jury deadlocked on whether the Gentrys were guilty of murder. The couple steadfastly maintained their innocence, rejecting at least three proposed plea bargains, the last of which would have allowed them to go free after pleading guilty to child endangerment.

But the couple rejected the offer, preferring to risk 10 years in prison if convicted on all counts, their attorneys said.

On Tuesday, Frye said that Lindsay told her that her mother had “locked” her in a closet.

But Frye examined the closet Lindsay pointed to and found that there were no locks on the sliding doors. The girl pointed to marks on her knees and claimed she “got hit,” Frye said. But an examination showed they were made by Velcro straps on kneepads worn by the girl, who had trouble walking because of her twisted back and club foot, to protect her when she fell.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen Cady sought to portray Frye’s investigation as incomplete, because she spoke only with Lindsay and her mother and did not interview her father or sister, Sheila. Katrina Gentry also might have known ahead of time about Frye’s visit and prepared for it, Cady suggested.

Also Tuesday, Robert Hull, an employee of a nutritional supplement company, testified that Michael Gentry spent $227 on 12 bottles of liquid minerals in September 1995, out of concern for Lindsay’s health.

Greg Rollins, a family friend who also sold nutritional supplements, testified that he saw that the Gentry household was stocked with products such as nutritional shake mixes and vegetable capsules.

Rollins, who also saw Lindsay at church barbecues and other family outings, said he had often seen the girl with a plate filled with food such as hot dogs, potato salad and chips but that she would only “nibble” at it.

He was invited once to the Gentrys’ house for dinner, he said.

He recalled hearing Katrina Gentry tell her daughter: “Lindsay, eat!”

But the girl, who was chatty, just “talked and talked and talked,” and played with her food, said Rollins, who added: “then Mike would go, ‘Lindsay, you have to eat.’ ”