Jose Menendez Hit Son at Age 5, Relative Testifies

Jose Menendez ordered his brother-in-law out of his house when he urged Menendez to take better care of his sons, an uncle of Lyle and Erik Menendez testified today during their murder trial.

Peter Cano was the latest in a parade of relatives, neighbors, and former teachers and coaches of Lyle and Erik Menendez to testify that the defendants’ parents were abusive.

The brothers are accused of planning and carrying out the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents--wealthy entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty--in the den of the couple’s Beverly Hills home.

Cano testified that when Lyle was 5, Jose Menendez reprimanded the boy severely for being hyperactive.

“Jose stood up, grabbed (Lyle) and just looked at him right in the eyes and said something to him that I couldn’t hear,” Cano said.

The confrontation caused the young child to “wet himself,” said Cano, a former husband of one of Jose Menendez’s sisters.

A “pale and trembling” Lyle was escorted to his room by his father, said Cano, who testified that he trailed behind.

“I yelled at Jose . . . because he was doing things that I thought were way out of line,” Cano said. At that point, he said, Jose “hit (Lyle) with his closed fist” on the child’s chest.

Cano testified that he told his brother-in-law: “That’s no way to raise a child.”

He said Jose told him that if Cano didn’t like it, he could leave the house. Cano said he gathered his wife and five children and left.

When they take the stand, Lyle and his brother are expected to claim that they killed their parents in self-defense after enduring years of psychological, physical and sexual abuse. But the prosecution claims the brothers killed out of greed for a $14-million estate and hatred for their domineering father.

Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg appeared Thursday to be tiring of the testimony from the parade of witnesses that the defense hopes will persuade jurors that Jose and Kitty were abusive parents.

He ruled that Cano could testify only about the one episode because everything else the defense hoped he would say has “all been gone into before.”