Testimony from two New York State Police investigators Wednesday highlighted how law enforcement agents challenged the story of a man now accused of second-degree murder in the killing of his nine-year-old daughter from Montreal last summer—with Ashlee Marks and Ashley Terry, both investigators for the state police, speaking to Luciano Frattolin after his daughter’s body was found.
Frattolin, 46, kept his head down as the video played in the courtroom.
In the recording, Marks accuses Frattolin of not telling the truth and tells him his story doesn’t make sense, and Frattolin agreed that his story was complicated.
Frattolin was seen going back and forth and trying to decide what information to give investigators.
Her head and shoulders were hidden under a log and a large rock was on her torso.
“The more we ask you about this specific time of your travel, the more your story changes. Are you aware of that? You’re adding new details, you’re forgetting things,” Marks pointed out in the tape.
At one point, an investigator said to Frattolin, “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m saying you’re not being truthful.
Jurors watched hours of video showing police confronting Luciano Frattolin as they challenged his account of what happened to his daughter, Melina, with the interview lasting more than 13 hours.
Police call it an interview, while defense attorneys call it an interrogation, and jurors watched many of the video recordings of the exchanges between police and Frattolin, with videos showing anger, frustration and mistrust in the room.
During that over 10-hour recording, Luciano and the investigator were seen and heard raising their voices and Luciano started crying at one point saying, “I swear I don’t know where she is.”
Joseph Moeller, now a sergeant for the state police, was part of the police dive team who were among the first to see the body of Melina Frattolin, and he described being called into work on July 20 and sent to the location where the girl’s body was found.
The jury viewed video footage of the scene, captured by Moeller as officers approached the girl’s body, and the video shows how Moeller waded into a marshy area, accompanied by three other divers walking in what he described as foot-deep muck.
The video also shows that the head and shoulders of girl’s body were partly submerged under a log and that a large rock was on her torso.
The jury also saw a photo of Melina’s deceased body, a copy of the death certificate, the autopsy document and photos of her body relating to the autopsy results.
Evidence has already painted a damaging picture of Frattolin’s account since the start of the trial last week.
Based on surveillance video, Luciano Frattolin was wearing different clothing when he reported that Melina had been abducted than what he had on earlier at a McDonald’s in Saratoga Springs where the two stopped to eat.
Digital evidence, including GPS tracking on his rental car and his and Melina’s phones, placed them at the parking lot of a trail at the marsh where the girl’s body was found.
A bag of wet clothes matching what Luciano Frattolin was wearing earlier was found by investigators near Pottersville, and an FBI analysis found that soil in the socks and sneakers cannot be differentiated from the marsh where the girl’s body was found.
His defense team has argued a different narrative.
His attorney said law enforcement decided his client’s guilt before the investigation began.
During the defense’s opening statement, attorney Brian Pilatzke said investigators ignored Frattolin’s report of a kidnapping.
The defence also argued New York police couldn’t properly understand Frattolin as English is his third language, and Pilatzke said Frattolin had suffered a head injury in the past, which would explain the inconsistencies in his retelling of the events.
In the viral moment that the trial stemmed from, Frattolin reported on the night of July 19, that his daughter had been abducted by two men in a white van at a rest stop while they were on vacation in upstate New York. The jury heard a recording of a 911 call by Frattolin to the Warren County Sheriff’s Department around 10 p.m. on July 19, in which Frattolin told an operator his daughter was kidnapped by suspects who drove off in a white van. The Amber Alert went out around 1 a.m. within hours, sparking a massive search. Her body was found on July 20, in Paragon Brook near Ticonderoga.
Her death was determined to be due to drowning, and Luciano Frattolin’s relationship with Melina’s mother, a resident of Montreal, ended in 2019, and the girl’s mother had custody.
Frattolin has pleaded not guilty to both charges and has been held without bail since his arrest soon after his daughter’s body was found.