Valva, Pollina Lose Custody Of Kids After Thomas Valva's Death: Lawyer

CENTER MORICHES – "It's finally over." So said the biological father of Angela Pollina's youngest daughter on Tuesday as, after years of waiting, Pollina's custody rights were terminated.

Both Pollina and ex-NYPD Officer Michael Valva were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after being found guilty of second-degree murder and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child in the death of 8-year-old son Thomas, who froze to death in his father's Center Moriches garage in 2020.

Valva was convicted in November, 2022 and Pollina, in March of 2023.

During the legal proceedings, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly described the Center Moriches house as the "house of horrors," where Thomas, died of hypothermia after being forced to spend the frigid, 19-degree January night with his brother in his father's unheated garage, on a cold cement floor with no blankets or pillows.

Also living in that house at the time of Thomas' death were Pollina's three daughters and Valva's remaining two sons.

And since the arrest, both the biological fathers of Pollina's girls and Justyna Zubko-Valva, Thomas' mother and the mother to two other sons, have fought tirelessly to receive full custody of their children.

On Tuesday, that fight was won, with Judge Frank Tantone terminating Pollina's custody rights and affording those rights to both Gino Cali, the father of Pollina's youngest daughter, and Michael Ichkhan, father to her twins.

A decision dated August 15 said that Pollina committed acts "constituting severe child abuse," and that her three daughters were "derivatively severely abused, derivatively abused, and derivatively neglected by Angela Pollina."

Custody was officially granted to Cali and Ichkhan on Tuesday, December 10.

Cali said he has been fighting for more than a decade for custody of his daughter. "This 13-year horror show is finally over," he said.

"We're happy it's over now," Ichkhan told Patch. "We continue to heal and move forward."

Lou Sternberg, family court lawyer for Michael Valva, confirmed with Patch that all Valva's custody rights and visitation rights were terminated in late October.

In a case where custody rights are terminated, there can be no communication or visitation with the children and orders of protection are put in place, Sternberg said.

At Pollina's sentencing in April, 2023, Cali spoke, his eyes filled with tears. "It's the verdict I wanted — but it doesn't bring Tommy back," he said.

Ichkhan, father of Pollina's twin girls, shared a statement with Patch after Pollina's sentencing: "Angela, today is the moment I’ve been waiting for the last three years because in my mind I knew it was coming. But, in my heart, I’ve been struggling with it — not just for me but for my daughters. Today you finally answer for your heinous acts from the past 14 years. All the years of physical, mental and emotional abuse and the disgusting and deliberate act of murder. You always thought no one can touch you – well, you thought wrong.”

He added: “Thomas is the reason I have my daughters back. This still doesn’t sit well with me. Do you want to know why? Because I have a heart, something you clearly don’t have. One final note, Angela: May you rot for what you did!”

Ichkhan and his wife, as well as Cali and his partner Geri Antonacci attended the sentencing, sitting together in solidarity and vowing to protect the girls forever.

Ichkhan said his and Cali's focus is on the girls, he said. His daughters have had nightmares, he said, adding that they're doing better, but what happened will be with them forever.

Cali also spoke with Patch after the sentencing: "I want to celebrate that I have my daughter, but for Thomas to have died to make it happen is just insane," Cali said.

After the sentencing, Cali said: "It still won't bring Thomas back. None of it makes sense. I wish she would've just gotten life, so all of these kids can continue to heal. My heart goes out to Justyna," he said, breaking down in tears.

Cali and Ichkhan both vowed Pollina will never see her girls again. "Over my dead body," Cali said.

He added: "Even though I have my daughter, it's never going to be okay. Thomas is my daughter's guardian angel."

Teachers and the principal from East Moriches Elementary School offered emotional testimony in both Pollina's and Valva's trials, describing Thomas and his older brother, who came to school bruised, soaked in urine, starving, and always cold. Detectives and others who responded to the home also testified.

During Valva's trial, one witness, a plumber, said he saw Pollina throw a child down the stairs.

There was also evidence shown of texts reflecting Pollina's frustration with the incontinence of Thomas and his older brother and her stating that she did not want them in the house.

Valva's defense team painted an image of Valva as a man stressed over finances, who had nowhere to go with his boys if he had to leave the home he shared with Pollina.

At Pollina's sentencing, ADA Kelly spoke of Thomas: Describing a photo she'd shown during the trial, of Thomas at school the day before he died, giving a thumb's up and smiling, she said he was still innocent.

"He thought goodness and love could return to his life. But what we know from the evidence was that Thomas wasn't surrounded by love — he was surrounded by nothing other than pure evil," Kelly said. "The redness of his hands and cheeks was evidence of that evil."

She said Thomas, exiled to sleeping on the cement floor of a freezing cold garage, was forced to use pullups and wash in the backyard; on the morning Thomas died it was 19 degrees, yet his father forced him outside naked to wash him with water from an icy spigot.

"Thomas was a profile in courage," Kelly said, tears in her voice. "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 asked the judge to remember how Thomas spent the last special days of his life. On his last birthday, he was chastised because the teacher brought in sweets. On Halloween, he was dressed as a prisoner, "which he was." On Thanksgiving, he was in the garage with Anthony wondering what Black Friday was. And Christmas was spent, too, in the lonely, cold garage.

Thomas lost many things, she said — he never went to junior high school, never learned how to drive, never had a first date or bought his first home or had children.

People in the courtroom sobbed audibly.

Instead of being a happy, health 8-year-old little boy, Thomas had stress-induced alopeci, a kidney infection and other ailments. "As an 8-year-old, he should have looked forward to playing with his dog, a favorite TV show, a Christmas gift. Instead, he was trying to figure out how to stay warm," she said.

Even on the day he died, Kelly said, Pollina showed Thomas no mercy, screaming at him for an accident in the night. She said Pollina knew Thomas was hypothermic when he kept falling but did nothing.

One text revealed Pollina telling Valva that she wanted all books, clothes and blankets out of the garage. "There should not be one thing that belongs in a bedroom in there," she wrote.

Even in prison, Pollina and Valva will have warm beds with blankets, food, recreation, the things that were denied the boys for years, Kelly said.

In recent weeks, officials unveiled "comprehensive" changes to Suffolk County's Department of Child Protective Services, so, they said, what happened to Thomas Valva can never happen again.

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.