Surveillance Videos 'Erased' After Thomas Valva's Death: Witness

LONG ISLAND, NY — The trial continued Tuesday for ex-NYPD officer Michael Valva, charged in the death of his 8-year-old son Thomas Valva, who froze to death in his Center Moriches garage in 2020, with a witness saying that videos from the home were deleted after the boy's death.

Valva, along with his then-fiance Angela Pollina, who will have a separate trial, were arrested Jan. 17, 2020, and charged with second-degree murder and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child. If convicted, each faces 25 years to life in prison. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain jailed without bail.

Surveillance video recorded at the home in the hours before Thomas' death was deleted after he died, according to a report by Newsday. Testifying Tuesday, Suffolk police detective Guy Gerig said he was given the username and password to the Nest system the day Thomas died, but that once he accessed the system, most of the footage prior to 1 p.m. was erased, Newsday reportewd.

Later, Patrick Aube, a network intrusion forensic analyst with the U.S. Secret Service, said the password had been through a process linked to Pollina's phone, Newsday reported.

Speaking with Patch, Valva's attorney John LoTurco said: "All evidence of video deleting points at Angela Pollina. She had complete control of her Nest home surveillance account. The account was in her name, she maintained the username, password, and was the only one who could bypass the two-factor authentication security steps to access the system. All the evidence at the trial confirmed that Michael Valva had nothing to do with any evidence tampering."

Pollina's attorney Matthew Tuohy did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Patch.

On the day of opening arguments, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Laura Newcomb said that Suffolk police detective Norberto Flores got the username and password to the Nest video, and another detective also saw videos of "Thomas and Anthony in the garage, shivering."

That's when the case took a turn, she said, adding that the videos were "being erased" and the password changed.

However, she said, one video wasn't erased.

"There was a video of Bella's room," she said. Bella, the dog, had a warm room in the pantry, and it was through the camera in that room that the detectives were able to hear the audio of Valva saying, "F------ idiot, stand up. F------ idiot. Boo f------ hoo," she said.

At a pre-trial hearing in 2021, Flores recounted the day he was called to the Valva home.

When asked about cameras in his home, Valva told Flores that Pollina "handled that," Flores said; Valva did not object to police going to the home, he said.

Next, Flores spoke with Pollina at the hospital.

"She was visibly upset," he said. Pollina, who had lived at the Center Moriches home for 2 1/2 years, spoke of her daughters, her twins, then 11, and an 8-year-old. She'd driven the girls to school and then returned home to the house, which she said was "hectic" with trying to get the children ready for school.

Valva told Pollina that Thomas had fallen; when she went to the basement, Flores said, she saw that Thomas was "shaking uncontrollably, his legs were kicking and his teeth were chattering. When she put her hand near his mouth, he bit her finger," Flores said.

When Flores told Pollina the importance of the surveillance cameras and asked for her permission to see them, she agreed and gave him the username but then said she couldn't remember the password, he said. Flores said he then "began to fill out the 'permission to search' form" but at that moment, Pollina became distraught about her daughters and who would pick them up from school. Flores said he told her neighbors would help. "She seemed upset, so I stopped the interview" and put away the form, he said.

Next, Flores headed to the Valva home where crime scene vans and SCPD members were present, he said; he walked through the driveway and home and noted the cameras around the house, he said.

Valva and Pollina later arrived and when he asked Pollina, she told an officer to accompany her upstairs to her bedroom where the password was in a notebook in her bedroom; she gave permission and never objected to police looking at the cameras, Flores said. He also said Pollina signed and dated the "permission to search" form.

Opening arguments in the Valva trial began recently in Riverhead before Judge William Condon. Assistant District Attorney Laura Newcomb described how Thomas, 8, died after spending months living in the garage with his brother.

"19 degrees," she said. "That's how cold it was the night before Thomas Valva was murdered on the morning of January 17, 2020."

Just 19 degrees, she said, and Thomas and his brother, both autistic, were forced to sleep on a cold floor with no mattress, no pillow, no blankets, where they had lived for months. "Just his body on the cold concrete all night long," she said.

Thomas died a few hours later of hypothermia, according to the Suffolk County Medical Office' determination. His body temperature was 76.1 degrees, 22 degrees lower than it should have been, Newcomb said.

Newcomb said Thomas and his brother were sent to school starving, eating crumbs from the floor and garbage, and always so cold.

There was also physical abuse, Newcomb said. The boys were slapped and punched; teachers reported red marks, scrapes and bruises, and their soiled clothes reeked of urine, she said.

Defense attorney Anthony La Pinta, in his opening remarks, said the boys struggled with incontinence, something that "caused a major conflict at 11 Bittersweet Lane . . . with Angela, who grew resentful over the urination and defecation," he said.

Pollina also grew increasingly impatient with and resentful of Michael, he said, because she did not feel he could discipline his boys. She threatened to throw Valva and the boys out and Valva was "unnerved" because he was in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, La Pinta said.

La Pinta also claimed that Thomas died from a biological reaction to Valva putting Thomas, who was cold, into a warm bath. He claimed that Thomas died from "vasoconstriction," causing blood flow away from his organs and to his skin and causing cardiac arrest, not hypothermia. "An awful tragedy. Thomas died by accident — not by murder at the hands of his father."

He added: "This was not a senseless act of evil. Michael did not want his son to die. You need to think with your head and not your heart," La Pinta told the jury.

Thomas' mother Justyna Zubko-Valva pleaded for help on her Twitter page before her son died. In 2020, Zubko-Valva filed a $200 million wrongful death suit.

Zubko-Valva has not responded to requests for comment.

In June, a judge ruled that portions of the $200 million lawsuit filed by Zubko-Valva after Thomas died can move forward, a judge ruled.