💔 Little Girl Refused Overseas Trip With Dad… Hear...

Mother’s Courtroom Testimony Reveals 9-Year-Old Daughter Begged Not to Travel With Father Before Fatal Trip

Kali Galanis sat on the witness stand this week and delivered one of the most haunting moments yet in the murder trial of her former partner. Her nine-year-old daughter Melina, she told the jury, had clearly and repeatedly said she did not want to travel overseas with her father. The little girl never made it home from the trip that replaced that journey.

Luciano Frattolin, a 46-year-old Montreal coffee entrepreneur, is on trial in Essex County, New York, charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse in the July 2025 death of Melina. Prosecutors allege he drowned the child during a supposed vacation and then staged a kidnapping story that triggered a regional Amber Alert. He has pleaded not guilty and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

Galanis and Frattolin met in Ethiopia in 2009 and welcomed Melina in 2016. Their relationship ended in 2019. Galanis retained sole custody of their daughter in Montreal while still allowing Frattolin regular visitation. In early 2025, Frattolin proposed taking Melina to his native Ethiopia. Galanis testified that she initially considered the idea until she learned of “troubling things” her ex had said to the child. Both mother and daughter grew uneasy. “She didn’t want to go,” Galanis told the court. Faced with their resistance, Frattolin agreed instead to a shorter vacation in New York and Connecticut.

On July 11, 2025, father and daughter crossed the border legally. They were scheduled to return to Montreal by early evening on July 19. That afternoon Melina spoke with her mother by phone one final time, around 6:30 p.m. Hours later Frattolin called 911 from the Lake George area and claimed two men in a white van had abducted the girl while he stepped away briefly to relieve himself near Exit 22 on Interstate 87.

An Amber Alert swept through the region. Search teams mobilized. Within hours, however, digital evidence and cell-phone data pointed investigators to a remote wooded trail near Eagle Lake outside Ticonderoga. There, roughly thirty miles from the reported abduction site, forest rangers discovered Melina’s body in a shallow pond. She had been placed near a fallen tree with a rock resting on top of her. An autopsy determined the cause of death was asphyxia due to drowning. The manner of death was ruled a homicide.

Prosecutors have laid out a timeline they say dismantles Frattolin’s account. Surveillance video captured father and daughter at a McDonald’s in Saratoga Springs around 5:30 p.m. on July 19—the last confirmed sighting of Melina alive. Phone and vehicle data later placed Frattolin near the trail where the body was found for nearly an hour. Investigators recovered wet clothing and shoes they believe he changed out of after entering the water. Mud on the footwear, they contend, matches the pond sediment.

In recorded police interviews played for the jury, Frattolin maintained the kidnapping story even after being shown photographs of his daughter’s body. At one point he suggested the CIA might have taken her. Investigators described his demeanor as shifting under pressure. One trooper testified that Frattolin slammed himself against the door of a police cruiser three times during a late-night search. Most chilling of all was a remark he made the morning after Melina disappeared. Pressed about the possibility he had harmed his own child, Frattolin replied that there was no way he would do such a thing in the United States. It would have been “a lot easier,” he said, in Ethiopia or in Italy, where he holds dual citizenship.

That single comment has hung over the courtroom like a dark cloud. Galanis’s testimony this week added another layer of dread. The same father who once wanted to take Melina to Ethiopia—against the child’s clear wishes—later told investigators that killing her would have been simpler there. The contrast has left many observers stunned.

Possible motives have also surfaced. Prosecutors say Frattolin had grown increasingly troubled by what he believed were mental-health issues affecting Melina, issues he linked to her mother. Writings recovered from his vehicle reportedly spoke of ending her suffering. Financial strain, including significant debt and difficulties with child support, has also been mentioned in reporting around the case.

Galanis described the careful arrangements she had made for Melina’s visits and the shock of learning her daughter was dead. Montreal police officers knocked on her door in the early hours of July 20. After nearly twelve hours of questioning, authorities informed her that a body had been found. “I was in a state of shock,” she told the jury.

Defense attorneys have argued the entire case is circumstantial. They maintain Frattolin is telling the truth about an abduction and that the evidence does not prove he killed his daughter. Frattolin has remained largely expressionless throughout the proceedings, staring ahead as video of his police interviews plays and investigators recount the long night of questioning.

The trial, which began almost exactly one year after Melina’s body was discovered, has drawn intense attention on both sides of the border. In Montreal, where the family lived, the case has left a community struggling to understand how a father-daughter vacation could end in such darkness. In the small Adirondack towns near the crime scene, residents still remember the Amber Alert that swept through the region and the shock that followed when the missing-child report collapsed into a murder investigation.

Cell-phone data, clothing evidence, the location of the body, Frattolin’s own shifting statements, and now the mother’s account of Melina’s reluctance to travel form the core of the prosecution’s case. The defense continues to challenge the interpretation of that evidence and to insist that Melina was the victim of strangers, not her father. Jurors must now weigh those competing narratives against the image of a nine-year-old girl who spoke with her mother by phone just hours before she died and who never made it home.

The chilling comment about it being easier to commit the crime overseas has taken on new weight in light of Galanis’s testimony. Whether it reflects cold calculation or the rambling of a man under intense pressure remains for the jury to decide. What remains undisputed is the outcome: a little girl from Montreal never returned from a summer trip with her father, and her body was found hidden in a remote New York pond under a rock and a fallen tree.

As testimony continues, the central question persists with devastating clarity. Did Luciano Frattolin invent a kidnapping to hide the fact that he drowned his own daughter? Or is a grieving father still searching for answers about the men in the white van he insists took her? The evidence presented so far has left little room for neutrality. The final judgment will rest with the twelve people listening in the Essex County courtroom—people who have now heard, in the mother’s own words, that Melina never wanted the trip that cost her life.