Valva, Ex Talk Deleting Videos Hours After Thomas, 8, Froze: Witness

LONG ISLAND, NY — A witness in the trial of Michael Valva, an ex-NYPD officer whose son, Thomas, 8, froze to death in his father's garage in 2020, testified Monday that he and then-fiance Angela Pollina discussed erasing the Nest video recordings in the house just hours after Thomas died.

Valva, along with Pollina, who will have a separate trial, were arrested Jan. 24, 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.

Thomas and his brother, who had autism, were forced to sleep in the frigid garage as temperature outside plummeted to 19 degrees, prosecutors said. When he died, Thomas' body temperature was 76.1 degrees, 20 degrees lower than it should have been, prosecutors added.

Suffolk Police Sgt. Norberto Flores took the stand and gave a timeline of the day Thomas died. When asked about a point on the Nest video, at 2:36 pm. on Jan. 17, 2020, Flores said he, Valva, Pollina, an NYPD chaplain, and other police personnel were at the home on Bittersweet Lane in Center Moriches. At first, he said, he was speaking to Valva and Pollina was speaking to the chaplain; Flores said he was offering condolences. Valva and he discussed a possible media release — Flores said he was unsure who initiatiated that conversation — and he told Valva that unless the media asked, police would do their best to "protect his privacy."

Then, Flores said: "I heard Angela Pollina say she deleted the history. Michael Valva said, 'Change the password.'"

Nest videos were played in court Monday from a compilation of the recordings. On Jan. 17, 2020, at 8:09 a.m., Valva was heard on a video made in the dog, Bella's room — each of those videos shows the dog Bella, who is kept inside the room, listening as the events unfold. Pollina asks Valva why he is yelling.

Thomas, he said, "s--- in his pants. So much it's coming out his a--." A moment later, he added, "I can't beat the s--- out of him, right? It's all over the floor."

"You deal with this," Pollina said.

During video from 8:09 a.m., Valva can be heard shouting, "Turn around! Get up! Get up! Get up!"

At 8:14 a.m. Valva is seen on the video going into the room where Bella is kept, seemingly gagging, wearing black gloves and carrying what appeared to be a plastic bag. At 8:19 a.m., Valva enters his youngest son's bedroom and says he needs help finding an "outfit for Tom." At first he tells the child the first pair of pants is too big. He tells him to find "an old pair of sweatpants."

When the boy shows a pair of pants, Valva said, "No, these are nice. Find an old pair of sweatpants."

A video taken outside on the cold January morning, at which the low temperature was forecast for 19 degrees, shows the wind whipping as Valva hoses off Thomas, who is naked.

Valva could be heard screaming, "Get up! Get up! What's wrong with you! Goddamn you, get up!"

Last week, according to News 12, Flores testified that Thomas, naked, had fallen in the yard multiple times.

As Valva raged, Pollina screamed, "Come on, Michael! The f------ neighbors!" the video indicated Monday.

"Get up, you f------ moron!" Valva screamed. "What a f------ mess! I can't send him to school now!"

Valva, in the courtroom Monday, showed no emotion as the video clips played, looking down.

When a child was heard in the video asking Pollina, "Why can't he walk?" she explained that Thomas had hypothermia and was freezing because he'd been washed in cold water.

Moments later, Valva was heard screaming, "Walk! Walk! Are you alive? Are you alive? You don't want to answer me? Fine!"

When Pollina asked what Valva was doing, he said he was suffocating Thomas. "Michael, get your hand off his mouth right now!" Pollina screamed.

At 8:53 a.m., Valva said Thomas had fallen and had two "gigantic bumps on his head," and that he'd fallen because he was cold. "Boo f------ hoo!" he said. "He's a bloody f------ mess."

At 8:57 the house cleaner Tyrene Rodriguez arrived; last week, she testified that she helped Valva give CPR to Thomas, both on the couch and on the floor. She said that Thomas was "lifeless," and that he was cold, clammy, wet, blue with blue lips and naked, according to News 12.

Another video showed Pollina entering her daughter's room to get a space heater from the closet.

At 9:40 a.m., Valva called 911.

In video taken later that afternoon, Valva was seen cleaning up in the basement, stuffing trash into an adult diapers' bag.

Videos were also shown of the boys sleeping in the garage, as well as one of the older Valva boy crouched in the garage near a Christmas tree and some ladders.

Later on Monday, a series of texts was shown between Pollina and Valva, which reflected Pollina's growing frustration with the incontinence issues as well as other characteristics exhibited by the older Valva boy associated with his autism.

In one text on Feb. 25, 2019, Pollina complains about the older boy. "I'm not surprised, it's freezing and he's on concrete," Valva said. Pollina counterd that it wasn't cold and the girls window was open. She said the boys' behavior was ruining their family. Later, Valva texted Pollina, "So he's going to go to school reeking of piss?"

He texted that he'd come home and take care of it. He said his boys wouldn't sleep on the cold garage floor and he wouldn't have him treated like an outcast anymore. "He's not going to be exiled," he said of his older son.

Pollina fired back that he could take the boys, "not a problem. I'm not having him in this house anymore. I need to be thoroughly clean. You don't want him exiled? That's what he wants...You are using his autism as an excuse. He is not coming in this house. I'm going to throw that backpack into the garage and open the door when it's time for school."

Pollina also, according to the texts shown, accused Valva of "babying" the older boy. "You kiss his f------ a--."

At one point, Valva texted that it was "f------g killing me, to see him suffer like this. Something is wrong."

Pollina added: "This is a behavioral issue...He's a stubborn b-----. I don't even want him in my garage anymore. I don't want him here and I don't want it around my girls anymore."

Valva countered: "I don't want my son living like a prisoner."

Pollina said if he didn't want the boy living like a prisoner, he could "figure it out. I don't want him here anymore..There's a rule — peeing in the pants, not coming in the house."

She added that she would not live her life that way and could not marry Valva, with the older boy exhibiting the behavior that he did, as well as the incontinence issues.

Defense attorneys have argued that Valva never thought his son would die in the garage and that he was a man trapped by lack of money due to a contentious divorce, with nowhere to go with his three boys if Pollina threw him out, something that put him under enormous pressure.

Valva's attorney John Lo Turco did not respond to multiple requests for comment Monday.

During opening arguments, Assistant District Attorney Laura Newcomb told the jury that Thomas had an accident and soiled himself, she said. Valva, she said, "began screaming, 'Stop pooping. I should make you eat this ---t.'"

Then Valva took Thomas outside into the cold and hosed him down with icy water from the spigot, she said. Thomas began falling head-first onto the concrete. "What did this father do?" she asked, pointing at Valva. "Did he try to help him? No. He began yelling, 'F--- you, moron, walk!'"
And later, he said of Thomas, "He's cold. Boo f------ hoo," Newcomb said.

Thomas died a few hours later of hypothermia, according to the Suffolk County Medical Office' determination.

Looking back to September 2017, when Valva and Pollina moved in to 11 Bittersweet Lane in Center Moriches, with both Thomas and his brother, and finding it difficult to communicate, the boys were "punished if they didn't use their words," given no food, she said.

The boys were starving at school, eating crumbs from the floor and half-eaten food from the trash, Newcomb said. In a year, his brother had lost 20 pounds and Thomas gained only a pound, she said.

Also, although both boys had been toilet trained when they began living with Valva and Pollina in 2017, by 2018, they were back in Pull-Ups. Due to their accidents, they were forced to sleep on the floor, on pads meant for training dogs, Newcomb said.

"When that didn't work, they were forced into the backyard, alone in a tent, while the rest of the family slept upstairs in their warm beds," she said.

The boys were next "exiled to the two-car garage with the unwanted items. A life-size Halloween werewolf. A Christmas tree. No heat. No insulation. By the time of Thomas' death, the boys were living out of the garage."

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.

The jury will see proof, Newcomb said, because 11 Bittersweet Lane had the Nest video recording system that saved information to the Cloud.

"You can see the abuse they endured" at the hands of their father, Newcomb said.

And, she added, there are the texts. Newcomb read one that said the boys, if they refused to listen, would be put out in the snow.

Or another: "I will beat them until they bleed," Newcomb read.

Another video shown Monday afternoon depicted Valva beating one of the boys in the garage, Newsday reported.

And, Newcomb said during opening arguments Valva texted, at another time: "When I get home I'm going to f------ handcuff him," Newcomb said.

Defense attorneys, however, maintained that Pollina was the dominant person in the relationship, whose "trigger" was the boys' incontinence that sparked her anger.

Recent witnesses included teachers at Thomas' school, who have sobbed on the stand as they recounted seeing Thomas and his brother starving, cold, with bruises and scratches, and eating crumbs from the floor.

Special education teacher Katelyn Edwards said before classes were dismissed for school breaks and weekends, she was worried about the older Valva boy, because "she was afraid he might die."

"I did say that," Edwards said. "I thought he was going to die."

Testimony continues Tuesday in Riverhead.