Police Arrest 2nd Suspect in Slaying of Girl, 14

A drifter charged with the September kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and the shooting of the teen-ager’s friend has been arrested and is being held without bail, police said Saturday.

Marsha Lynn Erickson, 33, was taken into custody as she walked along heavily traveled Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood about 5:30 p.m. Friday, Los Angeles police said.

Erickson, who had been under surveillance for a short time, was not armed and did not put up a fight, officers said.

Police had been searching for Erickson since Sept. 24, two days after the arrest of her one-time companion, 58-year-old Roland Norman Comtois. The two are charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual molestation in connection with the abduction of 14-year-old Wendy Masuhara and her 13-year-old girlfriend.

Lured Into Motor Home

The girls allegedly were lured into Comtois’ motor home as they walked in a quiet Chatsworth neighborhood late 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 Erickson and Comtois from police files, police said.

The name of the surviving teen-ager, who was sexually assaulted, was not released.

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

In addition to the murder and kidnapping 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.

Arraignment Monday

Erickson is 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 an addiction to heroin and other drugs. She began traveling with Comtois in the white 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 stretching back to 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, in California, on burglary and robbery in 1960 and 1961. His last conviction--on a heroin charge--came in 1974, also in California.

Acting on a tip, police spotted Comtois in Elysian Park 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 to the charges at his arraignment Oct. 15.

300 Tips

Two days after Comtois’ arrest, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates identified Erickson as the second suspect in the killing. The announcement and release of her photograph prompted about 300 tips from callers who said they had seen the woman in the San Fernando Valley, police said.

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-term heroin addict whose six children were put up for adoption.

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

Erickson lived from 1984 to 1985 at her parents’ Chatsworth home, about a mile from where the two girls were kidnapped on Lurline Avenue.

If convicted of the kidnapping and killing, she and Comtois could face the death penalty, prosecutors said.