Man Testifies He Used Wrench to Beat Wife to Death : Court: Moosa Hanoukai says he killed Manijeh Hanoukai after she cursed him and their daughter.

Fighting to maintain his composure, an Iranian immigrant told a jury Friday how he used a wrench to fatally bludgeon his wife after the woman said she wished the couple’s daughter was dead.

“At that time, I wasn’t feeling anything, I wasn’t understanding anything,” Moosa Hanoukai testified, sobbing uncontrollably as he discussed the slaying. “It was like a blackout.”

Hanoukai, on trial in Van Nuys Superior Court and charged with murdering his wife, Manijeh, nearly one year ago, said he grabbed a wrench from his kitchen and went upstairs in the couple’s Woodland Hills home, where he killed her.

“I ran after her and pounded--pounding and pounding,” Hanoukai said through a Farsi interpreter. The beating stopped when he got tired, according to his testimony.

Hanoukai, a 55-year-old Iranian Jew, said the killing occurred Friday, March 29, 1992, the Sabbath and Persian New Year’s Eve, two celebrations where special meals are generally prepared. But, Manijeh Hanoukai did not prepare a feast that night, Hanoukai said, explaining that he killed his wife after eating a bologna sandwich.

Defense attorney James E. Blatt is presenting a “cultural defense,” arguing that Hanoukai, driven by his male-dominated background, reacted after a quarter century of psychological abuse from his 45-year-old wife.

Several people, including the defendant, have testified that Manijeh Hanoukai often called her husband “stupid” and forced him to sleep on the floor.

But Hanoukai indicated that the final straw were curses directed at him and the couple’s only child, Delaram, 25.

“I hope you’re dying, and I’m going to get rid of you, hopefully,” Manijeh Hanoukai said to her husband, according to his testimony.

Speaking of the daughter, Manijeh Hanoukai said, “I hope you lose your head and your life,” Hanoukai said.

Hanoukai testified that he cleaned up the blood after the slaying, realizing what he had done. After taking bloody clothes off the corpse, he put a dress on the body. “It was very difficult to do that,” he said.

Hanoukai testified he placed the body in the garage after wrapping it in a plastic garbage bag and blankets.

At the start of Friday’s proceedings, Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz refused to reconsider a decision handed down earlier this week to dismiss first-degree murder charges against Hanoukai.

When the case concludes next week, the jury will have the option of convicting Hanoukai of second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory penalty of 15 years to life in state prison, or voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 11 years.