‘Evil Stepmother’ gets 25 years to life for freezing murder of Long Island boy

NEW YORK – Long Island’s “seditious, wicked and cruel” mother-in-law, as described by prosecutors, convicted by a jury last month of the murder of 8-year-old Thomas Valva, was given a maximum sentence on Tuesday 25 years to life imprisonment.

“My only regret is that they don’t have a garage there,” the judge said of the jail where Angela Pollina will serve her sentence.

Pollina was found guilty on all counts in mid-March after a grueling trial. Thomas’ father, former NYPD officer Michael Valva, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison last year.

Thomas died of hypothermia in early 2020 after he and his brother were forced to sleep in the family’s freezing, unheated garage one night when outside temperatures dropped below freezing, prosecutors said. The brothers, both autistic, had to sleep there as punishment for constantly urinating and defecating in the house, the researchers said.

Pollina’s defense team had argued that no matter how anyone might judge her parenting behavior, she had not murdered the child. The jury disagreed and found her guilty on all charges against her.

The Suffolk County woman, who prosecutors say was often the 8-year-old boy’s primary caregiver, was visibly upset after learning of the guilty verdict. It included four counts of child endangerment as well as second-degree murder and followed just five hours of jury deliberation. The trial itself lasted two emotional weeks.

Initially, a juror seemed unwilling to convict, but another panel member later said it was a repeat of the medical examiner’s office testimony that convinced the person to vote guilty. The judge also apparently told the jury afterwards that he made the right decision in the case, as previously reported.

In the days following Thomas’s death, investigators uncovered a series of disturbing allegations – repeated and extreme punishment, starvation, being locked in a freezing garage for hours – at the hands of his father and his fiancée of SO. Jurors saw autopsy photos as well as videos showing the two boys shivering on the garage floor.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said those exhibits were instrumental in the prosecution’s case.

“He really created a gripping story about what happened to those two poor kids,” Tierney said last month.

On Tuesday, lead prosecutor Kerriann Kelly described that evidence as “something that made horror movies come true.”

At trial, Kelly had attempted to portray Pollina as a “bad stepmother” who tortured children out of frustration over their incontinence problems. Prosecutors said she refused to let them into the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home to shower, instead washing them with cold water from a hose in the backyard. court.

And they urged the jury not to believe Pollina when she testified she tried to help Thomas, who had a core temperature of 76 degrees when he arrived at the hospital the day he died. Kelly said the woman “knew something was seriously wrong” with the boy and didn’t even give him a blanket.

Nor did Pollina indicate she was sorry, Kelly said during her sentencing. There were five other children living in the house at the time, he noted on Tuesday, and Pollina also showed no remorse for what they suffered under her roof.

“She testified, ‘I was mean and cruel and these kids witnessed that,'” Kelly told the judge. “Not once did he indicate that he was sorry about that either, and that says a lot, in my humble opinion, about the identity of this defendant.”

“Ironically, prison life will be better than the hell he put 8-year-old Thomas and 10-year-old Anthony through,” he added. “And she will be surrounded by adults who will protect her from harm, which Thomas and Anthony absolutely experienced at school, absolutely not at home.”

When asked at her trial whether she felt she had a duty to do better in terms of protecting children or treating them differently from other children, Pollina gave the same seven-word response: “I did the best I could.”