Prosecutor Says Accused Killer Lied : Trial: Man charged with bludgeoning his wife fabricated key facts, attorney claims in closing argument.

VAN NUYS —  Disputing an accused killer’s defense that he bludgeoned his wife as a reaction to years of abuse, a prosecutor charged Thursday that the man lied to a jury and that his family may have helped him cover up the crime.

Attorneys gave impassioned closing arguments Thursday in the murder trial of Moosa Hanoukai, who is charged with killing his wife by hitting her nearly 50 times with a blunt object and leaving her body in the garage of their Woodland Hills home.

Hanoukai, 55, admitted killing Manijeh Hanoukai, 45, with a wrench, but mounted an unusual “cultural defense.” The defendant, a Jewish immigrant from Iran, testified he snapped when she cursed him and the couple’s daughter during a fight on the day that was both the Jewish Sabbath and Persian New Year’s Eve.

Prosecutors want Hanoukai convicted of murder, while the defense asked the jury Thursday to return the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Saying the true story of the March 29, 1993, slaying may never be known, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady concluded that Moosa Hanoukai fabricated several key facts in his story.

Triangular-shaped wounds and cuts in the victim’s blouse do not match the shape of the open-ended wrench that Hanoukai said was the weapon used, Cady said.

As a result of the beating, Manijeh Hanoukai lost two to three quarts of blood, but only tiny amounts of blood were found in the bedroom where Hanoukai said the beating occurred, according to the evidence. Hanoukai also said he did not clean up the body, but a coroner testified that the victim’s underwear was wet. Cady also said blood had been washed from her hair.

“Who knows what he did with her body?” Cady said. “Who knows if he put her on ice?”

While the defense portrayed Hanoukai as a frail, browbeaten man, Cady told the jury that men working at the couple’s home heard Hanoukai yelling at his wife during an argument on the day of the slaying.

Hanoukai, jealous of his wife’s success at the family’s Huntington Park clothing store, planned to kill his wife, according to Cady, but he panicked when he realized he would be held responsible for her death.

“Maybe someone from the family comes over to help clean up,” Cady said, drawing gasps from Hanoukai’s relatives. “You’ve got to remember the family didn’t like her.”

To support this theory, Cady cited phone calls between Hanoukai and his sister that, according to the defendant’s account, took place five hours after he killed his wife. While Hanoukai admittedly dressed the corpse in fresh clothes, Cady suggested someone provided guidance.

“Maybe it wasn’t him,” she said. “Maybe it was someone helping him out. If you use your common sense, he didn’t think of pantyhose.”

As he has throughout the two-week trial, defense attorney James E. Blatt portrayed Hanoukai as a weak man who was left with no self-respect after his wife psychologically abused him for more than a quarter-century.

“This act was not from a macho man, but from a dependent, depressed, weak individual,” Blatt said as Hanoukai cried at the defense table.

Hanoukai was forced to sleep on the floor for eight years, his wife constantly said he was stupid, and psychological testimony indicated he was in a “dissociative” state at the time of the killing, according to the defense attorney.