Trial postponed until July for Montreal father accused of killing 9-year-old daughter in N.Y.

The trial for a Montreal father accused of drowning his nine-year-old daughter and concealing her body last year has been postponed until the summer.

Scheduled to begin April 20, the trial will now start July 20, according to the online docket for Essex County Court.

The case was back in court Wednesday.

In July 2025, Luciano Frattolin pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and the concealment of a human corpse after his daughter Melina’s body was found in a shallow pond near Ticonderoga, N.Y.

Last year, New York State Police said Frattolin and his daughter, who lived with her mother in Montreal, were travelling in the U.S. before he reported her missing on the evening of July 19, 2025.

They said that Frattolin told investigators that he’d left his car to urinate in a wooded area and that his daughter was gone when he returned. He reported a white van fleeing the scene southbound.

In a subsequent interview, he mentioned two unknown men who forced his daughter into the white van.

Police said Frattolin had “fabricated the initial report of the abduction.”

Frattolin has been in the custody of the Essex County Sheriff’s Office since an Essex County grand jury indicted him and after a judge denied his bail.