Judge Orders Separate Trials for Two Accused in Kidnap-Murder

A transient couple, accused of kidnaping and murdering a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl in 1987 and shooting a 13-year-old female companion, will be tried separately, a San Fernando Superior Court judge ruled Friday.

Judge Ronald S. Coen, who had rejected earlier requests by defense attorney James D. Gregory that the cases be separated, granted the request Friday because the lawyer announced that his client, Roland Norman Comtois, did not wish the trial to be delayed any longer.

Dennis E. Mulcahy, attorney for the woman, Marsha Lynn Ramos, said he is unable to go to trial for several months because he is busy with another case. Jury selection for Comtois is scheduled to begin April 16.

The ruling means that Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn, who is prosecuting the couple, must conduct two virtually identical trials in front of separate juries. “It’s called instant replay,” Lynn said Friday.

Police said Ramos lured Wendy Masuhara and a 13-year-old friend into a camper. Comtois allegedly bound and gagged them and later shot them in secluded Woolsey Canyon, near the Chatsworth Reservoir. He tried to force the friend to orally copulate him and injected her with cocaine, police said.

The girl, found walking along a canyon road, dazed and bleeding, gave police a description of the man, who was arrested several days later after he was shot and wounded by a police officer. Ramos was arrested two months later.