ELIZABETHTOWN, NY – Luciano Frattolin, the father accused of killing his young daughter, showed little visible reaction in court Wednesday as prosecutors played police interview footage in which he continued to insist the girl had been abducted, even after investigators pressed him to tell the truth about her death.
Frattolin, 45, sat expressionless while jurors watched recordings of two state investigators repeatedly urging him to admit what authorities say he did to 9-year-old Melina Frattolin. By then, police had shown him images of the child’s mud-covered body, which was discovered along Paragon Brook in Ticonderoga, roughly eight miles from Interstate 87.
He is standing trial in Essex County in connection with Melina’s July 19, 2025, killing.
In the July 20, 2025, recordings, Frattolin told New York State Police investigator Ashlee Marks, “We both came back to the car,” even though investigators had already informed him that his daughter had been found dead hours earlier beneath a tree, about 10 minutes down a hiking trail in the Adirondack wilderness.
Authorities said they located the child’s body using cellphone data from Frattolin’s phone, which also had a trackable Apple AirTag attached to it.
Still, even after being confronted with that information and shown a disturbing photo of Melina’s body, Frattolin allegedly kept repeating a false account, claiming he and his daughter had gone to a trail near a lake but could not swim because the shoreline was lined with homes.
“There were 100 homes,” he told Marks in the recorded interview, despite the investigator having just returned from the isolated area where Melina was found.
“We know there were no houses on that trail,” Marks told Frattolin, who appeared in the video wearing a white Tyvek suit, his legs crossed as he sat chained to a bench inside a state police station.
“It’s changing, you’re adding information, you’re changing information,” Marks charges in the recording.
Earlier in the day, Frattolin told investigators he pulled off the section of I-87 known as the “Northway” to go to a “big lake” he and Melina spotted while driving because she wanted to go swimming.
But Paradox Lake, the nearest to where Frattolin’s cell data pinpointed him on July 19, 2025, isn’t visible from the thruway.
The accused killer also was caught in another lie, originally telling state police he hadn’t changed his clothes on the day his daughter was allegedly abducted.
But he later altered his story to say he changed his shirt.
Frattolin then changed his story again after he was told he was captured on camera outside of a McDonald’s with Melina wearing an entirely different set of clothing earlier that day.
He was supposed to return Melina to her mother in Montreal the same day he allegedly murdered her.
The trial is expected to resume Thursday.
