Social Worker Testifies on Disabled Girl’s Death

Despite reports by school employees that Lindsay Gentry was being abused, a social worker who investigated her home testified Tuesday at her parents’ involuntary manslaughter trial that the girl seemed fine, and that the allegations may have been imagined.

“No marks or bruises to indicate physical abuse,” said Celeste Frye, a social worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Family and Children’s Services, reading from notes she wrote during her 1992 investigation.

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

Michael and Kathleen “Katrina” Gentry of Lake Los Angeles are being retried on charges of involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and conspiracy. They’re accused of failing to provide enough food for their daughter, who suffered from myotonic dystrophy, a muscle wasting disease, and was 4-feet-10 and weighed 44 pounds when she died in 1996.

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

Defense attorneys say the girl died from her disease. Last year, a jury deadlocked on whether the Gentrys were guilty of murder in the death.

On 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 for Lindsay. 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.