LONG ISLAND, NY — Angela Pollina thought Michael Valva had made the garage where Thomas Valva and his older brother were forced to sleep "too comfortable," she told Suffolk County District Attorney Kerriann Kelly. Pollina was repulsed by the boys, saying they were "filthy and stinky" although she refused to let them use the bathroom or shower inside, the ADA added.

Cross-examination began Wednesday in the murder trial of Pollina — former fiancée of Michael Valva, an ex-NYPD officer convicted of murder in the death of his 8-year-old son Thomas, who died of hypothermia after being forced to sleep in his father's frigid garage.

Valva and Pollina were arrested Jan. 24, 2020, and charged with second-degree murder and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Each faced 25 years to life in prison, and both pleaded not guilty.

Jurors convicted Valva of second-degree murder and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child in Thomas' death. The boy froze to death in the Center Moriches garage. His father was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars.

Matthew Tuohy, Pollina's defense attorney, said Pollina will be the only witness he calls to the stand. After the prosecution cross-examines Pollina, closing arguments will follow and then, the jury will deliberate.

Tuohy has maintained Pollina's innocence from the start of the proceedings. "So far, the evidence is emotionally driven, but the facts show clearly she is not guilty of a murder and that it's Valva that acted alone in killing his son."

On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly began by asking Pollina if she had, in fact, sent all the text messages and videos shown during the previous proceedings; Pollina said she had.

Kelly asked if any of the other four children in the home, the dog — who slept in an insulated, warm pantry — or Pollina or Valva had ever slept in the garage.

"You and Michael didn't give it a go?" she asked.

Pollina said sleeping outside the house started as a "Band-aid," with the boys in a tent outside but they eventually got moved into the garage. When asked if she also supported the decision, Pollina said, "Yes, I agreed with him."

Kelly pointed to a text Valva had sent Pollina saying that the treatment of the boys was meant to make him "suffer" and make him feel like a failure, and that she never made her children sleep in a garage.

"It wasn't to make him (Valva) suffer," she said.

When asked if she'd sent the boys outside to urinate, defecate, or wash, rather than letting them use a shower, Pollina said she hadn't; during the cross-examination she repeatedly said she was just following Valva's directions and decisions.

Kelly pointed out that even Edward Concillio, the husband of Pollina's cousin who lived part of the month in a basement office turned bedroom, had access to heat, running water and a bathroom — and he didn't pay rent.

"Those two children had to sleep in the garage and not in the basement?" Kelly asked. Pollina said yes.

Kelly also reminded Pollina of testimony from school officials that said both Thomas and Anthony's individualized learning plans made no mention of incontinence issues or wearing pull-ups; the boys did not have those issues until they moved into 11 Bittersweet Lane in 2017, where they eventually had no access to a bathroom, Kelly said.

Pollina said she could not recall the testimony in question regarding the IEPs.

A text from Valva to Pollina, she added, said. "My son knew how to use a f------ bathroom."

Kelly asked if it were true that the boys did not see their biological mother, Justyna Zubko-Valva, from mid-January 2018, until Thomas died in January 2020. Pollina said yes, that was true.

"You were their only mother figure?" Kellly asked.

When asked by Kelly about Valva's work hours, Pollina said when Valva had the 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift with the NYPD in Brooklyn, "it worked out well," but when he started his new shift of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, with a commute time of about 90 minutes by car, it meant she was alone with all the children from bedtime until after they were off to school.

Kelly asked Pollina, who had worked as a biller in a hospital until she had surgeries and was out on disability, if that was where she'd learned the word "hypothermic."

During Tuesday's proceedings, the jury saw a video where Pollina, when asked by her daughter why Thomas couldn't walk, said, "He's hypothermic."

On Wednesday, Pollina said she used the word to mean "cold," or freezing, and used it in the summer when she wanted her girls out of the pool, telling them, "Get out, you're hypothermic."

She said she didn't know why her daughter asked why Thomas couldn't walk. "I don't know where she would have gotten that question from," Pollina said.

Pollina also said she didn't realize it was 21 degrees; Kelly asked her if she didn't remember speaking about the temperature with Valva just a few minutes earlier.

"Did you ever ask if Thomas was okay?"

"I can't recall," Pollina said.

"Did you ever tell Michael to bring the boys in from the garage because it was so cold."

Pollina said it was "a little chilly"; Kelly reminded her it was 11 degrees below freeezing.

Valva eventually took a second job at a library, Pollina confirmed.

"The boys stayed in the garage the whole time he was there?" Kelly asked.

Pollina said they had but said Valva had put them there. "Not you?" Kelly asked. She added: "You could have said, 'Come into the warm house.' But you never did that, did you?"

Pollina said she had — three times — but Valva found out and was angry.

"I did the best I could," Pollina said. "I wasn't their biological parent. I did the best I could with the circumstances I had."

When asked if she treated Thomas and Anthony differently, Pollina said, "yes," repeating as she did often through her testimony that she followed Valva's "rules."

Discussing the bathrooms, Pollina said she and the girls shared the master bath and the boys and Valva shared the other bathroom upstairs. Eventually, Kelly said, the boys were no longer allowed to use the bathrooms; she pointed to one text from Pollina discussing the smell from the boys' bathroom.

By the time Thomas died, the boys had been living in the garage, Kelly said; Pollina agreed.

"You thought they were dirty, filthy and stinky," Kelly said.

"They were dirty," Pollina agreed.

Texts to Valva indicated that Pollina wanted the boys out of her garage and her home, Kelly said.

She also said the garage was too comfortable for them in a text, Kelly said: "Everything is coming out of there," Kelly read. "Books, clothes. You've made it too comfortable a punishment because you've made it a home. You shouldn't make it a home for them."

Discussing the Nest cameras, Pollina said the account was in her name but that Valva "had access" to the videos.

"At the time Thomas died?" Kelly asked. "He had no access."

Pollina said she "recalled deleting him" from the account but did not know when; she said.

Kelly asked if Pollina used to phone to send clips to Valva of the boys at night and Pollina said yes, because he'd asked to see them. Kelly also reminded that teachers had testified that Pollina used the phone app to talk to the children on the cameras.

Discussing the day Thomas died, Kelly initially began by asking what Valva did when Pollina got to the hospital.

"He just looked at me and shook his head, 'no,'" Pollina said.

"He didn't have to tell you, did he?" Kellly asked. "You knew Thomas was dead."

Pollina said Valva had ridden in the ambulance and she drove herself to the hospital in Patchogue, using navigation to find the way. Kelly then asked Pollina if it were true that on the way home from the hospital, with Valva driving, she accessed her Nest videos a total of seven different times.

"Did you or did you not log in?" Kelly asked.

Pollina repeatedly said Valva, who was driving, had access to her phone and was on the phone with Nest and Googling information.

Kelly then asked Pollina if she had logged in at 1:23 p.m., 1:55 p.m., 1:59 p.m., 2:01 p.m., 2:02 p.m. 2:15 p.m. and 3:03 p.m.

"We were together," Pollina said. "I don't remember but he had acess to my phone." She said she wasn't feeling well and was dozing; Valva, she said, told her "he was fine to drive."

When asked about the video clip shown in court where she is heard telling Valva that she deleted video and changed the password, Pollina said, "He asked me to delete the video and yes, I did. I did what he asked me to do."

Kelly then asked Pollina why she would delete the video of that morning, the video that would have shown what really happened to Thomas. On Tuesday, Pollina testified that she'd gone to the garage and found Thomas with Valva; Thomas was on the floor and she said she'd sat on the floor, put him on her lap and dried his tears. She also said she felt his forehead and he said, "Ow, ow, ow."

That video, Kelly said, "would have shown you sitting on that urine soaked floor. You told the jury you sat on the floor with Thomas on your lap. Did you delete the video that would have shown that?"

At some point on Jan. 17, 2020, Kelly said, all the videos were deleted. "All the videos," she said. "That could have shown what really happened to Thomas."

Kelly said Pollina lied and deleted "to protect yourself."

"I did it for himself (sic) and myself, for both of us," Pollina said.

When Valva was working, Kelly said, Pollina was in charge of the kids; she was the emergency contact if Valva wasn't available. Valva, Pollina said, "patched" her in on all calls from the school and she attended all parent-teacher events with him.

"Did the teachers put you on notice that Thomas and Anthony were starving?"

When asked if she was aware that they were "very cold" at school Pollina said she could not recall.

Pollina insisted she gave the boys a shake their father wanted them to have and granola bars for breakfast.

Kelly also read a list of "Rules For Me To Follow At Home," his teacher said was written by Thomas. Those rules included, "No peeing in pants," "If I have to pee in the middle of the night, control myself," "No grabbing and grinding myself," "No screaming or yelling," and more.

Pollina said she had no knowledge of the list and didn't recognize the handwriting as Thomas.'

But, she said, "We expected them to control themselves at night." Kelly said they were in pullups and not allowed in the house to use the bathoom. Pollina said they could have come inside; she said the door was not locked.

Kelly read a text she said was from Pollina to Valva in 2017: "I don't care. They're going to school. No f------ breakfast."

Pollina said she didn't recall the text.

And, Kelly read another text. "I'm not feeding nobody. I"m done with the stupidity of your children. I'm taking care of my own f------ kids. CPS had better not send me no more reports."

Pollina said she still fed the kids and that she was just "angry" when she wrote the text.

Kelly then asked if it were true that the reason Pollina, as she said on the stand Tuesday, was "fixated" on the older Valva boy's touching himself, watching videos of him late at night, "bothering no one" in the garage, was because she thought it was "disgusting" and because she was afraid of "germs" and disease and styles.

"It is dirty," Pollina said, adding, "It was "inappropriate behavior."

Kelly added maybe he put his hands in his pants because "he was freezing. Maybe he was just a little boy, warming himself. Or because he had no access to a bathroom, he was trying to stop himself from urinating. Maybe he was a little boy in a diaper and it was uncomfortable."

The bottom line, Kelly said to Pollina, was: "You wanted the boys out of your house."

Pollina said it wasn't just the boys; she no longer wanted to marry Valva. "The family dynamics weren't working."

And yet, Kelly said, after Thomas died, Pollina and Valva were still found together in their bed. "I was on my side," Kelly said. "I didn't want to go near him."

Kelly pointed out that Pollina's family lived in Franklin Square and if she wanted a place to go, to leave Valva, she had one.

By the time Thomas died, Kelly said, the boys "spent every waking hour in the garage," eating, sleeping, doing homework. Pollina said there were times when "they were dry and good," that they could come inside."

"So if they were dry and good it was okay," Kelly said. "You put them out there because you thought they were dirty, filthy and stinky."

After the text telling Valva the boys were too "comfortable," Kelly showed a video of the garage, stripped of all "comforts." Thomas was shown "curled up in a ball," trying to keep warm, she said.

"You got your way," she told Polllina. "There were no longer any comforts."

Pollina said she wasn't justifying her behavior but by making the garage a home, nothing would change.

Meanwhile, the situation was going downhill for everyone, she said.

Kelly fired back that the boys were in the garage, not for Valva, but for Pollina, "to make you happy, because your house stunk." Valva had sent text to Pollina saying his sons "were not going to be treated like outcasts, sleeping on the concrete floor, exiled," Kelly said.

Those texts also reflected Pollina telling Valva he used the boys' autism "as an excuse." She also said she didn't want them in the house and she wanted out of the relationship, Kelly said.

At one point, Pollina even got one of her daughters involved; the girl told her mother that there had been knocking from the garage for 15 minutes. Pollina told Valva to handle it.

Showing a video where Thomas took a dirty towel from the laundry basket to keep warm, Kelly said she texted Valva and called Thomas an "SOB."

"My terms were wrong," Pollina said.

She also blamed Valva for the "methods" of punishment used, which she said "he started."

Speaking about the morning Thomas died, Pollina said she heard Valva scream "F------ idiot" from the backyard. She said she screamed at him to lower his voice because of the neighbors before she pried open the blinds and saw Thomas naked, Valva just finishing hosing him down.

The jury listened to video of Pollina saying, "It's all over the floor" after Valva said Thomas had defecated in the night.

Kelly said Pollina asked Valva if he'd cleaned up the floor before entering the garage and questioned how Pollina had "sat on the floor" in a urine-soaked garage.

The only difference that day, Kelly said, was that Valva had been home the night before; if he had been working, Pollina would have sent Thomas outside to the backyard to clean up. Pollina said they had wipes and he would have put his dirty clothes in a garbage bag.

"He was 8 years old and not allowed to use the shower in the house," Kelly said; Pollina said she wasn't allowed to help him due to mandates from his biological mom and he couldn't use a shower alone.

Pollina said again that she was doing bills and helping her daughter with spelling words and telling the youngest Valva boy to get a snack, a "hectic" morning.

When asked if she remembered Valva screaming "Get up! Get up!" to Thomas, she said she couldn't hear what he was saying. She was asked if remembered Valva calling Thomas "a f------ moron" and saying he'd done a "head dive into the concrete" and Pollina said she remembered him calling Thomas a "f----- idiot.' There was a lot of anger and frustration."

Pollina also said she didn't remember a moment on the video where Anthony knocked on the garage door asking for a sip of water; Valva said it was okay but when Pollina said she didn't do that in the morning, Valva told his son to get a drink at school.

"He did what you said," Kelly said.

Pollina said she never asked if Thomas was okay because she didn't think he was in grave danger and his father was bandaging him up.

When she heard Valva slap him and went to the garage, Pollina said Valva had his hand on Thomas' mouth; she told him to stop and he did, she said.

Still, Pollina said, "He wasn't in danger."

Kelly questioned how Pollina, who wouldn't let the boys sit on the furniture because she was afraid they'd urinate, making them sit on the floor, allowed Thomas to sit on her lap, during the time she testified to comforting him.

Kelly also asked why Pollina told the house cleaner why Thomas fell in the driveway running for the bus, when she knew that wasn't true; that Valva told her he'd fallen in the backyard and had never gone to the bus at all.

"You knew he didn't fall on the driveway," Kelly said. "That's the story the two of you came up with."

Pollina said Thomas was able to walk out of the garage to the kitchen and was conscious until she came downstairs from getting a clean towel and the heater and found Valva getting him out of a bath. She said his eyes were closed and he didn't respond when she called his name.

Kelluy asked how, in the two minutes it took to go upstairs and get those things, Thomas went from being conscious, to being, as first responders found him: blue, cold to the touch, with eyes open, fixated, and pupils dilated, with no pulse.

She also asked if Pollina ever told the EMTs or anyone that day that she'd said Thomas was hypothermic and that he'd slept in a frigid garage; Pollina said she did not, because the EMTs were not talking to her and she was crying and being comforted by the house cleaner.

Pollina did not go to the hospital and followed in her own. car; Kelly said she asked to go to the school to get her kids "because you wanted to control what they said happened in that house." Pollina said that was absolutely not true.

"You did not care one bit about what happened to Thomas until it impacted your life," Kelly said.

Pollina said it wasn't true.

Kelly then said Pollina took the time to cancel a nail appointment before she went to the hospital. Pollina said it was a dental appointment.

Tuohy then cross-directed, asking if Pollina felt she'd violated her duty of care to the boys; she said yes, including putting the boys in the garage.

He asked who'd put the boys in the garage the night before Thomas died and she said their father did.

"I own up to that," she said, adding the screaming and yelling were wrong and that her disciplinary methods were aggressive.

Tuohy asked if she violated her duty of care on Jan. 17, or if she yelled or was abusive to them or punished them on that day. She said she did not.

Tuohy asked a series of questions; Kelly objected and said they were just a repeat of the direct examination and it wasn't a cross direct.

When asked why she didn't call police on the morning Thomas died, Pollina told Tuohy she did not believe he was in grave danger; she said she just thought he fell.

"He was in his father's care; his father was a police officer," she said.

Tuohy said he is not contemplating reduced charges and while he would not comment on her testimony, he said, of Pollina, "She's doing her best."

He said he felt "100 percent" confident in Pollina taking the stand and his goal was to be "transparent."

His stance has always been to focus on the events of the day Thomas died, Tuohy said. Pollina, Tuohy said: "She didn't commit murder. Finding her guilty of a murder she didn't commit is not going to give closure."

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