Aunt Describes Tensions in the Menendez Home

The sister of slain entertainment executive Jose Menendez burst into tears on the witness stand Monday as she viewed pictures of her brother forcing his baby son to hang from a chinning bar.

The photos of Erik Menendez at 18 months showed an infant with his mouth open as if screaming as he hung by both hands from a bar. The father stood by blank-faced, looking at his son.

“He would just hold (Erik) up and see how much he could stand before crying,” Marta Menendez Cano said of her brother’s routine when he took Erik to the gym.

“When he would cry, (Jose) would laugh because he was still such a little one and he was a sissy.”

She said it was part of a pattern in which Jose began to favor his elder son, Lyle, because Erik was seen as soft, while “he was proud that Lyle did not cry.”

When defense attorney Leslie Abramson showed Cano two pictures and asked her to identify them, the witness began to cry.

“Have you seen these photos before?” asked Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberged.

“I don’t think I have,” she said and quickly composed herself.

Erik Menendez, 22, and Lyle Menendez, 25, are on trial for the murder of their parents four years ago in their Beverly Hills mansion. Defense lawyers are trying to show a Van Nuys Superior Court jury that unrelenting harshness by parents who punished them unmercifully convinced the sons that they were in danger of death when they bought two shotguns and killed their parents. The brothers are claiming self-defense.

Prosecutors say the brothers killed on Aug. 20, 1989, out of greed for their father’s fortune.

Cano joined a witness stand parade of relatives in describing her brother’s family as unaffectionate, with the parents rigorously demanding performance from the children at a very young age. Lyle was the favorite, she said.

“Erik was totally ignored unless he was doing something Jose didn’t like,” Cano recalled. At the age of 2, she said, Erik was locked in his room as punishment for crying.

Outside the jury’s presence, Weisberg continued to balk at evidence of the family’s secretive ways and at testimony about Kitty Menendez’s status-conscious personality.

“Ultimately here, the issue is what was in the minds of the defendants at the time the parents were killed,” said Weisberg. “What the mother said is not in issue. What the defendants heard the mother say is.”

Abramson said Erik Menendez will testify that his mother told him the night before the killings, “You’re the reason this family isn’t going to work out.”

“She told her children she hated them and wished they hadn’t been born,” Abramson said. “This was a hostile, secret, dishonest, status-conscious woman.”

“What you’re slowly moving toward here is a psychoanalysis of the parents,” Weisberg said, ruling the evidence irrelevant.

Abramson, who has been in conflict with the judge over the defense strategy, argued vehemently to present testimony about Kitty Menendez’s emotional makeup. The judge said such opinions were impermissible conclusions by witnesses.

Abramson then told Weisberg: “If I were to say about you that you were a person who was never forthcoming about anything emotional . . . and people who knew me would say I always speak about emotional things, that is not guesswork. It’s not a wild conclusion.”

The judge responded: “The nature of your argument for personalizing it doesn’t help much, but I’ll make a public ruling. I don’t find it is relevant.”