Threat Forced Woman to Help Killer, Defense Says

A woman charged with helping a 60-year-old drifter kidnap and murder a Chatsworth teen-ager cooperated with him because he threatened to kill her if she did not obey his orders, her defense lawyers said Monday.

Marsha Lynn Ramos, 36, cooperated with Roland Norman Comtois because she feared that he would shoot her, attorney Dennis E. Mulcahy said. Mulcahy is one of two lawyers defending Ramos against charges of murder, attempted murder, sexual assault and kidnaping in a criminal trial that began Monday in San Fernando Superior Court.

Comtois was sentenced to die in the gas chamber after his June 6 conviction on eight felony counts in the 1987 abduction and shooting of Wendy Masuhara and a 13-year-old friend. Masuhara died, but the other girl, now 16, survived and testified against Comtois.

Ramos is charged with helping Comtois commit the crimes and faces the death penalty if she is convicted. Jury selection began Monday. The defense attorneys made their remarks in an interview during a break in court proceedings, but they refused to elaborate on their defense strategy or say whether Ramos would take the stand.

Authorities say that the two girls, who had been friends since kindergarten, were walking in the quiet residential neighborhood where they lived when Ramos lured them into Comtois’ motor home by telling them that she was having mechanical trouble.

As the two girls were helping Ramos start the camper, Comtois appeared from the back of the motor home with a handgun and threatened to kill the girls if they did not cooperate.

After the girls were gagged and bound, Comtois forced the girl who survived to undress and orally copulate him. He also attempted to sodomize her before instructing Ramos to inject her with cocaine.

The girl testified in the Comtois trial that Ramos and Masuhara were locked in the motor home’s restroom while Comtois assaulted her.

Afterwards, the two girls were driven to an isolated area in Woolsey Canyon, where they were ordered into an abandoned station wagon and shot.

Mulcahy said Ramos was “a victim also, and not a participant.”

Alex R. Kessel, Ramos’ other attorney, said that “throughout the whole incident, she was coerced to do every act at gunpoint.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn said that Ramos, who has a criminal history that includes prostitution, burglary and drug use, was directly responsible for luring the girls into the motor home and injecting the surviving girl with cocaine.

“She is guilty,” he said.