JUDGE UPHOLDS BAIL FOR GENTRYS.

Byline: Bhavna Mistry Daily News Staff Writer

A Los Angeles judge refused on Friday to reduce the $1 million bail for Mike and Kathleen Gentry, charged with allowing their disabled daughter to starve to death.

The ruling followed a 90-minute hearing at which the investigating officer testified that 15-year-old Lindsay Gentry had been neglected and possibly abused by her parents.

``I learned that Lindsay came to school dirty and soiled. Her hair would be knotted and her lunch pail would have ants with her food,'' said sheriff's homicide Detective Ray Rodriguez. ``Lindsay had a blow to her mouth. Hand prints had been seen on Lindsay's bottom.

``She was hungry at school . . . always eating at school,'' Rodriguez said.

School officials kept track of Lindsay's weight and indicated that she lost weight when she was not attending school, Rodriguez told the judge.

But the most damaging testimony came when Rodriguez spoke of a telephone conversation between Lindsay and a baby sitter just a few weeks before she died. ``The phone conversation was interrupted (by Kathleen Gentry). Lindsay grew angry and told her mother, `Get off the phone, I'm talking to my other mother - the one that doesn't want me to die.' ''

Lindsay later related to the sitter that ``her parents told her that they wanted her to be with Jesus,'' Rodriguez said.

In a February interview, Kathleen Gentry told the Daily News that days before Lindsay Gentry died the girl said she wanted to ``be with Jesus.''

``I can see Jesus,'' Kathleen Gentry quoted her daughter as saying. ``He's smiling at me.''

Broke into tears

As prosecutors and investigators gave details of their allegations, Kathleen Gentry broke into tears. The court took a brief recess as she wept silently in the arms of Lyle Middleton, one of her two attorneys present. Throughout the hearing, Middleton comforted Kathleen Gentry by placing his hand on her back.

``She knows the truth behind the allegations,'' David Houchin, another of Kathleen Gentry's attorneys, said outside court. ``She hears things that aren't true and she wants to talk. She's scared and wants to understand.''

Friday's hearing before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Glenette Blackwell was held to decide whether the $1 million bail should remain for the Gentrys, who have been behind bars in Los Angeles County jails since their July 23 arrests.

Lindsay Gentry, who suffered from congenital myotonic dystrophy, was 4 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed about 50 pounds when she died Feb. 6, 1996, at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Fontana.

Her death certificate lists pneumonia and marasmus - progressive emaciation caused by a lack of food - as contributing factors.

Authorities said they did not suspect wrongdoing until they were told - by a source they have described only as someone close to the family - that Lindsay Gentry was mistreated.

Scores of supporters

The Gentrys have scores of supporters who describe them as devoted parents and upstanding citizens. About 25 traveled Friday to downtown Los Angeles, and a half-dozen held hands in the courtroom and prayed before the start of the hearing.

Outside in the hallway were camera crews from the television shows ``Inside Edition'' and ``L.A. Detective,'' whom the judge barred from videotaping the court proceedings but who are following the case.

Michael Gentry wore a blue-and-white jailhouse uniform, his hands cuffed and a file under his arm as he entered the courtroom. He gently smiled at the supporters who filled the courtroom's three visitor benches.

Kathleen Gentry wore an all-blue jail uniform, her hands cuffed in front of her, and walked hunched over as she entered the courtroom.

Testifying in the prosecution's effort to convince the judge not to reduce the Gentrys' bail, Rodriguez said Michael Gentry's anti-government views and past brushes with the law indicate he might not appear for trial if he is set free.

``I believe that he may flee,'' Rodriguez said. ``He may not obey court orders.''

Accusations

When the Gentrys lived in Orange County, Rodriguez said, Michael Gentry was accused of threatening a neighbor who reported the couple to the county Department of Children's Services.

Rodriguez said Michael Gentry's first wife accused him of stabbing her and threatening her with a gun in the 1970s. That case was dropped, Rodriguez acknowledged under cross-examination.

In 1994, with Lindsay at his side, Rodriguez said, Michael Gentry visited an unnamed state assemblyman and expressed his views about how government did not belong in schools.

The assemblyman's secretary, Rodriguez testified, said Michael Gentry told her, ``Children are the property of their parents and that parents have the right to do what they want to. Parents have the right to kill their child if they felt they needed to or if they wanted to.''

While the judge denied the defense's request for lower bail, she added that another request could be made later - closer to the preliminary hearing expected to be held in November.

``The court at this time has only heard one side of the story,'' Blackwell said. ``This will be a battle of the experts.''

The couple's supporters said Friday's outcome was upsetting and surprising.

``We were hoping to bring them home today,'' said Helen Darrow, Michael Gentry's mother. ``These are all lies. Everything the family did was to make life comfortable for Lindsay.''

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PHOTO (Color--Ran in Valley Edition only) LINDSAY GENTRY