‘Alibi’ Witness Tells of Confession : Court: Ex-lover who initially claimed Guy Dean Bouck was with her when his wife was slain now says he admitted killing her.

A former alibi witness in an 8-year-old murder case told a grand jury in Los Angeles that her lover admitted to killing his wife--and threatened to kill her if she revealed his secret, according to transcripts made public on Thursday.

“I just stood there and said, ‘You killed her,’ ” the witness testified she said to the suspect.

And he answered that his wife “had it coming.”

He also pointed a gun at her head, she testified, telling her that “now I wasn’t an alibi. I was a loose end. And he couldn’t have any loose ends leading back to him, so I was going to have to die.”

Former tire store manager Guy Dean Bouck, 45, was charged last month with murdering his second wife, Stephanie, so he could inherit $80,000 in insurance money and the couple’s Canyon Country house before she carried out plans to divorce him. He has pleaded not guilty.

The 918-page grand jury transcript reveals the witness’ claims that Bouck sexually and psychologically abused her for three years following the slaying. As a result, she told the grand jury, she did not reveal--or even admit to herself--everything she knew about the case until recently.

Prosecutors say the woman’s experience, which culminated in a 1990 rape, was but one of a myriad of violent acts Bouck inflicted on the women and children in his life.

Her testimony last January helped persuade the grand jury to indict Bouck for murder with three special circumstances that could carry the death penalty: lying in wait, torture and financial gain. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.

The name of the accusing witness is being withheld because Bouck was convicted of raping her. She said she now believes the attack was an attempt to intimidate her, perhaps even to kill her, to ensure her silence. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence for the assault.

The woman related to the grand jury what she said were long-buried memories of Bouck’s murder confession, which occurred during a physical fight she had with him within a week of Jan. 3, 1987, the day Stephanie Bouck’s body was found.

The accountant, known as “Stevie,” had been shot four times. She was discovered in her bedroom by her grown daughter after she failed to keep a family appointment.

Bouck was arrested the following day but not charged in connection with his wife’s slaying. Sheriff’s deputies held him for 48 hours, then released him after the district attorney declined to prosecute, citing insufficient evidence, including a missing murder weapon.

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Shortly after his release, Bouck confronted his lover about doubts and suspicions she expressed soon after the slaying.

She told the grand jury he was wearing latex gloves when he pointed a revolver at her in the bedroom of her Tarzana condominium.

“He walked toward me and he’s, like, hitting me on the shoulder, telling me that I don’t know anything. And the next thing I remember is he’s telling me I’m the perfect alibi, the perfect blind patsy. All I had to do was tell the truth and he was home free.”

She testified he then pulled her by the hair, jerking her head back, and held her at gunpoint. “And he tells me that I’m going to beg for my life like she begged for hers.”

Instead, the witness said, she grabbed Bouck’s hair and stood up to him, even though the barrel of the gun was pressed against her forehead.

“I said, ‘Get it out of my face or I will pull every piece of this hair out. And you will have to explain my death and your bald spot,’ ” she testified.

She told the grand jury that Bouck then forced the gun into her hand, telling her she was now an “accomplice” because her fingerprints were all over the murder weapon.

In an interview, defense attorney Charles Klum said the woman’s credibility “is going to be critical” in the case, adding that her story will not go unchallenged.

Klum labeled her testimony this year “inherently suspect” because it includes details she failed to reveal before--either to police or during a 1990 probate battle waged by Stephanie Bouck’s daughter and brother.

The civil case ended with a judge’s decision that “a preponderance of the evidence” proved that Bouck killed his wife for financial gain. The April, 1990, ruling blocked Bouck from inheriting any proceeds from his wife’s estate and eventually prompted the district attorney’s office to reopen the case.

Transcripts from the civil case show that the star prosecution witness never mentioned that Bouck held her at gunpoint and admitted killing his wife.

“It seems logical that a person who’s telling the truth gives a story and doesn’t change that story later on,” Klum said. “Jurors, if asked to accept a third story as true, have to take that story with a grain of salt.”

But the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey C. Jonas, said the woman’s story has been consistent, even if she didn’t immediately disclose details. He contends that she may have previously put some of the more traumatic memories out of her mind. And, he said, she took Bouck’s threats to kill her and her children seriously.

Jonas, who began investigating the case in 1993, said the woman initially was reluctant. “There was a wall as we sat down together,” he recalled. Later, after Bouck was imprisoned and she grew to trust prosecutors, Jonas said, the details of her story poured out.

She offered a chilling account of Bouck’s demeanor as he appeared in the bedroom of her townhouse at 4:10 a.m. on Jan. 2, 1987--shortly after the time Jonas now alleges that Bouck killed his wife.

“He was standing--his fists were clenched and he was just kind of like shaking, kind of just staring off into space,” she testified. “I just went to put my arms around him because he was just standing there. . . . And all he said was, ‘Just hold me. Just hold me.’ He was so cold. He was shaking. . . .

“I couldn’t get him to talk to me.”

Later, she said, she awoke to find him standing over her, looking “kind of strange.” She followed him into the bathroom. In the light, she said she saw the tension in his face.

“It was like a whole different look he had.”

The woman said that for years she convinced herself that Bouck’s wife was killed sometime after 7:30 that morning--a time frame that fits Bouck’s alibi that he was with her in Tarzana.

She pushed her doubts to the back of her mind, but they continued to nag her, she told the grand jury. She wrote them down in her journal, now a key piece of corroborating evidence in the murder case.

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In the journal, which was read to the grand jury, she described Bouck’s demeanor: “Guy is here at 4:10. Strange today. His body is tight and rigid. There is a wall a mile high. . . . Terrible knot in my stomach.”

After Bouck’s initial arrest, she met with a lawyer to help establish his alibi and win his release from jail. The woman told grand jurors she experienced a strong gut feeling that her lover had killed his wife--but immediately suppressed it.

She wrote in her journal, “I knew Guy killed Stevie. It’s a feeling, only a feeling. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“I told the attorney if he went to trial, I would do everything to help him win because that was my commitment,” she wrote in her journal. “However, I would grieve the end of a great love, as personally I am sick inside that he could harm another human being.

“I loved Mr. Hyde. I don’t know Dr. Jekyll.”