Police Arrest 2nd Suspect in Kidnap, Slaying

A woman drifter charged with the kidnaping and murder of a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and the shooting of her friend last September has been arrested and is being held without bail, authorities said Saturday.

Marsha Lynn Erickson, 33, was taken into custody early Friday evening as she walked along heavily traveled Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood, Los Angeles police said. Erickson, who had been under surveillance for a short time, was not armed and offered no resistance, officers said.

Police had been seeking the woman since Sept. 24, two days after the arrest of her one-time companion, Roland Norman Comtois, 58. The two are charged with murder, kidnaping and sexual molestation in the abduction of 14-year-old Wendy Masuhara and her 13-year-old girlfriend. If convicted, Erickson and Comtois could face the death penalty, prosecutors said.

The girls allegedly were lured into Comtois’ motor home as they walked in a quiet Chatsworth neighborhood on the night of Sept. 18, officers said.

Police said the couple shot the girls and left them for dead in an abandoned station wagon in secluded Woolsey Canyon near the Chatsworth Reservoir. Masuhara died that night but her friend survived. Found dazed and bleeding as she walked along a canyon road, the girl later identified photographs of Erickson and Comtois from police files, police said.

The name of the second teen-ager, who was sexually assaulted, has not been released.

Police said it was Erickson who persuaded the girls to enter the motor home by asking them to help start the vehicle.

In addition to the murder and kidnaping charges, a criminal complaint filed Oct. 2 charges Erickson and Comtois with attempted murder, one count of sodomy by force, one count of forcible oral copulation, one count of committing a forcible lewd act upon a child and injecting a child with cocaine. Police said Masuhara’s friend was injected with the drug; Masuhara was not. Nor, officers said, was the murdered girl molested.

Erickson is scheduled to be arraigned Monday morning in San Fernando Superior Court. In custody at the Sybil Brand Institute, she also is being held on an outstanding warrant for forgery and two warrants for petty theft, a jail spokesman said.

Police have described Erickson as a drifter who turned to prostitution and burglary to support her drug addiction. She began traveling with Comtois in the motor home at least six months before the two girls were abducted, police said.

Authorities identified Comtois as a Massachusetts native with a 46-year criminal record beginning in 1941 when he was arrested for petty theft at age 11. Court records show that he was convicted of rape in Massachusetts in 1952 and burglary and robbery in California in 1960 and 1961. He was most recently convicted--on a heroin charge--in 1974.

Acting on a tip, police spotted Comtois in the Elysian Park area four days after the killing. Shot in the back and leg as he attempted to flee, Comtois was taken into custody and remains hospitalized in the medical ward of the downtown Central Jail. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Oct. 15.

Born in Los Angeles, Erickson had been arrested 12 times in the last 10 years on charges ranging from prostitution and burglary to drug possession, police said.

In an interview with The Times in October, Erickson’s father described her as a long-time heroin addict, whose six children were put up for adoption.

“Drugs controlled her. Drugs destroyed her,” the father said.