The father of a nine-year-old girl who was found dead in New York hung his head in shame as he was arraigned for allegedly killing her when he was set to hand custody back to her mother.
Luciano Frattolin, 45, was seen in a white jumpsuit and shackles being hauled into Ticonderoga Town Court on Monday, where he pleaded not guilty to murdering his daughter Melina.
Authorities allege that he killed the little girl on Saturday while they were traveling home to Montreal, Canada, before reporting that she had been abducted.
Authorities issued an AMBER alert at the time, however cops came to suspect that Frattolin had ‘fabricated’ the report, officers said at a press conference on Monday morning.
At the press conference, officials said that Luciano and Melina had traveled to the US from Canada on July 11 for a vacation, and were expected to return on Sunday.
Luciano and Melina had spent the week on vacation in New York, but he was set to hand custody of his daughter back to her mother that day, officials said.
Melina’s mother had full-time custody, and had been estranged from Luciano since 2019.
At around 6:30pm on Saturday, Melina phoned her mom to say she was heading back to Canada, but sometime that night she was allegedly murdered.
The little girl was found in the shallow portion of a pond in upstate New York near the town of Ticonderoga on Sunday. Her cause of death is not yet known, and officials said they would perform an autopsy on Monday.
Police have not officially determined a motive, however the timeline laid out by cops at Monday’s press conference suggest that the alleged murder came as Luciano was set to give custody of his daughter back.
He is now facing charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse.
Luciano Frattolin, 45, hung his head in shame as he was arraigned on Monday for allegedly killing his daughter, 9, when he was set to hand custody back to her mother over the weekend
Luciano Frattolin allegedly killed his daughter Melina on Saturday before reporting that she had been abducted, which cops said he had ‘fabricated’
Cops said Luciano Frattolin, 45, ‘fabricated’ reports of his daughter’s abduction, and he is now facing charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse
Melina’s body was tragically found in a remote area near the town of Ticonderoga on Sunday, with New York State Police Captain Robert McConnell saying at Monday’s press conference that the discovery was devastating.
‘This is certainly a difficult case, a heartbreaking investigation,’ McConnell said.
McConnell said Luciano initially claimed that his daughter was kidnapped near Lake George in upstate New York when he pulled over to urinate in the woods.
He said he turned around to find that Melina was missing, and saw a ‘suspicious white van’ fleeing the scene.
But he later said that ‘two unknown males forced’ his daughter into the white van.
When her body was found, detectives said there was no evidence she was ever abducted and there was ‘no threat to the public’ following Luciano’s arrest.
Cops said that ‘as the case progressed, law enforcement identified inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he provided.’
She was located in a remote stretch in Ticonderoga, New York, around 45 miles south of where her father said she had last been seen.
Lake George, the spot where he said he last saw her, is a small waterside town in the Adirondack region of upstate New York around 60 miles north of Albany.
On Sunday afternoon police issued an update saying ‘there is no indication that an abduction occurred’ and the little girl had been found dead. (Pictured: Melina with her father)
Police said both Melina Frattolin and her father Luciano are Canadian residents
Lake George, where the girl’s father said she was last seen, is a small waterside town in the Adirondack region of upstate New York around 60 miles north of Albany
Luciano is the founder of an organic coffee brand called Gambella, according to the product’s website.
‘Luciano Frattolin is an experienced entrepreneur with a proven track record of building diverse, high-performance businesses,’ the website reads.
‘With a background in the humanities and social sciences, his formal education, together with his pragmatic understanding about the complexities of life, motivates him to maintain an understanding of the world grounded in a distinct cross-cultural ethos.
‘The son of an Ethiopian mother and an Italian father, Luciano was born in the small, remote village of Gambella.
‘With a childhood spent running between rows of crimson coffee buds on the Ethiopian family plantation, and the neoclassical architecture of his father’s Milano, his vision of the world and his pursuits within, reflect these hyphenated cultures.’
