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Nine-year-old Rita Fisher starved to death this summer. Not on a distant, drought-ravaged plain, but in the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville, where she lived with her family and a couple of dogs in a two-story red-brick home no different from the others along Old Milford Mill Road.

No different, from the outside. As prosecutors tell it, the walls defined a world governed by fear and abuse, neglect and hunger. Rita's mother, Mary Fisher-Utley, and her older sister's boyfriend, Frank Eugene Scarpola, locked Rita in her bedroom for hours at a time without food or water, according to charging documents filed in Baltimore County District Court. The last week of her life, Rita's daily sustenance was a single glass of water.

The medical examiner's report is an inventory of hurt: On June 25, the day she died, Rita weighed 47 pounds, half the average weight for a 9-year-old girl. She had seven cracked ribs, head injuries and marks on her wrists and ankles, indications that she had been bound. The report concluded that she died of dehydration and malnutrition.

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Last month, a Baltimore County grand jury charged Fisher-Utley, 49, and Scarpola, 21, with first-degree murder. Scarpola's girlfriend, Rose Mary Fisher, 20, was charged with abusing Rita. Last week, the grand jury added fresh charges in connection with similar alleged abuses of Rita's 15-year-old sister, who police said was severely malnourished. The girl, who is not being identified because The Washington Post does not name victims of sexual assault, is in foster care.

Scarpola was charged with rape, attempted rape, reckless endangerment and conspiracy to commit child abuse. Fisher-Utley was charged with abuse, conspiracy and reckless endangerment. Fisher was charged with abuse, assault and false imprisonment. Scarpola is being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center; Fisher and Fisher-Utley are at the county Women's Detention Center. All pleaded not guilty.

The Baltimore County Department of Social Services had been monitoring problems in Rita's household for more than three years before she died. The department has the authority to take custody of children when it sees evidence that they are in danger, but Rita remained in the brick house in Pikesville until the end.

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"This is a huge thing gone awry in our department in terms of our ability to protect children," said Maureen Robinson, a department spokeswoman. "We really want to find out if there was something in the way that we conduct business that contributed to that."

The department is conducting an internal investigation. Two other investigations are under way by the state Department of Human Resources and the office of County Executive C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger III (D).

The first time Rita appeared in county Social Services records was in 1994, when the department launched an investigation into reports that her father, Howard Utley, molested girls in the home, Robinson said. Utley later was convicted of one count of sex abuse. After serving one year in prison, he failed to report to probation officers and now is a fugitive. The department coordinated counseling for Rita and her sisters until August 1996.

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In January, Social Services received a call from a guidance counselor at Rita's school, Winand Elementary, reporting that the child had bruises on her face. Rita blamed her mother, said Sgt. Kevin B. Novak, a spokesman for the Baltimore County Police Department, which responded along with Social Services officials. But then she changed her story, and the case was closed.

Even so, Social Services continued to watch the situation, sending a social worker to visit Rita's home about once a week until the end, Robinson said. She would not name the social worker, citing state confidentiality rules and the fact that the social worker is expected to be a witness in the criminal trials.

Robinson said the social worker visited the house within the last two weeks of Rita's life. She did not know whether the social worker had seen Rita, who, according to the medical examiner's report, already had suffered the head injuries and broken ribs. She would have seen a little girl wasting away.

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Throughout the last term at Rita's school, teachers, guidance counselors and the principal recognized a problem, said Baltimore County School Superintendent Anthony G. Marchione. He said school officials called Social Services repeatedly to report evidence of abuse.

Social Services officials confirm receiving only one report from Rita's school, the call in January. Marchione said several calls were made but would not provide documentary evidence or details. The school year ended June 6, about three weeks before Rita died. Her head and chest injuries were inflicted about a month before she died, said an assistant state medical examiner, James Locke.

Carol Keen, who lives two doors down from the Fisher-Utley home, said she called Social Services twice in the spring on behalf of Rita. The department has no record of that, Robinson said.

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By most accounts, Rita was a timid little girl who rarely smiled and usually retreated in fright when spoken to. She and her 15-year-old sister were nearly inseparable.

"They had a lost, vacant look," said Judy Ollivierre, who lives nearby. "They didn't look at you very often. They looked down most of the time. But when they did look at you, you saw sadness."

Until a year and a half ago, Rita and her sister wandered around the neighborhood freely, neighbors said. Rita played in her backyard sandbox, toys strewn about. Then the girls all but disappeared. Other than coming from and going to school, they weren't seen often.

Neighbors said the change coincides with the arrival of Scarpola, who police said controlled the household finances and meted out discipline. They said he told them it was his idea to add a lock to the girls' bedroom so they wouldn't mess up the house. He planned to put a security system on the refrigerator, police said.

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Neighbors said the girls' hunger was clear. Sharon Wheeler, who lives around the corner, once found them taking food from her refrigerator after they walked into her kitchen uninvited. Rita's teenage sister regularly tried to steal food from High's, a convenience store around the corner, cashier Frank Hill said. Not sodas or candy. Food.

Scarpola's attorney, Arthur Frank, said his client moved into the house at Rose Mary Fisher's urging, in hopes he could ease long-running troubles. Rita's mother had been through a string of abusive relationships, her girls had been victimized, and Scarpola tried in vain to persuade Fisher-Utley to treat her daughters better, Frank said.

"He tried to help," Frank said. "He didn't do the greatest job, obviously -- look at what happened -- but he loved those kids."

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Fisher-Utley's attorney, Thomas Nugent Jr., declined to comment. Finances don't seem to explain why the girls went without food. Fisher brought home a paycheck from a nearby bank, where she worked as a teller. Fisher-Utley had a job as an animal caretaker at a kennel.

As neighbors gathered on a recent afternoon, watching their young children play in the grass, they gazed across the street at Rita's empty yard. "You lie there at night," Ollivierre said, "and you think, what could I have done?" CAPTION: Carol Keen, who lives near the Fisher-Utley home, says she called Social Services twice in the spring about Rita Fisher. CAPTION: Neighbors of Rita Fisher, such as Megan Keen, left, and Lauren Wheeler, with two of her children, say the hunger suffered by Rita and her sister was apparent.

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