Awful public insults 'killer dad' Luciano Frattolin leveled at daughter, 9, as it's revealed he was $200k in debt
Luciano Frattolin, 45, wrote on his Gambella Coffee website that he struggled with daughter Melina's impact on his life because of his obsession with keeping 'perfect order' in his home.
The businessman included candid insights into his 'feelings of isolation' and struggles with 'incidences of racism', and said he was hit hard by the death of his father as a teenager.
At his arraignment on Monday, where he hung his head in shame as he was perp-walked into Ticonderoga Town Court in upstate New York, Frattolin also revealed he is mired in debt.
He said he is more than $200,000 in debt due to his failing business in Canada, and admitted he could not afford a lawyer as he pleaded not guilty to murdering Melina.
According to authorities, Frattolin killed his little girl as they were heading home from a vacation in New York on Saturday night, and he was set to give custody back to her mother.
He called 911 in upstate New York and claimed that she had been abducted, but soon after an AMBER alert was issued, suspicion fell on Luciano.
Cops said he had 'inconsistencies' in his story of the abduction, before her body was found in a lake in a remote stretch in Ticonderoga, New York, around 45 miles south of where her father said she had last been seen.
Despite his apparent insults at his daughter's 'messy' impact on his life, Frattolin also wrote on his coffee website bio that she is the 'light of his life.'
'She is the inspiration for... well, everything,' the bio read.
'His pursuits for building a more equitable and just world are deeply guided by his determination that she will not have to endure the same social injustices that he encountered throughout his childhood.'
The bio has since been scrubbed from the internet, with Frattolin's coffee company and failing business ventures said to have severely impacted him in recent years.
According to a report in Canadian news outlet La Presse, Frattolin had rented a property in a hip neighborhood in Montreal since 2020, which he subletted as an Airbnb.
He said in court documents reported by the outlet that he hired two property managers to run the Airbnb and make the rent payments, which he then used to pay for Melina's child support.
But he still fell $26,000 behind in rent, and his lease was terminated by the landlord in August 2024.
Frattolin is currently suing the two property managers for over $115,000, alleging that they never made the rental payments as promised, per Le Devoir.
The managers countered that Frattolin had plans to flee the country and empty his bank account, which he denied.
The Bank of Nova Scotia said Frattolin owed around $83,000 on Dépanneur Café, coffee shop he once owned, alongside $97,000 in credit card debt from Café Gambella, a coffee shop with the same name as his failing coffee business.
After Melina's body was found on Sunday, Frattolin is now facing charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse.
At a press conference on Monday, officers said they came to believe he 'fabricated' his report of an abduction due to inconsistencies with his story.
He initially claimed that his daughter was kidnapped near Lake George in upstate New York when he pulled over to urinate in the woods.
He said he turned around to find that Melina was missing, and saw a 'suspicious white van' fleeing the scene.
But he later said that 'two unknown males forced' his daughter into the white van.
At the press conference, officials said that Luciano and Melina had traveled to the US from Canada on July 11 for a vacation, and were expected to return on Sunday.
Luciano and Melina had spent the week on vacation in New York, but he was set to hand custody of his daughter back to her mother that day, officials said.
Melina's mother had full-time custody, and had been estranged from Luciano since 2019.
At around 6:30pm on Saturday, Melina phoned her mom to say she was heading back to Canada, but sometime that night she was allegedly murdered.
The little girl was found in the shallow portion of a pond in upstate New York near the town of Ticonderoga on Sunday. Her cause of death is not yet known, and officials said they would perform an autopsy on Monday.
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