Menendez Uncle Says He Was Told of Abuse : Trial: The brothers told him months after their arrests that they killed their parents and they had been molested, he testifies.

Six months after their arrests, Lyle and Erik Menendez confessed to killing their parents and disclosed they had been sexually molested, their uncle testified Wednesday.

With the defense seeking to show the allegations of abuse were not made up right before trial, uncle Carlos Baralt said his nephews made the revelations at the Los Angeles County Jail in the fall of 1990.

At what Baralt called a “very emotional” jailhouse meeting, with Erik Menendez crying and Lyle Menendez’s voice breaking, the brothers said they killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, on Aug. 20, 1989, in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion, he said.

But under cross-examination, Baralt said the brothers did not tell him that they had killed in self-defense, as they now claim. And he testified that Jose Menendez was a “great guy,” giving a generally glowing portrait of the man the defense has portrayed as a tyrant.

“Did you see any signs of any kind of sexual molestation occurring between Jose Menendez and his sons?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich asked.

“No,” Baralt said.

Moments later, Baralt added: “They seemed like a normal family unit.”

Erik Menendez, 22, and Lyle Menendez, 25, are charged with first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their parents. The brothers have testified that they lashed out in fear and self-defense after years of physical, emotional sexual abuse.

A physician testified that he examined both brothers in the county jail two months ago, but found no scars, tears or other evidence that they were victims of sodomy.

The results of his examination were predictable, however, according to Dr. Kerry English, a pediatrician at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. The brothers say they were abused years ago, he noted, and physical evidence of sodomy usually disappears within days.

Most of the day was taken up with the testimony of Baralt, 57, of West Windsor, N.J., who was used by the defense in part to rebut the prosecution contention that the brothers killed to get their parents’ millions.