NYPD cop's suicide pits wife vs. his lover
Secretly named police galpal as pension beneficiary
A Brooklyn cop’s decision to name his NYPD lieutenant lover as his death-benefit beneficiary months before his suicide has pitted the female officer against his wife in a bitter showdown.
NYPD Community Affairs Officer Mike Smith, who was living apart from wife Elizabeth Ann Morehouse, killed himself on March 7, 2017, in his Manhattan Beach apartment while his girlfriend, Lt. Zoya Golubeva, was breaking up with him.
As Golubeva and her parents packed up her belongings in the bedroom, Smith handed Golubeva a piece of paper. On it was written the message, “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
Smith, 48, then walked into the foyer, a few feet away, and shot himself in the forehead. He had filed for retirement days earlier.
Next to his body, an autopsy report said, was a photo of Golubeva, 37. On a counter nearby lay a “pension statement.”
That document is now at the heart of a simmering feud.
Eleven months before his death, Smith had secretly changed his New York City Police Pension Fund beneficiary from Morehouse, his wife of 14 years, to Golubeva.
That move barred his wife and their 14-year-old daughter from collecting his $810,000 death benefit.
“That money should go to my daughter. He’s her father,” Morehouse told The Post.
Beneficiary disputes over death benefits are a plague of pension systems, experts say.
“This kind of thing has gone on forever. It’s soap opera stuff all the time,” said John Murphy, a former executive director of NYCERS, the city’s biggest pension system.
It’s not unusual, he said, for pension members to change beneficiaries without telling their spouse.
“They fall in love with someone else and want to leave the money to them” Murphy said.
Pension members aren’t legally required to tell spouses when they remove them as beneficiaries, and pension systems don’t have to notify a spouse of such a change.
Morehouse said it was after Smith moved out that she learned he
changed his beneficiary. She said she made the discovery when she opened an envelope from the pension fund addressed to him.
A state law gives some protection to disinherited spouses. Morehouse can seek to collect no more than a third of his pension benefits, or about $270,000.
She is filing a “right of election” claim for that sum in Surrogate’s Court. Golubeva can contest it, lawyers said.
Golubeva, a divorced Russianborn mother of three, has a right to collect the rest — $540,000, experts said.
The police fund’s general counsel, Nicole Giambarrese, said it “is legally obligated to honor” a member’s designated beneficiary.
Shortly after Smith’s suicide, Golubeva told his siblings that she believed Smith’s daughter deserved the money, according to Smith’s sister, Kathleen Carrano.
“She called it ‘blood money’ and didn’t want any of it,” Carrano said.
But in the 16 months since Smith’s death, Golubeva has not indicated she will turn over any of the money, Morehouse said.
Golubeva, her parents and her kids had socialized with Smith’s siblings. Smith had hosted Thanksgiving dinner for them.
But soon after his suicide, Golubeva stopped communicating with Smith’s relatives, Carrano said.
Causing additional anguish, Smith’s relatives say, Golubeva holds Korean War medals awarded to Smith’s late father, Raymond, and has not returned them despite repeated requests.
“They’re really significant to our family,” Carrano said. “I don’t know what meaning they would have for her.”
The family is struggling to understand why Smith, a popular cop in the 70th Precinct in Kensington for 23 years, took his own life on the eve of his retirement.
“He was looking forward to getting a dog — even starting a dogwalking service — and going to the beach,” his sister said. “We didn’t pick up on any signs of depression.”
As a union delegate, Smith helped fellow police officers cope with colleagues’ suicides.
“He’d say, ‘Oh, my God, there has to be another way,’ ” Morehouse recalled. “He believed in God and believed that suicide is wrong.”
Smith and Golubeva, who met when she worked briefly in the 70th Precinct, began dating after he left Morehouse in 2014 and had a tumultuous, on-and-off relationship, the family said.
Morehouse and Smith never formally divorced. “We remained friends, and both loved our daughter,” Morehouse said.
Smith, who left no will, had no other assets, but named Morehouse beneficiary of a $250,000 life-insurance policy.
Golubeva, who collected $142,438 in NYPD pay last fiscal year, stands to collect a sizable pension herself when she retires.
Smith’s teen daughter told The Post, “I miss my dad every day.”
She is upset Golubeva might keep her dad’s hard-earned cash.
“She was leaving Daddy. She wanted nothing to do with him. Why does she think she’s entitled to his money?” Morehouse said the teen has asked.
Reached by phone, Golubeva declined to discuss Smith’s death.
Asked whether she would keep Smith’s pension benefits and the war medals, she said, “I’ll have to get back to you,” and hung up.