{"id":853962,"date":"2026-08-11T08:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T08:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853962\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T08:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T08:48:10","slug":"some-type-of-closure-after-montreal-man-found-guilty-of-murdering-9-year-old-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853962\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Some type of closure’ after Montreal man found guilty of murdering 9-year-old daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published in the Plattsburgh, N.Y., Press-Republican<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ELIZABETHTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 Luciano Frattolin has been found guilty of the murder of his daughter, Melina.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Closing arguments from the prosecution and defence were heard Monday morning before the jury went to deliberations that afternoon.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Frattolin\u2019s sentencing is now scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 14 in Elizabethtown, N.Y. He will be remanded to Essex County Jail in the meantime.<\/p>\n

\"MenLuciano Frattolin, 46, is seen in Essex County Court in New York State during the trial\u2019s last day, Aug. 10. He was found guilty of the murder of his daughter, Melina. <\/p>\n

Carly Newton \/ Press Republican<\/p>\n

Frattolin faces a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Following the verdict, defence attorney Brian Pilatzke refused to comment. Eric Weyand from the Essex County public defender\u2019s office, who was assisting with the case, only offered a brief remark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tough case,\u201d Weyand told reporters standing outside the courthouse Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Michael Langey and Assistant District Attorney Carrie Daly prosecuted the case, which received national attention. It was Langey\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

He said it felt good when the guilty verdict was read aloud in court Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019t going to get convicted. So it was a relief for them. Hopefully this can be some type of closure for them,\u201d Langey said.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019m happy with my staff. I appreciate the amount of time everyone put into this, but I\u2019m just glad that the family can finally know that he\u2019s going to be held accountable for this, and hopefully move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frattolin, after taking the weekend to decide, did not testify as a witness in the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to,\u201d Frattolin told the court. \u201cBut I was advised not to because of my TBI (traumatic brain injury).\u201d<\/p>\n

Before closing, Judge Tatiana Coffinger denied Pilatzke\u2019s previous motion to dismiss the case entirely.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In her denial, Coffinger said the issues of fact in the case are \u201cto be decided by the jury.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Langey said it was the quickest verdict he\u2019d seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was fast,\u201d he said. \u201cI was surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

When news broke last year about a 9-year-old girl\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

It did not take long for residents to rally after the news. Days after Melina\u2019s body was discovered, Ticonderoga-area residents organized a vigil for Melina that was attended by hundreds of people who had never met her.<\/p>\n

Today, anyone who drives along the highway where Melina was found, State Route 74, will be greeted by a \u201cFriends of Melina Frattolin\u201d sign in her remembrance.<\/p>\n

She won\u2019t be forgotten in the county anytime soon, it seems, and Langey acknowledged that aspect of this case.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe touched the hearts of a lot of people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe really had no connection to the county, but I think whenever a child is murdered \u2026 it\u2019ll touch a lot of hearts. The community has rallied around her, so it\u2019s nice to have an end like this for it, and not have it just be out there wondering what it could have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Langey said he expects Frattolin to appeal the guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be an appeal in every case. It doesn\u2019t matter. They\u2019ll try to go through the trial transcript. They\u2019ll look at what we did. They\u2019ll look at the police,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd especially in a murder case, he\u2019s not going to have a lot to do for the next 25 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Langey said Melina\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSentencing is going to come up in October; she\u2019ll have the right to come and speak if she wants to. That\u2019s a decision that she\u2019ll have to make, but I\u2019m sure she\u2019s very relieved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019s dead in a brook in Essex County, New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melina\u2019s cause of death was determined to be drowning, and she had debris and dirt in her lungs when an autopsy was conducted.<\/p>\n

Langey said he believes Frattolin looked at a few locations before deciding to drown Melina in the remote area of Ticonderoga.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe drove to three very isolated rivers or brooks. One in Pottersville, one in Chestertown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think time was running out. It was getting late. It was getting dark, and this is the one that he picked. I don\u2019t believe he had been there before.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

If this was ten or even five years ago, Langey doesn\u2019t believe Frattolin would\u2019ve been caught.<\/p>\n

\u201dAn arrest would not have been made. They would never have found her that far away, that fast,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if they ever would have found her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He said law enforcement, from the beginning, never believed Frattolin, which led to the assumption of his guilt.<\/p>\n

Pilatzke said Frattolin was cooperative with police, and offered up his vehicle and phone willingly to be searched.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would someone who is guilty do that?\u201d Pilatzke said.<\/p>\n

In his closing, Langey said investigators had taken Frattolin\u2019s abduction story seriously, and they conducted several traffic stops on white vans into the early morning hours of July 20, 2025.<\/p>\n

However, police eventually began to find Frattolin suspicious when his version of events on the night of July 19 became inconsistent, Langey said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

However, Langey said GPS data pulled from Frattolin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Langey said if Melina had been abducted by two men in a white van like Frattolin claimed, it was the biggest \u201ccoincidence in the history of mankind\u201d that they ended up dumping Melina\u2019s body in the same area Frattolin was proven to be that night.<\/p>\n

Langey said Frattolin\u2019s abduction story was something he\u2019d probably seen in a movie some time.<\/p>\n

Langey told the media afterward that the jury likely felt the same way when they heard Frattolin\u2019s versions of events. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s fair to say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were here for three weeks \u2026 they took notes. I think they had a good idea of what they were going to do when they got to the deliberations room.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published in the Plattsburgh, N.Y., Press-Republican. ELIZABETHTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 Luciano Frattolin has been found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,222407,227708,44],"class_list":["post-853962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-crime-and-law","tag-murder-and-homicide","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}