Jury to Be Chosen in Trial of Man Charged in 1987 Attack on 2 Girls : Courts: A transient faces the death penalty if convicted of shooting a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl to death and trying to kill her friend.

Jury selection in the trial of a transient accused of kidnaping and murdering a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and shooting her 13-year-old friend is to begin Monday, 2 1/2 years after the girls were left for dead in a secluded canyon near the Chatsworth Reservoir.

Roland Norman Comtois, 60, faces the death penalty if convicted of the murder and kidnaping of Wendy Masuhara on the night of Sept. 18, 1987. He also is accused of attempting to murder and sodomize the younger girl and forcing her to orally copulate him.

Comtois was arrested four days after the kidnapings after a woman notified police that she had seen a man in the Elysian Park area near Dodger Stadium who looked like drawings of the suspect published in news accounts.

An officer saw the suspect and his camper and shot at him four times as he tried to run away. He continued running after being shot twice but collapsed and rolled down a 40-foot concrete embankment to the edge of the Los Angeles River, where he was arrested, police said.

Attorneys in the case said they expect the process of selecting 12 jurors and several alternates from a pool of 120 candidates to last two to three weeks. Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn said he expects many of the prospective jurors to be excused because the trial is expected to be lengthy and because some of them may oppose the death penalty. The jury is tentatively scheduled to begin hearing testimony May 7.

Comtois’ alleged accomplice, Marsha Lynn Ramos, 36, will be tried separately beginning July 6. She is charged with one count each of murder and attempted murder and also faces the death penalty if convicted, Lynn said.

Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors wanted to try the cases together, but a judge ordered separate proceedings after Comtois’ attorney, James D. Gregory, said he wanted to expedite his client’s trial. Ramos’ attorney, Dennis E. Mulcahy, had asked that the trial be delayed until he is finished with a lengthy unrelated murder case.

Police said Ramos approached the girls as they walked in a Chatsworth residential neighborhood and lured them into a camper by saying his engine wouldn’t start and asking for their help. Once the girls were inside, Comtois came up behind them with a gun and told them to lie face down on a bed in the camper or he would kill them, the surviving girl testified during the couple’s preliminary hearing in April, 1988.

Comtois then bound and gagged them and drove to a different location about five minutes away, where he undressed the 13-year-old and himself and forced her to orally copulate him, the girl said. Comtois asked Ramos to get a syringe, which he told her held cocaine, the girl said.

After injecting her, he drove to Woolsey Canyon, where he placed both teen-agers in an abandoned station wagon and shot Masuhara in the head, the surviving victim testified. She said she turned her head just as Comtois fired at her from behind, causing the bullet to enter her hand and neck. She was left for dead but later recovered and provided police with a description of the suspect.

Ramos, described by police as a drifter who turned to prostitution and burglary to support a heroin addiction, was arrested two months later in North Hollywood.

Mulcahy, Ramos’ attorney, said this week that his client was as much a victim of Comtois as were the two girls. He cited a taped police interview in which the surviving girl reportedly said that Comtois threatened to kill Ramos if she didn’t help him commit the crimes.

Mulcahy said he plans to play the tape in court if the surviving victim does not recall making that statement.

Comtois, who spent his childhood in a succession of orphanages, foster homes and reform schools, has been imprisoned at least four times for convictions of crimes including attempted rape, robbery and heroin dealing. At age 11, he was charged with petty theft and described as an incorrigible delinquent.