Cousin Recounts Child Abuse in Menendez Home : Trial: Defense witness says beatings occurred and anxiety was high when he spent summers at the Beverly Hills mansion. Judge denies prosecutors’ objections to the testimony.

As children, Erik and Lyle Menendez were visited by a cousin who testified in court Tuesday that their home was the site of beatings, fear and tense “Jeopardy” quizzes at dinner.

At night, Brian Andersen Jr. said, he would hear raised voices coming from the bedroom of the Menendez parents, Jose and Kitty, and the next morning, the mother would be bruised.

Erik and Lyle, now 22 and 25, respectively, are on trial for murdering their millionaire parents. Their lawyers have admitted that the brothers committed the killings but said they acted after years of emotional and physical abuse. Prosecutors say they acted out of greed.

Andersen, testifying for the defense, said he often spent summers at the Menendez house.

“When Jose came home, he would sit in his chair with the paper. . . . He would take off his belt and put it on the coffee table and snap it. You knew someone was going to be disciplined,” he said.

Dinner was a tense time, Andersen said.

“It was very much like a ‘Jeopardy’ setting with Jose quizzing the kids with questions of the day,” he said, referring to the popular television game show.

“Answers were needed quickly,” he added, imitating how Menendez would snap his fingers demanding responses.

“And what if they didn’t know the answers?” defense attorney Jill Lansing asked.

“They were instructed to put down their knife and fork and go find the answer in a newspaper or an encyclopedia,” he said.

Andersen, 31, is the son of Kitty Menendez’s brother, who lived in Illinois. He said he was never hit but was verbally disciplined by his aunt and uncle.

“Sometimes I’d be locked in the bedroom overnight,” he said. “When I had to go to the bathroom, I’d knock and knock but got no response. . . . As a 12-year-old I had to go in a garbage can and once I peed out the window.”

Erik and Lyle also were locked up, Anderson said, adding that while helping them clean their room, he found a container under the bed filled with feces.

He also said Kitty Menendez would go into rages at least once a week, smashing the family’s china.

“I would go in and say, ‘Kitty,’ and that seemed to snap her out of it,” he said. “It was very frightening.”

Andersen testified over the objections of prosecutors, who maintained that the brothers’ early childhood experiences were irrelevant to their parents’ fatal shooting Aug. 20, 1989, at their Beverly Hills mansion.

Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg allowed the testimony and said he would also permit testimony about the mother’s driving.

Attorney Leslie Abramson, who represents Erik, said later testimony would show that Kitty Menendez was a reckless driver who endangered her children’s lives.