ELIZABETHTOWN, NY – Luciano Frattolin, 45, appeared emotionless in court Wednesday as state prosecutors played video evidence of his persistent claims that his nine-year-old daughter, Melina Frattolin, had been abducted. This continued even after investigators presented him with photos of her dead body. Frattolin is on trial in Essex County for Melina's murder on July 19, 2025.
In recordings from police interviews conducted on July 20, 2025, Frattolin told state investigator Ashlee Marks that they both returned to their car, despite being informed that his daughter's body had been discovered hours earlier. Police located Melina's body about 10 minutes into the Adirondack wilderness down a hiking trail, near Paragon Brook, eight miles off Interstate 87 in Ticonderoga. Cell phone data from Frattolin's phone, which also had a trackable Apple AirTag attached, led investigators to the location.
Despite being shown a graphic image of Melina's body covered in mud, Frattolin maintained a false narrative about their excursion. He described going to a trail near a lake where they could not swim due to the presence of houses lining the shoreline. "There were 100 homes," he stated in the recording to Marks, who had just returned from the area where the child's body was found. Investigator Marks challenged his account, stating, "It’s changing, you’re adding information, you’re changing information."
Earlier in the day, Frattolin had told investigators he pulled over on the I-87 Northway to visit a "big lake" he and Melina had spotted, as she wanted to go swimming. However, Paradox Lake, the closest body of water to where Frattolin's cell data pinpointed him on July 19, 2025, is not visible from the thruway.
Frattolin also provided conflicting accounts regarding his clothing. He initially told state police he had not changed his clothes on the day his daughter was allegedly abducted. He later amended his statement to say he changed his shirt. This story shifted again after he was informed that surveillance cameras had captured him and Melina outside a McDonald's earlier that day, wearing a completely different set of clothes.
Frattolin was scheduled to return Melina to her mother in Montreal on the same day she was allegedly murdered. The trial is expected to continue on Thursday.