Star Cop Freezes Autistic Boy To Death

Star Cop Freezes Autistic Boy To Death

Moriches is a cozy hamlet in Suffolk County on New York’s Long Island, technically a part of Brookhaven. The community is most well known for the Jurgielewicz duck farm, which raises over 1 million Pekin ducks annually. The community west of the Hamptons has that small-town feeling of what Long Island used to be. However, in 2020, this sleepy waterfront community was torn apart by a terrible crime. They were all left wondering: how could this have even happened in the first place? This is the story of Thomas Valva.

On December 30th, 2015, NYPD transit officer Michael Valva filed for divorce from his then-wife, Justina Zubko-Valva. While the divorce was pending, Justina initially retained custody of their three children: Thomas, Anthony, and Andrew. But after the representative for the Valva kids in the divorce action informed New York Supreme Court Judge Hope Schwartz Zimmerman that Justina had been interfering with her access to the three boys, the judge awarded temporary custody to their father, Michael. The judge did, however, allow Justina unsupervised visitation with her boys. However, things were far from amicable.

After Michael was awarded temporary custody of his kids, he filed CPS allegations against Justina. The father alleged that his ex-wife was hitting the boys and poisoning them with a toxic brown medicine. He also accused Justina of suffering from a deteriorating mental illness that rendered her incapable of caring for their kids. A day after these filings, CPS investigator Michelle Clark visited Thomas and Anthony at their school. Both boys denied their father’s allegations. Furthermore, they advised the investigator that they had no concerns about visiting their mother. They insisted that Justina did not use physical punishment, nor were they afraid of her.

Meanwhile, Justina filed allegations of her own. She informed CPS that her sons were starving and suffering from severe weight loss while living at their father’s house. She noted that in one month, eight-year-old Anthony had lost over 13 pounds, six-year-old Thomas had lost over four pounds, and four-year-old Andrew had lost nearly four pounds. Additionally, the mother alleged that Michael and his significant other, and later fiancée, Angela Pollina, were beating the boys. She claimed the couple beat them on their heads, their hands, and their backs. She also claimed that they were put in extremely long timeouts without food or water and were forced to stay outside in the backyard without shoes.

Justina tried unsuccessfully to follow up on her report by calling CPS on November 13th and December 1st, 2017. She later learned that CPS investigator Clark closed the complaint against Michael on November 9th, two days after Justina filed her report. There has never been a concrete reason for the closure of this complaint, but one could speculate that Michael’s status as an NYPD officer could have influenced this decision. On December 17th of the same year, Justina met with investigator Clark and her supervisors, Edward Heap and Robert Lido. She told them that the boys were losing weight while living with their father, that their educational needs were not being met, and that their father was leaving them outside in the cold without shoes as a form of discipline.

According to Justina, she provided CPS with a flash drive containing 320 files of direct evidence that Michael and Angela were hurting these boys. The flash drive also contained letters from a pediatrician and a neuropsychologist who specializes in treating kids with autism, as both Thomas and Anthony were diagnosed as autistic. Moreover, the flash drive contained a letter from Dr. Kimberly Behrens, who supervised Anthony’s intensive behavior treatment, which predicted that Judge Zimmerman’s order to remove the boys from Justina’s custody would cause regression in Anthony’s developmental progress, as well as psychological and emotional distress for the boys. Justina also provided CPS with certified transcripts of audio recordings showing Michael and Angela trying to brainwash the kids against their mother by forcing them to repeat phrases like, “I don’t love Mommy,” “Mommy is mean,” and “I don’t want to stay with Mommy.”

On January 2nd, 2018, Justina filed another report against Michael with Suffolk County CPS. The complaint alleged that CPS closed out the report a day later without conducting any investigation. On January 14th, she filed a third report after she noticed injuries on Thomas’s backside, which included coagulated blood spots, bruises, and broken blood vessels. Thomas told his mother that his father hit him 12 times the day before. After investigating the injuries, CPS filed a neglect petition against Michael for his excessive corporal punishment. His case was adjourned in contemplation of dismissal on March 7th, and an order of protection was issued directing him—and it literally said this—to “refrain from DV and the use of corporal punishment and to take classes at a local library.”

On January 16th, Justina threatened to file a complaint against CPS investigator Michelle Clark for conducting CPS’s investigation in a biased and unfair manner, stating that she was responsible for Michael’s January 13th attack on Thomas. The next day, Ms. Clark filed a neglect petition against Justina under Section 1029 of New York’s Family Court Act. For those unaware, this is a temporary order of protection. If law enforcement or a social services agency has reason to believe that your son or daughter has been abused or neglected, then the law allows them to remove your kids from your custody. Soon after CPS filed a neglect petition against the mother, Justina alleged that CPS filed the neglect petition as retaliation for her threat to file a complaint against Ms. Clark. CPS removed Ms. Clark from the case and, in February of 2018, replaced her with investigators Jennifer Lance and Melissa Estrada.

However, the drama would continue from here. Justina alleged that CPS investigators Lance and Estrada repeatedly lied to ensure that the neglect petition against her would continue. Specifically, she claimed that Ms. Lance and Ms. Estrada fabricated allegations that the mother had mental health problems that had deteriorated since losing custody of her sons in September of 2017, that her behavior had become increasingly erratic and concerning, that she had exhibited a recent history of violence, and that she was out of control. They also alleged she was consistently uncooperative and unmanageable when dealing with authority, and finally, they alleged she had a drinking problem. Justina contended that Ms. Estrada and Ms. Lance made these allegations without any evidence and that the two CPS investigators never even spoke to her directly.

She also alleged that Ms. Estrada and Ms. Lance misrepresented the situation in the Valva home by stating that the Valva home was stable and provided excellent living conditions, that Michael was affectionate towards all of the kids, that Michael used discipline appropriate for the boys’ age, development, and conduct, that Michael provided age-appropriate care and supervision of the boys, and that Michael accepted responsibility for past problematic behavior and had taken appropriate steps to initiate change. Unlike Michael, who had his case adjourned in contemplation of dismissal after beating his son’s backside bloody, CPS decided to prosecute the neglect case against Justina. Because CPS chose to proceed with the neglect proceedings, Michael and Justina’s divorce was halted pending the resolution of the neglect petition.

The neglect proceedings began with an emergency hearing on January 17th, 2018, where Family Court Judge Cheng issued a temporary order of protection suspending Justina’s rights to unsupervised visitation with her kids. She then requested a hearing on the temporary order of protection, which culminated in Judge Cheng modifying the order two months later to allow for unsupervised visitation. Judge Cheng proceeded to hold a full fact-finding hearing on the neglect petition. On April 12th, 2019, Judge Cheng concluded that the county had produced insufficient credible evidence to support a finding of neglect against Justina. Judge Cheng held that many of the county’s allegations did not even rise to the level of neglectful behavior. Moreover, the judge rejected the county’s claims that Justina’s mental health was impaired. Indeed, he observed that Justina, who worked as a corrections officer, had submitted a pre-employment psychological evaluation report from the Department of Corrections that concluded there was no evidence of psychopathology. Judge Cheng also stated that he had the opportunity to observe the mother; he found that although Justina expressed her belief that CPS, the county attorney, and the attorney for her sons were all working against her, she was focused, goal-directed, and clear, and did not appear to suffer from any mental illness. Thus, Judge Cheng dismissed the county’s neglect petition against Justina.

Based on multiple complaints from the boys’ school about Michael’s mistreatment of his sons, Judge Cheng ordered CPS to investigate. As a result, CPS generated reports on October 2nd, 2018, October 15th, 2018, and March 5th, 2019, which contained statements from the boys’ teachers and doctors about Michael and Angela. For example, the October 15th report contained the following troubling claims from the boys’ teachers at East Moriches Elementary School: Renee Eamon reported that she and the teachers were concerned as Anthony and Thomas had lost a noticeable amount of weight, they were both very thin, and they constantly asked for food. Anthony’s special education teacher told CPS that she had concerns for Anthony; he looked emaciated and shoved food in his mouth as fast as he could. Thomas’s teacher said that she had witnessed Thomas eating crumbs off the floor and out of the garbage. She also expressed concern that he had been sent to school in a wet pull-up and was not allowed to go to the nurse’s office to take it off. According to reports, the boys wore pull-ups as they were incontinent due to stress and due to long bouts of not using the bathroom while at home. Anthony’s teacher indicated that she was concerned as Anthony had little to no emotion and had been observed snatching food off of desks and off the floor.

Even before these investigations took place, the principals and teachers at East Moriches Elementary School had placed over three dozen calls to CPS on their own, and nothing had been done about it. In the same report, the boys’ doctor expressed concerns that Anthony and Thomas were malnourished and underweight, with their BMI being in the first percentile. So why was it that CPS’s concern was Justina and not their father, Michael? Meanwhile, the boys remained in Michael and Angela’s custody. On January 8th, 2020, CPS investigator Lydia Sebasto and her supervisor, Gene Montague, closed out the last report that had been filed on the CPS hotline. Justina spoke to supervisor Montague on the phone twice and begged her not to close the investigation, but they did anyway.

In less than 10 days after CPS closed out its final investigation into Michael Valva and Angela Pollina, the unthinkable happened. On January 17th, 2020, Thomas Valva went into cardiac arrest after contracting hypothermia. According to text messages between Michael and Angela, the couple had, for months, repeatedly locked Thomas and Anthony in an unheated garage at their home at 11 Bittersweet Lane. While being kept in the garage, Thomas had urinated and defecated on himself. Just after 8:00 a.m., according to an audio recording from the security camera in the home, Michael told Angela that he should make the boy eat his own feces. He berated his son using expletives as he screamed at him for soiling his pants before school. He then ordered Thomas to strip down, which can be heard on the recording. The unclothed third grader then went into the backyard so his father could douse him with cold water.

Thomas fell as he walked, striking his head on the concrete, which was seen on the video footage from a neighbor’s security camera. At about 8:50 a.m., Michael, who had brought his son back into the garage, can be heard on the audio recording from the security camera swearing as he tells Angela that Thomas is catatonic. He repeatedly yells, “Wake up! Are you alive?” and then slaps Thomas each time. After submerging Thomas in a warm bath, Michael called 911 at about 9:40 a.m.—an hour later—before even attempting CPR.

“11 Bittersweet Lane, Center Moriches, New York 11934.” “11 Bittersweet, nearest right on the corner?” “Yes, sir.” “What’s your name?” “My name is Michael. I’m a police officer with the City of New York. I don’t know if he’s breathing or not. I don’t know if his heart stopped. He fell down on his way to the bus and banged his head pretty good. I brought him in, and I’m doing CPR right now.” “Alright, how old is he?” “Eight years old.” “Okay, do you need any instructions, sir?” “Um, I just need somebody here. I already—I already sent them.” “Okay, help is already on the way. Do you need any other kind of help?” “I’m not sure, hopefully…” “Alright, is your front door unlocked for them?” “I’m sorry, I have to keep on doing CPR.” “We already sent help, okay? Okay, thirty. Alright, I’m gonna hang up now. Is that alright? Do you need me for anything?” “No, just please get somebody here.” “Okay, we’re gonna get somebody right there. Okay, we’ll get one right now, they’re on the road.” “Yeah, he’s freezing.” “Keep going until someone takes over and tells you to stop.”

According to responding officers, Michael had called 911 and claimed his son had fallen in the driveway while waiting for the school bus and that he was unconscious. When they arrived, he was performing CPR on Thomas in the basement. The little boy was rushed to Long Island Community Hospital, where his temperature was ultimately taken; it was only 76.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Soon after, Thomas passed away at about 10:30 a.m. However, the officers quickly figured out that the father was lying. According to Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart, “We determined Thomas was never in the driveway that morning. He suffered head and facial injuries that were not consistent with the father’s account.” Michael Valva and Angela Pollina were arrested and charged with second-degree homicide and depraved indifference to human life. Both pled not guilty.

Although this goes without saying, the NYPD suspended Michael without pay. Police made the arrests after reviewing the home surveillance video. Each room of that house had a camera that was labeled. The camera in the garage was low to the ground and pointed towards the floor with a label that read “The Kids’ Room.” The two previous nights showed Thomas and Anthony sleeping on the garage floor, shivering. Audio files recovered from the home recorded the couple discussing the fact that Thomas was suffering from hypothermia, had been washed with cold water, could not walk, and was face-planting on the concrete on the morning he was killed. After the arrest of Michael and Angela, Justina regained temporary custody of sons Anthony and Andrew. Angela also had three daughters: a set of 11-year-old twins and a six-year-old. The girls had been staying with their maternal grandmother but were released into the custody of their respective fathers.

According to father Gene O’Calley, “I knew this would happen. Trying to tell people for a long time.” He stated that he hadn’t seen his daughter in three years because Angela prevented him from doing so. He added, “I’ve always wanted to be in my daughter’s life. There’s not been one day that I didn’t want to be in my daughter’s life.” Michael Itkin, the father of the 11-year-old twins, told the judge that he hadn’t seen his daughters in three years for similar reasons.

On January 30th, 2020, family, friends, and strangers heartbroken over the tragedy gathered on Long Island to bid a final farewell to Thomas. His funeral began at 9:30 a.m. at Saint Elizabeth Church, with burial to follow at Saint Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale. Bishop Zglejszewski, who gave the sermon, had strong words for elected officials and those in social services. He said that Thomas’s story should prompt everyone to take a hard look at our social services system. He stated, “I hope that the message of this tragedy will touch so many hearts and so many lives, too, simply because we have to do something about this. Another beautiful life was lost because of our human negligence, and in so many ways, I feel that we failed this little boy.”

On November 4th, 2022, three years after causing the death of his son, Michael’s case went to trial. About 70 people packed the small courtroom, taking up nearly every seat. About a dozen residents from the community, who had been there almost every day of the trial, had also come to watch. Michael’s lawyer, John LoTurco, conceded to the jury that his client was guilty of all four counts of child endangerment, but he asked jurors to consider lesser homicide and manslaughter charges that carry significantly less prison time. He argued that for prosecutors to prove that Michael had committed second-degree homicide, they would have to show that he exhibited depraved indifference toward his son. Prosecutors, his lawyer said, wanted to paint Michael as a cold-blooded monster, a werewolf with no love in his heart, who did not shed a tear over the death of his son. He added, “You’d have to believe that he had utter disregard for Thomas’s life, that he simply did not care whether Thomas would die, and that’s absolutely not true.”

However, Suffolk County Prosecutor Kerriann Kelly had a word for the defense. She said, “You can’t throw an eight-year-old into 19-degree weather naked after having him sleep on a cold garage floor and not expect that the child is going to be hypothermic. This is depraved indifference murder by a man who had utter, complete disregard for the life of his child, and he did nothing that day but lie and treat his child in a cruel, inhumane way.” She followed her statements up by showing the jury the last known photo of Thomas, taken by his teacher on January 16th, 2020. Thomas, who wore a dark gray long-sleeve shirt, was smiling as he gave a thumbs up. Ms. Kelly showed a photo from the next day; it was the one taken from the morgue. Thomas was pale and his lips were blue, his dark eyelashes standing out against his snow-white skin. Michael showed little emotion during closing arguments; he looked away when a photo of his son in the morgue was shown on a small screen at the defense table.

After about seven hours of deliberations, the jury returned its unanimous verdict: Michael Valva was found guilty of second-degree homicide and four counts of child endangerment. On December 8th, 2022, Michael Valva returned to court for his sentencing. Tearful, he read a statement to the judge prior to learning his fate, which read: “My actions were neglectful and abusive to my boys, resulting in the tragic death of Thomas.” The defense asked for a lesser sentence and highlighted Michael’s career in law enforcement, but the judge threw the book at him and gave him the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. An equally emotional Judge William Condon asked out loud to the courtroom, “How did all of us as a community allow this to happen? I don’t think you intended to kill Thomas, but there was no getting around that Thomas and Anthony lived their lives in constant duress in the place they should have felt safest: their own home. An eight-year-old boy who right now should be getting excited for Christmas is dead. I speak for everybody out there: we can never let this happen again.”

Still crying, Michael told the judge that he accepted receiving the maximum sentence. “Your honor, I accept your sentence as I already sentenced myself to a lifetime filled with extreme regret, remorse, and grief.” On April 11th, 2023, Michael Valva’s co-defendant and former fiancée, Angela Pollina, received the same sentence of 25 years to life in prison for her role in Thomas’s death. Suffolk County Court Judge Timothy P. Mazzei called her evil and said she tortured the eight-year-old and his brother. He said, “My only regret displaying it is they don’t have a garage there with no heat and no mattress and no blankets and no pillows.”

It’s been theorized that Anthony and Thomas were the targets for Michael and Angela’s mistreatment due to the fact that both brothers were autistic and that the other four kids residing in the Valva household were not. During the course of the investigation, it was found that the other kids were unharmed. According to a study conducted by the National Library of Medicine, 18.5% of autistic kids have been harmed physically by their caregivers, and 16.5% had been assaulted. These numbers go up to nearly 60% as those same kids reach adulthood.

Additionally, studies show that domestic violence is rampant in police officer families. The National Center for Women & Policing noted that two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24%, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than among American families in general. Additionally, police typically handle cases of domestic violence involving officers informally, often without an official report or investigation, or even a check of the victim’s safety. This informal method is often in direct contradiction with departmental policies. Lastly, even officers found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or even referred for prosecution.

So what do you think? Is a sentence of 25 years to life appropriate for Michael and Angela’s crimes? As of the date of this recording, Michael is 43 years old; it is possible that he could make it out of prison in his lifetime. Is this justice? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.