Realtor Describes Terror at Kidnap Trial : Court: Paula Harrington says she was paralyzed with fear for two days with defendant, who said she joined him willingly.

A Santa Clarita Valley woman testified Wednesday at the trial of a man accused of kidnaping her, saying that far from accompanying him willingly, she was so terrified that she pleaded for a few minutes’ warning if he was going to kill her so she would have time to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

“I wanted to be praying when I died,” Paula D. Harrington told a jury as friends and relatives wept with her in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

During almost three hours of testimony, the former real estate agent said her alleged kidnaper, Timothy Daniel Shue, maintained tight control of her every move during the two days they were together by threatening her with a gun and with what she called “the look”--which she described as a penetrating stare as he barked detailed instructions on her behavior.

Shue’s defense has been that she accompanied him of her own volition.

Harrington testified that she was virtually paralyzed with fear as she obediently shopped and withdrew cash for Shue and submitted to sex with him. She said she never tried to escape, although she thought of it constantly.

“I was in shock, I was so scared,” Harrington said. “It was in slow motion, one step at a time.”

Harrington disappeared June 29 and was found two days later, bound and gagged but unharmed in a Gila Bend, Ariz., hotel. Shue, a convicted armed robber from Michigan, was arrested July 6 after showing off his handgun to an Ogden, Utah, stripper.

Shue, 38, was charged with kidnaping Harrington, now 27, and using a firearm during the crime.

In addition to Harrington’s identification of Shue as her kidnaper, he left a fingerprint in their Arizona hotel room and he gave FBI agents a detailed confession, prosecutor Daniel P. Collins said during opening statements Monday.

But in a surprise defense move, Shue’s attorneys told the jury of 10 men and two women that an unhappily married Harrington had been a “willing companion” on a two-day fling aimed at teaching her husband a lesson.

She had second thoughts only after Shue told her he was on parole, and she made up a tale of abduction and rape--having him tie her up after their last night together--to protect her reputation, said Deputy Federal Public Defender Neison M. Marks.

In the trial’s first day of testimony Wednesday, Harrington gave her side of the story in a dramatic account often punctuated with tears.

Using the false name of Steve Sterling, an affable Shue pretended he was interested in buying a house and lured her--she was then a real estate saleswoman--to a remote Val Verde property, Harrington said.

After touring the home twice and complimenting the sunny master bathroom, Shue suddenly pulled a gun and growled at her: “Put your hands up, bitch!” Harrington said.

He hog-tied her, forced her into the rear compartment of his Jeep, and left with her on a surreal trip east, saying he had a fatal brain tumor and wanted to do some traveling before he died.

They stopped in Hacienda Heights, Redlands, Indio, the Salton Sea and Yuma, Ariz., before he finally spared her life and left her in Gila Bend, Harrington testified. Alternately fierce and tender, Shue threatened to kill her and anyone who tried to help her, Harrington said, yet he wiped her tears with a washcloth and bought her watermelon-flavored bubble gum, among other small kindnesses.

Despite his promises to free her as soon as she got him some money, Shue barricaded Harrington within a Best Western hotel room in Redlands their first night together, and he raped her after ordering her to drink champagne and model a pair of black fishnet stockings, she testified.

She also told the jury she was terrified of being impregnated by Shue and wept bitterly afterward.

“He asked me, ‘Did I hurt you?’ ” Harrington recalled. “And I said no, he didn’t hurt me physically. He’d hurt my soul.”

Harrington also said she no longer works as a real estate agent because she is afraid to be alone with strangers. Her testimony was to continue today, with cross-examination by the defense.