D.A. Briefly Had Slaying Suspect but Didn’t Know It

The man police had sought in the weekend abduction and shooting of two Chatsworth girls was in court on an unrelated charge and released on $1,500 bail Monday, a day before he was identified as the suspect and shot by a policeman whom he was fleeing, officials said Wednesday.

Roland Norman Comtois, an often-arrested ex-convict with a history of drug abuse, was in Van Nuys Superior Court Monday for a hearing on a March, 1987, grand-theft charge involving a $75,000 check-forging scam, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford Stone.

But, at the time, Comtois had not been identified as a suspect in the Friday night abduction and shooting that left one girl dead. After a Nov. 9 trial date was scheduled, Comtois was allowed to go free after bail that was set in March was continued.

“It’s bizarre,” Stone said. “In light of what has happened, it’s embarrassing. But the reality is we obviously didn’t know. According to what we knew, the guy had nothing in his background that allowed us to deviate from the standard bail.”

Comtois, 57, a convicted rapist, robber, and drug dealer, according to court records, remained in critical condition at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center while Los Angeles police focused their efforts on finding his woman accomplice.

He was shot Tuesday when he ran from two officers who were in a neighborhood north of Dodger Stadium checking out a tip on the Friday night abduction of Wendy Masuhara, 14, and a 13-year-old companion. Masuhara was killed, but her companion survived and provided detectives with the description that led to Comtois’ capture.

On Wednesday, police revealed little about Comtois or possible motives in the abduction.

Woman Still Sought

Detectives spent the day seeking the woman who lured the two girls into the motor home in which they were abducted. Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said investigators believe they know the name of the woman, but he he would not release her identity.

“We feel we will pick her up soon,” Gates said.

What is revealed about Comtois in Los Angeles County Superior Court records is that he has an extensive criminal record dating to a Massachusetts rape conviction in 1952.

He is known to police in the San Fernando Valley as a burglar suspect, police said. Besides the grand-theft charge filed against him in March, court records show that this year he was arrested twice in June for burglary and again in July for auto theft. The auto theft charge was later dropped.

Court records show that Comtois was previously sentenced to five to 15 years in a California state prison after he pleaded guilty in 1974 to selling heroin and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Information on how much of the term he served was unavailable.

According to the records, Comtois also served prison terms for a 1952 rape conviction in Bristol County, Mass., and a 1960 conviction for armed bank robbery and a 1962 robbery conviction, both in California.

In the 1974 drug case, Comtois handwrote a three-page letter to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Harry Peetries in Van Nuys asking that he be considered for entry in a drug-rehabilitation program rather than being sent to prison.

The letter, dated June 18, 1974, states in part, “I have spent over half of my life in orphanages, foster homes of every kind, reform schools and prisons. After serving seven years in the California Dept. of Correction, I had promised myself never to enter another Institution again.

“After leaving prison I worked day and night trying to get ahead. I bought my family a home and started a business. But due to the involvement and pressures of the business I lost my family through divorce. . .”

Comtois received a prison sentence in the case. The family he wrote of--a son, 29, a daughter, 23, and his former wife--live in Van Nuys. The son, Raymond Phillip Comtois, said his father also has a 3-year-old son, Joshua, by another woman. The child, Raymond said, has been in his and Comtois’ former wife’s care for about a year.

“My father had a lot of problems, and so he brought the baby here,” Raymond said. “He was responsible for him, though. Once in a while he would pop in and leave money for the baby.”

Raymond Comtois said that, in recent months, his father had lived a nomadic life in a motor home, which he moved from place to place in the Valley. “He lived in different places,” Raymond said. “He’d come by all the time, but I don’t know where from.”

Raymond said the last time his father came by was Tuesday morning to borrow his pickup truck.

A few hours after that, police officers, acting on an anonymous tip, saw Comtois moving personal items from the motor home into the pickup truck in the 3800 block of Newell Street near Dodger Stadium. Police said that, when Comtois saw the officers, he ran down the street, climbed over a wall and was shot in the back and arm by one of the officers before he could get away.

“I feel sorry for those two girls,” Raymond Comtois said. “But I can’t see my father being involved in what the police are saying he was. I can’t believe it.”

Times staff writer Jane Hulse contributed to this story.