Justice For Thomas Valva

A sad and horrific chapter in the history of Long Island has been closed with the sentencing of Angela Pollina for her role in the murder of her eight-year-old stepson, Thomas Valva, who froze to death after being locked in a garage overnight with no heat or blankets as temperatures fell to 19 degrees.

Blue lights in memory of the boy still shine throughout the Moriches Bay Area as residents express their compassion and sorrow for the abused youngster who fell through the cracks of a child protective system that utterly failed him. His father, Michael Valva, an ex-New York City police officer, received the same sentence as his fiancée, 25-years-to-life, in a case where the little boy’s birth mother led a crusade in trying to expose years of abuse leading up to his murder.

Justina Zubko-Valva appeared before judges, wrote letters, appealed to multiple authorities in a vain attempt to save her son, but it all fell on deaf ears. Even his schoolteachers raised numerous red flags in a grotesque exposure of the failures of Suffolk County’s Child Protective Services. That the father was a police officer as a possible reason the abuse was allowed to perpetuate rankled the community. That Pollina exhibited no compassion for the emaciated and battered boy infuriated anyone who followed the sordid details exposed at their trials.

Handing down Pollina’s sentence, Supreme Court Judge Timothy Mazzei told her, “You tortured those boys,” referring to Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, 10, who survived the abuse.

"My only regret, Ms. Pollina, is that they don't have a garage in prison, that has no mattress, no blanket, no pillow—nothing that belongs in a bedroom...That's where you deserve to be the rest of your natural life.”

After suffering in the cold garage all night without access to a bathroom, Thomas was hosed down by his father at an outdoor spigot as Pollina looked on. She weakly contended in court when she took the stand in her own defense that she offered the boy a towel and a blanket as a show of compassion. Her lawyer argued that it was the cold water administered by the father that caused his ultimate death, not the actions of Pollina, but the jury didn’t buy it. Her testimony was appalling as she admitted: “I treated them bad...I treated them evil. I put them in the garage. It was horrible. Yes, I did…I exiled them.” Her words brought tears to the jurors who convicted her after only a day of deliberation.

At the time of his death, Thomas’ body temperature had fallen to 76 degrees, the prosecution noted. He was suffering from a head injury, sunken hips, no body fat, alopecia, and a chronic kidney infection from holding his urine, all signs of the unconscionable abuse he suffered in his living hell. Valva and Pollina were arrested in January 2020 and charged with second-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child. Judge Mazzei told Pollina that he looked up the definition of the word "torture" and said it was something that causes agony or pain, or the infliction of intense pain to punish, coerce or afford sadistic pleasure. "That's what you did—and never once have you ever shown any sorrow, remorse, or compassion."

A “profile in courage” is what Prosecutor Karriann Kelly called Thomas during Pollina’s sentencing hearing. "He stared down the faces of evil he endured each day in the faces of his father and this defendant, a mother figure in his life for two years. He battled and fought but ultimately lost the war." Kelly characterized the abuse inflicted on Thomas and his brother as “cruel, callous, wanton and evil.” They were undernourished and begged for food at school, and were seen by teachers foraging through the garbage because they were so hungry, she said. They came to school soiled, wearing pull-up diapers; their hands and faces were red, cold to the touch. They were given no access to a bathroom, and when they soiled themselves, they were banished to the cold garage, the prosecutor had charged.

A memorial to Thomas Valva stands outside of the elementary school he attended in East Moriches Robert Chartuk

Videos displayed at the trial showed both boys in the garage in the days before Thomas died. The eight-year-old was shivering and said he needed to use the bathroom. He looked up at the camera with “pleading eyes for someone to help him,” Kelly said. When the ambulance arrived, Pollina stayed in the bathroom “doing her hair" as Thomas lay "ice cold and lifeless." It took her 45 minutes to arrive at the hospital, Kelly told the jury.

The inexplicable murder of Thomas Valva continues to roil the community with an ire directed at the institutions that were supposed to protect him: a legal system that turned a blind eye to the pleas of a mother for help, and Child Protective Services, which even recently was reported to have considerably more cases than its workers can handle. The county named a task force to look into the child welfare system and the legislature approved the “CPS Transformation Act” in the wake of Thomas’ death. According to published reports, the task force hasn’t met since 2021 and promised investigations have gone nowhere. A $200 million lawsuit filed by Justina Zubko-Valva against those she pleaded with to do something is pending. The people who put up blue memorials to the little boy hold out hope that the system never again allows such a horror.