SUSPECT'S WIFE HELPS PROSECUTION; DEATH PENALTY SOUGHT IN SLAYING OF DEPUTY.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

The wife of a man accused of murdering a sheriff's deputy testified Wednesday that her husband had two handguns and threatened to kill her if she did not accompany him for a bank robbery and a trip to Wisconsin.

The woman's testimony supported prosecutors' theory that she was kidnapped and raped by her husband, Michael Raymond Johnson, in Ojai on July 17, 1996.

Prosecutors claim that Johnson then shot and killed a Ventura County sheriff's deputy, Peter Aguirre, in a desperate attempt to avoid serving the rest of his life in prison for the attack on his wife.

Johnson's wife is a key witness at the capital murder trial, but Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox found it challenging to elicit testimony from her.

The Spanish-speaking witness, testifying through a translator, frequently appeared to grow frustrated with the questioning and responded by saying she could not remember comments that she or her husband had made on the day of the shooting. Fox often brought up the woman's testimony at previous court hearings.

``You have to tell me if I said it correctly or if it's a trick,'' the witness told Fox in an oft-repeated accusation that prosecutors were trying to coerce her testimony.

She also scolded Superior Court Judge Steven Perren for having a sidebar conference with attorneys.

``(Jurors) have to know the truth, the whole truth,'' she blurted out.

But her testimony proved damaging for the defense theory that Johnson neither kidnapped nor raped the woman he had married 11 years earlier as a favor to his boss. The marriage allowed the woman to get legal residency in the United States, although the spouses were estranged for years before Johnson eventually tried to patch up the relationship, prosecutors say.

Johnson's wife said that, on the day of the shooting, he went to the Ojai house where she worked as a nanny and asked, ``Do you know what a .45 is?'' She said she understood this to mean he had a .45-caliber handgun. Aguirre was killed with a gun of that caliber, prosecutors have said.

The witness said Johnson was acting strangely that day, but she took his threats seriously, especially when he produced a handgun from behind his back and said he had another in his pocket.

``He said that he was going to pick me up because he was going to take me to Wisconsin,'' she said. ``We were going to go to Wisconsin but we were going to rob a bank first.''

She said the defendant insisted ``he was going to kill me and he was going to kill himself'' if she did not go along with his robbery plans.

She said she pleaded with her husband to hand over the guns, but never made an effort to take them away from him.