Defendant’s Wife Tells of Days Before Deputy’s Slaying

Tearful and distraught, the wife of Michael Raymond Johnson testified Tuesday about the couple’s emotional roller coaster in the days before Johnson fatally shot a sheriff’s deputy intervening in their domestic dispute in July.

Speaking in Spanish through an interpreter, Guillermina Alonso, 46, appeared either confused or reluctant as she also described the 11-year marriage of convenience that she and the former Ventura drug counselor only consummated this spring.

The Mexico native, who gained legal residency when Johnson married her in 1985 as a favor to his boss, said the couple’s three-month romantic relationship this year frayed just before Johnson shot Deputy Peter Aguirre Jr., 26, at Alonso’s home in Meiners Oaks.

Alonso, a domestic worker in Ojai, said that Johnson, 49, suddenly moved out of her house two days before the July 17 shooting after Johnson took her to a Sunday breakfast with his parents.

Following the breakfast and a mountain hike where she mentioned Johnson’s boss, her former lover, Johnson packed his few belongings and left. In a subsequent telephone conversation, Johnson told her he wanted a divorce because she was not good enough for his family.

“I think I understood that I was too little a thing for him,” Alonso said.

The heart-rending testimony came on the second day of a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Edward F. Brodie, who will decide if there is enough evidence for Johnson to stand trial in the slaying of Aguirre, the attempted murder of another deputy and in the rape and kidnapping of his wife on July 17.

Johnson was wounded and captured shortly after shooting Aguirre, when he rushed from Alonso’s home firing two handguns at deputies. Defense attorneys concede the suspect fired the fatal shots, but argue that the delusional Vietnam veteran was not in his right mind when he did it.

In an hour of testimony Tuesday, which was suspended once when Alonso buried her face in her hands, the witness answered numerous questions after Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox refreshed Alonso’s memory with her prior testimony before a grand jury.

Several times, Alonso initially answered by saying she was confused or didn’t remember. Sometimes she said she didn’t want to answer at all.

She particularly had trouble with time sequences. After being sworn in, she said she did not know how to spell her name. She refused to give her home address.

Prosecutors acknowledge that Alonso’s testimony is important in proving the rape and kidnapping charges against Johnson. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley said her performance in the preliminary hearing will not hurt his case.

“I think it makes her more believable because she’s so blatantly trying to protect him,” Frawley said. “If she tries to back off now, it makes what she does say all that more believable.”

Alonso is scheduled to continue her testimony today.