The grieving mother of two murdered Queens boys faces eviction from the family’s apartment and can’t even afford to pay for her sons’ funeral, her lawyer said yesterday.
“She’s in total shock. She’s in mourning, she’s numb,” Mark Zawisny said of Jolanta Short.
“She came here a few years ago to make a new life and in two minutes her whole life was taken away,” he said of the Polish immigrant. “She just wants to know why.”
Short’s husband, Ronald, 49, is being held on $10 million bail while a Manhattan grand jury hears evidence in the killing of the couple’s children, John, 3, and Richard, 7.
The dad took the boys from the family’s Long Island City co-op Jan. 9 – and their beaten and hacked bodies were found Saturday in a basement room of a West 25th Street building he managed.
Ronald Short is jailed on child endangerment charges stemming from the boys’ disappearance. Police say he is the only suspect in the twin slaying.
Zawisny said Jolanta Short, 38, is staying with relatives and hasn’t talked to her husband since her sons’ bodies were found.
“To her, her life … is over. She feels nothing” for her husband, Zawisny said.
The lawyer said his client has no money and that the family had fallen months behind on maintenance payments at the posh Citylights apartment complex. He said they owed $12,000 and the co-op board had started eviction proceedings before the tragedy.
But that didn’t prepare Jolanta Short for the shock of getting an eviction notice soon after the killings.
Zawisny said he talked with the co-op board and it has agreed to put the eviction on hold.
Zawisny said Short has not been going to her nursing job and “does not have money to bury” her sons.
But a generous Brooklyn funeral home has pledged to cover all funeral costs.
George Mueller, funeral director of the Stobierski-Lucas Gardenview Funeral Home in heavily Polish Greenpoint, said the boys’ wake will take place on Friday at the earliest.
The family plans to bury the boys, side by side, in Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens.
Friends and neighbors have taken up a collection to help Short. Donations can be sent to her lawyer at 129 Nassau Ave., Brooklyn 11222, or to Citylights front desk, 4-74 48th Ave., Long Island City, Queens 11109.