
Sickening place 'killer dad' hid daughter Melina Frattolin's body after faking disappearance from Lake George
Organic coffee brand founder Luciano Frattollin, 45, attempted to conceal his daughter Melina's body in shallow waters in Ticonderoga, upstate New York, after claiming she had been kidnapped at a location 45 miles away, officials have said.
New York State Police gave more heartbreaking details about the little girl's death in a press conference on Monday, after charging her father with second-degree murder and concealing a body. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Captain Robert McConnell said Frattolin, who lives in Montreal, Canada, killed Melina on Saturday night while they were on vacation close to the picturesque town of Lake George, located in the Adirondacks region of New York 60 miles north of Albany.
Frattolin and Melina were in America legally after starting their vacation on July 11, and they were due to return to their native Quebec on Sunday.
The horror unfolded on Saturday night, when Frattolin called the local Warren County Sheriff's Office claiming that two men in a white van had abducted his daughter.
New York State Police issued an amber alert for help finding the little girl at around 10pm, advising the public that she was believed to be in 'imminent danger'.
But detectives quickly 'identified inconsistencies in the father's account of events and the timeline he provided', and they found Melina dead just before 2pm on Sunday.
New York State Forest Rangers discovered her body 'in the shallow water of a pond' in Ticonderoga, New York, around 45 miles south of where her father said she had last been seen on the highway close to Lake George.
Frattolin has been charged with murder in the second degree and concealment of a human corpse, and he is being held at the Essex County Correctional Facility.
He was seen in a white jumpsuit and shackles being hauled into Ticonderoga Town Court on Monday, where he pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Captain McConnell said Melina's mother, who has been estranged from Frattolin since 2019, was expecting her daughter to be returned to her home in Montreal on Sunday.
Melina resided full time with her mother and Frattolin visited without limitations. He also had zero criminal record, McConnell said.
Surveillance footage from 5.30pm on Sunday showed Melina's final moments as she was seen with her father in Saratoga Springs.
At 6.30pm, she phoned her mother and told her that she and her father were en route back to Canada.
'The child appeared to be in good health and did not indicate she was under any duress,' McConnell told the press conference.
'The investigation has determined sometime after Melina's phone call with her mother and sometime before Mr Frattolin's 911 call, he allegedly murdered Melina and left her body in a remote area where she was later discovered by law enforcement.'
Captain McConnell said Luciano initially told cops that Melina was kidnapped on the highway near Lake George when he pulled over to urinate in the woods.
The alleged killer dad said he turned around to find his daughter was no longer in their car, and he saw 'a suspicious white van' fleeing the scene.
He later added that 'two unknown males forced' Melina into the vehicle.
But when her body was found, detectives said there was no evidence she was ever abducted, and detectives said there was 'no threat to the public'.
NYSP said that 'as the case progressed, law enforcement identified inconsistencies in the father's account of events and the timeline he provided.'
Melina's cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy, which was scheduled for Monday.
McConnell expressed his condolences for Melina's family. 'This is certainly a difficult case and a heartbreaking investigation,' he said.
Frattolin is the founder of an organic coffee brand called Gambella, according to the product's website.
'Luciano Frattolin is an experienced entrepreneur with a proven track record of building diverse, high-performance businesses,' the website reads.
'With a background in the humanities and social sciences, his formal education, together with his pragmatic understanding about the complexities of life, motivates him to maintain an understanding of the world grounded in a distinct cross-cultural ethos.
'The son of an Ethiopian mother and an Italian father, Luciano was born in the small, remote village of Gambella.
'With a childhood spent running between rows of crimson coffee buds on the Ethiopian family plantation, and the neoclassical architecture of his father's Milano, his vision of the world and his pursuits within, reflect these hyphenated cultures.'

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The Guardian
a minute ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.


Daily Mail
26 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
I was deeply shocked by my tenant's bizarre act after she moved out - yet she's calling ME dramatic
A landlord was gobsmacked after discovering his tenant had taken his big-ticket items when she moved out - despite them being part of the furnished rental. Renter Katie was living in the apartment, which included essential appliances such as a fridge, washing machine and dishwasher. But when she moved out, she took the bulky gadgets, worth more than $2,000, with her, mistakenly believing they were hers to keep - leaving the landlord baffled, as they were his property. 'Hi, just wanted to say I've left the keys on the counter. Thanks for everything,' Katie said in her goodbye text message to the landlord. Baffled, he replied: 'Hi Katie. Just been to the property. Where is the fridge?' Appearing unfazed, she casually replied: 'Oh, I took it. Same with the washer and the dishwasher.' Taken aback by her response, the landlord said: 'Sorry? Those weren't yours to take. They were part of the tenancy.' Katie tried to justify taking the appliances, saying: 'Yeah but I used them every day. I assumed they were mine?' A landlord was gobsmacked after discovering his tenant had taken his big-ticket items when she moved out - despite them being part of the furnished rental As the products came with the rental property, he explained: 'They're listed on the inventory. You signed it. Can you return them please?' 'That's a bit awkward now. They're already in my new place,' Katie replied. He demanded she bring the gadgets back because 'they don't belong to you'. 'I genuinely thought they did. Like, I used them. They felt like mine,' Katie insisted. Furious with her response, he replied: 'Katie. You've taken items worth over a grand. This isn't a grey area.' Trying to find a way out of the situation, she suggested: 'Can't you just claim it on insurance or something? I'm not trying to cause drama.' However, the landlord gave her an ultimatum as he accused her of stealing. 'If I don't have them back by Friday, I'll have to treat it as theft. This is serious,' he said. Katie ended the conversation with: 'Wow. Over a few appliances? Bit extreme, don't you think?' It's unclear what happened between Katie and the landlord - but British property strategist Jack Rooke re-shared the pair's text exchange. 'She took over £1,000 ($A2040) worth of appliances… Then told the landlord he was being dramatic. And people still say landlords are the bad guys,' Jack said. 'That's a bit extreme. She's just robbed him.' His video has been viewed more than 770,000 times, with many divided over the situation. 'She's been paying the guy's mortgage for years, the least he can do is let her have a few white goods,' one suggested. 'To be fair, she's used them. Every day the new tenants won't want secondhand appliances - she's saved the landlord a job by removing them,' another shared. 'Dammit Katie you're making me agree with a landlord here,' one said. 'I never rent anything out furnished, literally they steal something every time. Over 10 years there was nothing left - no sofa, fridge, dryer, bed, table and chairs. Every single item stolen,' a tenant revealed. 'My last tenant left with my fridge. Exactly the same conversation,' one added.


The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Two found dead in Arkansas state park in ‘suspected homicide', police say
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