Mother Faces Charges in 680-Pound Daughter’s Death

SAN FRANCISCO —  When 13-year-old Christina Corrigan died of congestive heart failure in her El Cerrito living room, surrounded by fast-food cartons, she weighed 680 pounds.

Her thighs were 54 inches in circumference, her calves 47 inches. She was covered with bedsores.

Her body would not fit on the coroner’s stretcher. It took two deputy coroners and four firefighters to roll her body onto a large canvas and drag it to the coroner’s wagon.

Christina hadn’t been seen outside her home for three months, and may not have moved for two months. She had not seen a doctor for at least four years before her November death.

What most stunned investigators was that her mother, Marlene Marie Corrigan, 48, was feeding Christina right up until the end, El Cerrito Police Chief Linda Fellers said Friday.

“This has been a real nightmare for our officers to investigate. It’s pretty heartbreaking,” she said. “Had we only known, there were hundreds of people we could have found to help her.”

Now, Marlene Corrigan faces child abuse charges that could send her to prison for six years, although Contra Costa County prosecutor Brian Baker said that sentence is unlikely.

“It’s not a state prison case--it’s a probation case with possible local jail time, and with counseling,” Baker said.

The mother is not charged specifically with allowing her daughter to become obese, even though the coroner ruled that morbid obesity caused her death. Instead, the charges center on the bedsores and the feces and urine in the home, Baker said.

The only complaint Child Protective Services had received was in 1989. But when a social worker visited, the mother was taking 7-year-old Christina to a doctor and a nutritionist. The agency closed the case.