Crime Beat

rational thinking.”
    Criminal Impulses
    The probation officer’s August 1960 evaluation of Comtois concluded, “He appears to have no control over his impulses when things don’t go his way, and consequently he resorts to criminal behavior.”
    On the day his wife gave birth to a daughter, Comtois was sentenced to a year in a federal prison in California on the attempted bank robbery and burglary convictions.
    Within three months of being released from prison, Comtois was jailed again, this time for the July 1961 armed robbery of a market in La Mirada. “I don’t blame somebody else for what I did,” he told a probation officer. “I was clear of mind.” Once again he pleaded guilty to the charge. It was his fifth conviction, and he was returned to prison for his longest stay, until March 11, 1969.
    Two months after his release, Comtois—half his life now spent in prisons, reform schools and orphanages—was arrested on suspicion of narcotics possession. By 1971, his wife was seeking to end their marriage. The couple separated, according to divorce documents, after Comtois flew into a Thanksgiving Day rage, punched his fist through a door in the couple’s home near Long Beach and destroyed the china set on the table for the holiday meal.
    The divorce records contain allegations that Comtois had often beaten his wife and had a violent temper that sent him into uncontrollable rages.
    Another Failed Marriage
    Two years later, Comtois would tell a judge that the end of his marriage and failures in attempts to earn a legitimate living had led him into another cycle of crime and a deep involvement with drugs. He was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to sell and of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He admitted he was addicted to the drug as well.
    “I started selling my jewelry and other items I owned and refused to believe I was addicted,” he wrote to the judge who would sentence him. “I didn’t know which way to turn. With the loss of everything, I started borrowing from business associates and friends until I had neither left.
    “When I finally accepted the fact I was addicted, I started selling drugs to satisfy my addiction.”
    Comtois pleaded to be placed in a drug rehabilitation program instead of prison, but the judge sent him to prison for three more years.
    Comtois was released from prison in 1977 and completed parole a year later. His activities between then and last month’s abduction in Chatsworth are now being documented by homicide detectives. “So far, I can’t find anything legitimate about him,” Detective Orozco said.
    What is known is that he moved to the San Fernando Valley, possibly to be closer to his two children who lived with his ex-wife in Van Nuys.
    Police said Comtois was a transient, living at an ever-changing string of addresses. He may have worked at times as a laborer, and he received a monthly disability payment for reasons unclear to police, but detectives believe he largely supported himself as a burglar and scam artist.
    Some of Comtois’ activities are already on record. Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford Stone said Comtois walked into a bank in the Valley on Nov. 5, 1983, and attempted to cash a forged check for $75,000. When the teller attempted to verify the check, Comtois grabbed it back and left.
    Forgery Charge
    Three years later on Nov. 7, 1986, Comtois changed the date and took the same check into a bank in North Hollywood and deposited it in his account, Stone said. During the next week he went to other banks in Los Angeles and cashed $75,000 in checks against the account. When police finally sorted it all out, he was charged March 18 of this year with grand theft and forgery.
    Police say Comtois used the check scam money to buy $30,000 in gold and a new car. In January he also bought a small motor home, possibly with the same money.
    Released after posting $1,500 bail, Comtois was arrested at least two more times—in June on suspicion of burglary and in July on suspicion of driving a stolen car—before the abduction. Both times he was released on bail.
    By summer, Comtois was living in the brown-striped Roadstar motor home and moving freely about the Valley. Police said he was traveling with a companion, Marsha Lynn Erickson, though investigators have not discovered how or where they met.
    Erickson, police say, was a Los Angeles-born transient with a record of 12 arrests in the last decade on charges including prostitution,