Luciano Frattolin

Introduction

Luciano Frattolin is a 46-year-old Montreal businessman who was sentenced on October 14, 2026 to 25 years to life in prison for the murder of his nine-year-old daughter, Melina, whom a jury found him guilty of drowning during a July 2025 vacation in the Adirondacks, followed by a consecutive one-to-three-year term for hiding her body near Ticonderoga . An Essex County jury convicted him of second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse in August 2026 after a three-week trial and roughly one hour of deliberation . He told the sentencing court he maintains his innocence, and his lawyers filed a notice of appeal the same day .

Background Information

Frattolin built a life in Montreal as a coffee entrepreneur — a venture the New York Post described as failed by the time of the case — and fathered Melina with Kali Galanis during a relationship that ended in 2019 . Galanis held full custody, and Melina lived with her mother in Montreal . In July 2025 Galanis let father and daughter take a weeklong trip through the United States; prosecutors said at trial she had refused a planned trip to Ethiopia and approved the American one instead . On the trip’s final day, surveillance footage placed the pair in Saratoga Springs at 5:30 p.m., and Melina told her mother by phone about an hour later that they were driving back to Canada .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted of second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse for drowning his nine-year-old daughter in an Adirondack swamp and fabricating her abduction; sentenced to 25 years to life plus a consecutive term, with an appeal filed.

That evening Frattolin drove to the Warren County Sheriff’s office and reported that Melina had been abducted by two men in a white van at an I-87 rest stop near Lake George, triggering an overnight Amber Alert and a manhunt across the Adirondacks . Investigators believe Melina was killed between 7:40 and 9:12 p.m. that night, and license-plate-reader and cellphone data led police the next day to a shallow wooded pond off State Route 74 in Ticonderoga, where her body lay under a fallen tree with a large rock on it; an autopsy found she died of asphyxia due to drowning, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide . Police charged Frattolin on July 21, 2025, after deciding his account of the abduction had fallen apart, and he was held without bail . At the July 2026 trial, prosecutors reconstructed his movements with car-location data, cellphone records and surveillance footage, and argued his driving pattern — slowing repeatedly as he texted his estranged wife asking when Melina would be back in Montreal — fit nothing like a man pursuing kidnappers . Handwritten notes found in his rental car, which prosecutors said expressed a desire to start a new life and helped prove intent, anchored their case that the killing was retaliation against Galanis for winning custody; the defense countered that the notes’ ill will was aimed at his ex-wife rather than the child and that the case was circumstantial, and argued police had dismissed the abduction theory too quickly . The jury of seven women and five men convicted him on both counts on August 10, 2026, about an hour after deliberations began, and he was taken away in handcuffs .

Public Reaction and Consequences

Melina’s relatives sobbed and held onto one another as the “Guilty” verdicts were read, and Essex County District Attorney Michael Langey said the grandparents and aunts who sat through the trial felt relief and hoped it brought them some closure . Galanis was not in court that day, having said she did not want to be present in case Frattolin testified; Langey recounted that she “waited for her daughter to come home all night, looked out the window” and then received the call the next day that her daughter was dead in an Essex County brook . Langey credited the digital evidence as decisive, saying finding Melina’s body less than a day after she was hidden forty miles away “was a miracle” and “a tribute to the use of technology in criminal cases” . At sentencing, Judge Tatiana Coffinger told Frattolin he lived “in a world of self made delusion of wealth and image when the greatest accomplishment in your life could’ve been as a great father,” adding, “I hope at some point in your life you will realize what you have done” .

Current Status

Frattolin, 46, is serving 25 years to life for second-degree murder, with a consecutive one-to-three-year term for concealment of a human corpse, and cannot be considered for parole before 25 years . Judge Coffinger imposed the maximum after rejecting a defense motion to set aside the guilty verdict, and the defense filed a notice of appeal following the sentence . Frattolin maintained his innocence at the sentencing hearing and has said through counsel that he intends to pursue the appeal . He had been held at the Essex County Correctional Facility since his conviction .

Impact on Their Career/Life

The conviction and life sentence ended whatever remained of Frattolin’s standing as a Montreal coffee entrepreneur, a business the New York Post characterized as already failed and whose promotional biography had once praised his devotion as a father . The fabricated abduction report set off a regional Amber Alert manhunt that prosecutors said wasted police resources and prolonged Galanis’s ordeal, and the trial’s reliance on location data and surveillance footage is already being cited by the case’s own prosecutors as a demonstration of how digital evidence resolves fabricated narratives . For Frattolin the sentence forecloses any life outside prison for at least two and a half decades, with the appeal the only remaining legal avenue .

Sources

• New York Post, “Luciano Frattolin sentenced for murder of daughter in NY” — source
• CBC News, “Father receives life sentence in New York for murder of Montreal girl” — source
• CBC News, “N.Y. jury convicts Montreal father of murder in death of 9-year-old daughter” — source
• WNYT, “Luciano Frattolin found guilty of killing daughter, will be sentenced in October” — source
• WAMC, “Montreal man found guilty of 2025 murder of daughter in Adirondacks” — source
• The Daily Gazette, “Luciano Frattolin found guilty in murder of daughter” — source
• WRGB (CBS6 Albany), “Luciano Frattolin guilty of murder, concealment of human corpse in death of daughter” — source
• WRGB (CBS6 Albany), “Opening statements set for man accused of killing 9-year-old daughter” — source