PITTSBURGH — Caseworkers from two neighboring counties and a state agency doctored or destroyed records pertaining to a 4-year-old girl whose starved body was found stuffed into a picnic cooler, according to a newspaper's review of court documents.

One caseworker testified in a pretrial deposition that her supervisor ordered her to burn records pertaining to the girl, Kristen Tatar.

"And make sure that you sit down with a glass of wine and a box of Kleenex when you burn Kristen's" records, Penn State Cooperative Extension worker Pam Walmsley testified in a deposition detailing her supervisor's instructions. "And get it out of your system and move on."

Tatar's 11-pound body was found stuffed into the cooler that had been set on a curb for trash pickup behind her Parks Township, Armstrong County home in August 2003. Her parents, James Tatar and Janet Crawford, are serving life sentences for starving her to death.

Criminal investigators determined the couple grossly underfed the girl, who was often tied to a chair with a pacifier in her mouth and rarely bathed or nurtured.

The horrific details of Tatar's life and death are scheduled to receive a second, more detailed airing in April when a federal judge in Pittsburgh hears a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the girl's aunt, Cathy Fondrk. Fondrk, of Hyde Park, has adopted Kristen's surviving brother and sued her parents and various child welfare agencies on behalf of the boy.

A Pittsburgh newspaper on Wednesday reported that documents filed in the case reveal that Armstrong County officials admitted that they added details to Kristen's case file after police found her body.

But Armstrong County officials are convinced that Westmoreland County officials also doctored records.