(NEW YORK ) — A father accused of killing his 9-year-old daughter in upstate New York and then falsely claiming she was kidnapped pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.
Luciano Frattolin, of Montreal, was arraigned in Essex County on an indictment charging him with second-degree murder and the concealment of a human corpse.
A judge ordered him held without bail. His next court appearance has been scheduled for Aug. 19, with a jury trial set to begin in January 2026.
Frattolin is accused of killing his daughter, Melina Galanis Frattolin, during a vacation to the U.S., concealing her body and fabricating a story that she was abducted.
Melina was found dead in a shallow pond in a remote area near Ticonderoga on July 20, a day after he reported that she was abducted when he pulled over to go into the woods to go to the bathroom, police said.
Melina died by homicide and from “asphyxia due to drowning,” according to preliminary autopsy results, New York State Police said.
Investigators believe she was killed on July 19, just hours after she called her mother to say that she and her father were on their way back to Montreal, police said.
The indictment alleges Frattolin drowned his daughter then concealed her body “by placing it in a wooded area in water, near a fallen tree with a rock on top of the corpse.”
ABC News has reached out to his public defender for comment but has not yet received a response.
Melina lived with her mother full time in Montreal and was on a 10-day vacation to New York City and Connecticut with her father at the time, according to Capt. Robert McConnell of the New York State Police.
According to McConnell, Frattolin and his daughter’s mother have been estranged since 2019. He said the mother knew Frattolin had taken Melina on a vacation and told police she had no prior concerns about them traveling to the U.S. together.
Frattolin’s kidnapping report led the New York State Police to issue an Amber Alert early on July 20. A massive search was launched before her body was discovered later that day by New York State Police Forest Rangers, authorities said.
“He fabricated the initial report of the abduction,” McConnell alleged during a July 20 news conference.
Police began to focus on the father as a suspect after finding inconsistencies in his account of events and the timeline he provided, McConnell said.
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