SHELTER WORKER DETAILS WOMAN'S CALL.

Byline: Linda Deutsch Associated Pressdlim

In testimony banned from O.J. Simpson's criminal trial, a battered women's counselor told jurors Wednesday that a woman named Nicole reported death threats from a famous husband five days before Nicole Brown Simpson was slain.

Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki stunned legal observers with his ruling - one of the most damaging to Simpson in his wrongful death civil trial - to allow the testimony.

The defense vigorously objected that it was inadmissible hearsay and not backed up by records.

Even attorneys for the plaintiffs, who offered the evidence, appeared surprised. One leaned over to shake hands and congratulate another on the triumph.

The witness, Nancy N. Ney, said she retrieved sketchy written records of the call and reconstructed the details from memory after Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman were slashed to death June 12, 1994.

Ney testified that the June 7, 1994, call to Sojourn House came from a woman who didn't give her last name but said she was divorced from a well-known man.

``She said he was very high profile and if she mentioned his name I would know,'' Ney testified. ``She said that she was very frightened.''

Under questioning by attorney Peter Goldblum, Ney said the woman spoke of being stalked and threatened.

``She said that he had told her a few different times that if he ever caught her with another man he would kill her,'' Ney said. ``I asked her whether he had ever beaten her. She said yes.''

Simpson was acquitted of murder in October 1995, but was sued by families of the victims seeking to hold him responsible for the killings.

Ney joined a parade of witnesses who contradicted Simpson's testimony that he never hit, beat, punched or kicked his ex-wife.

In an angry, confrontational cross-examination, Baker suggested that Ney and Sojourn House thrust themselves into the Simpson case to drum up more donations. Ney denied it.

Baker seized upon the fact that the original date on the call sheet - May 7 - was scratched out and replaced with June 7. She acknowledged that work calendars showed she was not at the battered women's shelter on May 7 and said the date was a simple mistake.

Sojourn House, a secret hideaway for battered women, fought turning over records in the criminal trial, and Superior Court Judge Lance Ito barred the testimony as hearsay, inadequately backed up by records.