D.A. Says Surviving Girl in Kidnap Was Injected With Coke

A transient couple charged with the kidnaping and murder of a Chatsworth teen-ager and the attempted murder of her friend also injected the surviving girl with cocaine, authorities said Friday.

The report of the cocaine injection came as the Los Angeles Country district attorney’s office released an amended criminal complaint in which the woman, who was still at large, was charged with murder and seven other felonies.

Police were searching for Marsha Lynn Erickson, described by police as a drifter with a history of prostitution, burglary and narcotics use.

The amended complaint increases the penalties Erickson and Roland Norman Comtois, already in custody, could face if convicted of killing 14-year-old Wendy Masuhara and trying to kill her girlfriend near the Chatsworth Reservoir on Sept. 19.

Erickson, 33, and Comtois, 57, are charged with murder, attempted murder, two counts of kidnaping, one count of sodomy by force, one count of forcible oral copulation, one count of a forcible lewd act upon a child and one count of injecting a child with cocaine.

The complaint includes four “special circumstances”--such as committing a murder during a kidnaping--that could qualify the pair for the death penalty, authorities said.

Comtois, shot in the back and leg after he fled police in Elysian Park on Sept. 22, was listed in stable condition Friday at County-USC Medical Center. Comtois earlier was charged with all the offenses except injecting the surviving 13-year-old girl with cocaine.

Blood Tests

Assistant Deputy Dist. Atty. Myron Jenkins said prosecutors added the drug charge after blood tests found cocaine in the girl’s system. Early police reports said the girl recalled hearing the couple talk about the drug.

Jenkins said Erickson was charged with everything “except pulling the trigger.”

Assistant Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Knight said the amended complaint could raise the maximum sentences for each sex offense from eight years to 23 years. The sentences for each kidnaping count could rise from 11 to 14 years.

The girls were abducted Sept. 18 as they walked late at night in their Chatsworth neighborhood. Police said Erickson lured the girls into a motor home by asking for help starting the vehicle. The girls entered and discovered Comtois, who was wearing jeans and no shirt, police said.

The couple drove about six miles to secluded Woolsey Canyon, put the girls in an abandoned station wagon and shot them in the head, police said. The survivor was later spotted by motorists as she walked along the road bleeding and in a daze. Police found Masuhara’s body in the car.