Drifter Is Sentenced to Die for Killing Girl : Crime: Roland Comtois faces the gas chamber for murder and for another assault. The judge said the crimes are the most brutal he’s seen.

A judge Tuesday sentenced a drifter to die in the gas chamber for murdering a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and sexually assaulting and then shooting her 13-year-old friend after abducting them from a residential street in 1987.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen ordered Roland Norman Comtois, 60, handed over to the warden of San Quentin, where he will be put to death unless the sentence is overturned on appeal.

Comtois’ sentence, like all death sentences in California, will be automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court. He may pursue further appeals in federal court if his efforts at the state level fail.

Coen upheld a jury’s recommendation on June 21 that Comtois be put to death for the Sept. 19, 1987, murder of Wendy Masuhara and the attempted murder and sexual assault of her best friend.

Coen said the crimes were more brutal than any he had seen in 17 years as a prosecutor and judge.

“In hearing these facts, this appears to be more atrocious, more violent and more heinous than any case I have argued as the trier of fact,” Coen said.

“It is the order of this court that you shall suffer the death penalty,” Coen told Comtois, who showed no reaction.

Coen also based his ruling on Comtois’ previous convictions for rape, attempted bank robbery and armed robbery. Comtois’ criminal record dates back to 1941, when he was charged with petty theft and deemed incorrigible by juvenile authorities, according to court documents.

The mother of the surviving victim said outside court Tuesday that she and her daughter were pleased with the sentence.

“I am very satisfied,” she said. “It has been a tremendous ordeal. It has been a nightmare for years.

“I don’t have any sympathy whatsoever” for Comtois, the woman said. “I do feel sorry for his family. I feel sorry for my daughter. I feel sorry for the Masuharas, and I feel sorry for myself.”

Wendy Masuhara and her friend were walking in their Chatsworth neighborhood when Comtois’ companion, Marsha Lynn Ramos, 36, allegedly lured them inside a camper by telling them that it had stalled and needed to be jump-started.

Once inside, Comtois held a gun to the girls, forced the younger one to orally copulate him and told Ramos to inject her with cocaine, according to testimony. He then drove them to remote Woolsey Canyon in Chatsworth, placed them in an abandoned station wagon and shot them from behind.

Masuhara died instantly. The younger girl, now 16, survived because she held up her hand behind her neck and deflected the bullet.

One of Comtois’ two court-appointed attorneys, James D. Gregory, pleaded with Coen Tuesday for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, the only other sentencing option besides death.

The lawyer said Comtois suffers from numerous physical ailments, including angina and a hernia, and is “old and infirm beyond his . . . years.”

“I believe if he is executed, the killing will only go on in this case,” Gregory said. “His life experiences are so rotten. I don’t think the jury knows this man. This man has redeeming factors that are difficult to comprehend.”

But Coen disagreed, telling Comtois: “You have a record that goes back to 1941. Everybody has a business, sir. Your business is making victims.”

During Comtois’ penalty hearing in June, family members testified that he had an unhappy childhood, much of which he spent in an orphanage after his mother died when he was 4. Theresa Webb, his sister, said her brother was beaten and locked in closets for wetting his bed at the orphanage.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn said Gregory’s characterization of Comtois as old and infirm belied the fact that the defendant ran from police and jumped a nine-foot wall before an officer shot him twice.

The chase in the Elysian Park area came four days after the kidnapings when a man reported that he saw a camper matching the description of the vehicle in which the girls were abducted.

Besides convicting Comtois of murder and attempted murder, a jury on June 6 found him guilty of two counts of kidnaping, one count of attempted sodomy, one count of committing a lewd act on a child, one count of forcible oral copulation and a count of furnishing a controlled substance to a minor.

Ramos, who also faces the death penalty if convicted, is expected to stand trial in September.