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Or sign-in if you have an account.Luciano Frattolin (left) was found guilty for the 2025 second-degree murder of his 9-year-old daughter, Melina. Photo by Press Republican/New York State PoliceThis story was originally published in the Plattsburgh, N.Y., Press-Republican.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorELIZABETHTOWN, N.Y. — Luciano Frattolin has been found guilty of the murder of his daughter, Melina.The 46-year-old Montreal man had been on trial in the state of New York for charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse since July 23 for the death of the girl last summer.Melina Frattolin was found dead in a shallow body of water off a highway in the town of Ticonderoga, N.Y. on July 20, 2025.Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againClosing arguments from the prosecution and defence were heard Monday morning before the jury went to deliberations that afternoon.Deliberations lasted a little over an hour before the jury came back with the guilty verdict for both the second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse charges. Frattolin had no reaction when the verdict was read.Frattolin’s sentencing is now scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 14 in Elizabethtown, N.Y. He will be remanded to Essex County Jail in the meantime.Luciano Frattolin, 46, is seen in Essex County Court in New York State during the trial's last day, Aug. 10. He was found guilty of the murder of his daughter, Melina. Carly Newton / Press RepublicanFrattolin faces a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life.The concealment of a human corpse charge could add more than a year to the sentence as well. The sentence Frattolin receives will be at the discretion of Judge Tatiana Coffinger.Following the verdict, defence attorney Brian Pilatzke refused to comment. Eric Weyand from the Essex County public defender's office, who was assisting with the case, only offered a brief remark.“It was a tough case,” Weyand told reporters standing outside the courthouse Monday afternoon.District Attorney Michael Langey and Assistant District Attorney Carrie Daly prosecuted the case, which received national attention. It was Langey’s first murder trial as district attorney, which he was elected to last year after spending nearly 30 years as an assistant district attorney in Essex County.He said it felt good when the guilty verdict was read aloud in court Monday.“It's been a year. The families had to just sit and hope that there was some justice for her. The grandparents were here, the aunts were here. They had to sit in the courtroom, and there was a possibility, obviously, that he wasn't going to get convicted. So it was a relief for them. Hopefully this can be some type of closure for them,” Langey said.“I'm happy for my office. This was the first year I was DA. We were short a lot of lawyers. That was a lot of work. I’m happy with my staff. I appreciate the amount of time everyone put into this, but I'm just glad that the family can finally know that he's going to be held accountable for this, and hopefully move on.”Frattolin, after taking the weekend to decide, did not testify as a witness in the case.“I really want to,” Frattolin told the court. “But I was advised not to because of my TBI (traumatic brain injury).”Before closing, Judge Tatiana Coffinger denied Pilatzke’s previous motion to dismiss the case entirely.Pilatzke argued that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution failed to prove every element of the crime in both counts Frattolin has been charged with.In her denial, Coffinger said the issues of fact in the case are “to be decided by the jury.”After three weeks of testimony from many witnesses and many pieces of evidence shown, the jury was given the chance to make their decision around 2 p.m. Monday. Court resumed around 3:10 p.m. with a verdict ready.Langey said it was the quickest verdict he’d seen.“This was fast,” he said. “I was surprised.”When news broke last year about a 9-year-old girl’s body being discovered in a remote area of Ticonderoga, it shocked the community. Just hours before her body was found, residents had received an Amber Alert on their phones saying she had been abducted, only to later hear she was found dead.It did not take long for residents to rally after the news. Days after Melina’s body was discovered, Ticonderoga-area residents organized a vigil for Melina that was attended by hundreds of people who had never met her.Today, anyone who drives along the highway where Melina was found, State Route 74, will be greeted by a “Friends of Melina Frattolin” sign in her remembrance.She won’t be forgotten in the county anytime soon, it seems, and Langey acknowledged that aspect of this case.“She touched the hearts of a lot of people,” he said.“She really had no connection to the county, but I think whenever a child is murdered … it’ll touch a lot of hearts. The community has rallied around her, so it's nice to have an end like this for it, and not have it just be out there wondering what it could have been.”Langey said he expects Frattolin to appeal the guilty verdict.“There's going to be an appeal in every case. It doesn't matter. They'll try to go through the trial transcript. They'll look at what we did. They'll look at the police,” he said.“And especially in a murder case, he's not going to have a lot to do for the next 25 years.”Langey said Melina’s mother, Kali Galanas, was not present in court Monday because she did not want to listen to Frattolin if he were to testify. He said she was updated about the guilty verdict.“Sentencing is going to come up in October; she'll have the right to come and speak if she wants to. That's a decision that she'll have to make, but I'm sure she's very relieved,” he said.“It's a very stressful year knowing that the person that you had a child with is now convicted of murdering your child. It is not a position I'm sure that anybody wants to be in, and I hope she can get through this with the help of her family and try to move on. It was her only daughter, so our hearts have gone out to her since the beginning."“It’s a very tough spot to be in. She waited for her daughter to come home all night, looked out the window, (her) daughter never came home. And she had to get the call the next day that she's dead in a brook in Essex County, New York.”Melina’s cause of death was determined to be drowning, and she had debris and dirt in her lungs when an autopsy was conducted.Langey said he believes Frattolin looked at a few locations before deciding to drown Melina in the remote area of Ticonderoga.“He drove to three very isolated rivers or brooks. One in Pottersville, one in Chestertown,” he said.“I think time was running out. It was getting late. It was getting dark, and this is the one that he picked. I don't believe he had been there before.”Langey said GPS data was critical in this case. He said advancements in the technology allowed Frattolin to be tracked the entire way to the area off the highway where Melina was eventually found.If this was ten or even five years ago, Langey doesn’t believe Frattolin would’ve been caught.”An arrest would not have been made. They would never have found her that far away, that fast,” he said.“I don't know if they ever would have found her.”In his closing statements, Pilatzke tried to argue that the police did not do enough to find the men in the white van who Frattolin said abducted Melina from a parking area near Lake George on July 19, 2025.He said law enforcement, from the beginning, never believed Frattolin, which led to the assumption of his guilt.Pilatzke said Frattolin was cooperative with police, and offered up his vehicle and phone willingly to be searched.“Why would someone who is guilty do that?” Pilatzke said.In his closing, Langey said investigators had taken Frattolin’s abduction story seriously, and they conducted several traffic stops on white vans into the early morning hours of July 20, 2025.However, police eventually began to find Frattolin suspicious when his version of events on the night of July 19 became inconsistent, Langey said.Langey said police had taken Frattolin on a ride-along so he could show them where the abduction took place. He said the ride-along ended up being three hours long because Frattolin could not definitively identify the area she was abducted from.Langey said at one point, they had driven north toward Schroon Lake and Frattolin told police there was no way he went this far north in his travels with Melina.However, Langey said GPS data pulled from Frattolin’s car and cell phone showed he had been at the parking lot of a trailhead near the lake for almost an hour on the night of July 19, 2025. He was reported to have been there between 8 p.m. and 8:55 p.m.Langey said if Melina had been abducted by two men in a white van like Frattolin claimed, it was the biggest “coincidence in the history of mankind” that they ended up dumping Melina’s body in the same area Frattolin was proven to be that night.Langey said Frattolin’s abduction story was something he’d probably seen in a movie some time.Langey told the media afterward that the jury likely felt the same way when they heard Frattolin’s versions of events.“I think that's fair to say,” he said.“They were here for three weeks … they took notes. I think they had a good idea of what they were going to do when they got to the deliberations room.” Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.