Man, 60, Found Guilty in Kidnap, Slaying of Girl : Trial: A jury convicts a drifter after deliberating only four hours. His death sentence hearing starts June 18.

After only four hours of deliberations, a jury on Wednesday found Roland Norman Comtois guilty of kidnaping and murdering a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and shooting her 13-year-old friend, leaving the wounded girl for dead in an abandoned auto.

The bearded, 60-year-old drifter sat expressionless as the San Fernando Superior Court clerk read the guilty verdicts for each of the eight counts against him.

Relatives and friends of the slain girl, Wendy Masuhara, hugged one another and wept as the verdicts were read.

“It won’t bring her back,” the dead girl’s father, Allen Masuhara, said outside the courtroom later, but “it will make it a little bit better.”

“We’re glad this part’s almost over,” said her mother, Lynne Masuhara, anticipating the penalty phase during which the same jury will decide whether to sentence Comtois to death or life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Judge Ronald S. Coen instructed the jury to reconvene June 18 to begin hearing arguments in the sentencing phase, which is expected to last about two days. Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn, who prosecuted Comtois, said he will argue for the death penalty.

“The facts are about as gruesome as you can get,” Lynn said outside the courtroom. Comtois can be sentenced to death because the jury found that the crime included legally required special circumstances, including the charge that the murder was committed during the course of a kidnaping.

Comtois’ alleged accomplice, Marsha Lynn Ramos, 36, could also face the death penalty. Her trial on murder and other charges is scheduled to begin July 9.

The jury found Comtois guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of the Masuhara girl, whom he shot in the head in an abandoned station wagon in remote Woolsey Canyon near the Chatsworth Reservoir on Sept. 19, 1987. He was also found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of the girl’s friend, who survived because her upraised hand deflected the bullet and Comtois had left her for dead.

It was the surviving girl’s description of her assailant that led to Comtois’ arrest four days after the attack, and it was her testimony in the two-week trial that provided the foundation for the prosecution’s case.

The surviving girl testified that she and her friend were lured into Comtois’ camper by Ramos while walking in the quiet residential neighborhood where they lived. Comtois came up behind them with a gun and drove them to another location, where he forced the younger girl to orally copulate him, she said.

The girl said Comtois injected her with cocaine and drove to the canyon, where he placed them in the station wagon and shot them. The girl, who was wearing a blood-soaked sweater around a wound in her neck as she walked along a nearby road, was seen by a passing motorist who drove her to a hospital.

Wednesday’s verdict capped an unusually short, two-week trial during which the prosecution called 18 witnesses and defense lawyers called nine.

“It’s disappointing,” said James D. Gregory, one of two attorneys appointed to defend Comtois, after Wednesday’s verdict was read. “Now we’re going to put all our effort into showing this jury why Mr. Comtois should live.”

Comtois has spent most of his life in and out of prison for crimes that included rape, robbery and heroin dealing. In 1962, a probation officer wrote about Comtois: “He has lashed back at society with a vengeance, reaching out for what he wants with total disregard of the rights of others. . . . His personality affect is of a man who is very matter-of-fact, cold, hostile, cynical and daring.”

The jury also convicted Comtois 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 one count of furnishing a controlled substance to a minor.