Jo'anna Bird's mother, kids try to cope with her loss

The mother of Jo'Anna Bird, the New Cassel woman stabbed to death in 2009 by her ex-boyfriend, is trying to legally change the last name of the slain woman's 5-year-old son, she said Wednesday.

The boy's father, Leonardo Valdez-Cruz, 25, is serving a life sentence for torturing and murdering the boy's mother.

It's just one of the ways Dorsett is coping with the loss of her 24-year-old daughter.

The loss of his mother at his father's hand haunts the boy, says Dorsett, who is sending him and his 7-year-old half-sister to weekly counseling.

"They're going to have to be in counseling for a while," Dorsett said Wednesday in the office of her attorney, Frederick Brewington of Hempstead, who's representing her in a lawsuit against the Nassau County Police Department and also will be helping with the name-change process.

As the boy and his classmates were making paper turkeys recently, one student insisted the 5-year-old couldn't make the art for his grandma, only for his mom.

"He said he didn't have a mommy because his mommy was in heaven. She's an angel," Dorsett said her grandson said.

When the classmate persisted, the boy spoke the brutal truth about what happened to his mother, Dorsett said: "He just came out and said, 'Because my daddy killed my mommy.' "

This past Thanksgiving was particularly hard for the family, Dorsett said. She recalled how her daughter, in 2008, had devoted herself to cooking a feast.

Dorsett knows 2008's menu like she just tasted it: collard greens, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, turkey, ham, sweet potato pie, apple pie, rice and beans - "She made rice and beans because her daughter loves rice and beans," Dorsett said - ox tail, curried chicken and more.

Dorsett was preparing for this year's Thanksgiving meal with Bird's children when "the kids kept saying, 'Remember mommy used to do this?' and 'Remember mommy used to do that?' " Finally, Dorsett said, she decided to go for Thanksgiving at another daughter's house.

"I took out the turkey. I took out the ham, and then I couldn't do it," she said.