Jury hears tape of New York police search for murdered Montreal girl

He pleaded not guilty to both charges and has been held without bail since his arrest on July 21, 2025, two days after he reported her missing.

Warren County investigator Sean Smith, one of the two investigators in the vehicle with Frattolin, testified before Judge Tatiana Coffinger and the jury.

Smith testified that he and a New York State Police investigator asked Frattolin to bring them to the location where the alleged abduction occurred. A canine unit followed them.

On the recording, they repeatedly told him to provide as many details as possible to help locate his daughter.

But for most of the drive, Frattolin told police that none of the areas looked familiar and that he could not pinpoint the location where the men in the van would have taken his daughter.

He also told them he had issues with his vision, but said it was “good enough to drive.”

After about two hours, Frattolin identified a rest stop on Interstate 87 as the area where he said he had stopped with his daughter because she needed to pee.

Smith testified that this was the second time they had driven by the rest area, explaining that Frattolin had not identified it the first time.

At this spot, Frattolin had told police that he had turned around to give her privacy for a moment, right before she was kidnapped.

After one of the officers asked the father whether he was telling the truth about the abduction, Frattolin criticized the girl’s mother, in the recording, suggesting she might have been behind the kidnapping. But the officers in the cruiser appeared to dismiss this allegation.

“That’s pretty far-fetched,” one of the officers replied in the cruiser, adding it would take a “mastermind” to orchestrate the abduction from Canada.

Frattolin also told the officers in the recording that he wasn’t satisfied with the custody agreement he had with his ex and claimed the alleged kidnapping was “a stupid game to make (him) look like a bad father.”

“She has a severe mental illness,” he told the officers, adding that his daughter suffered as a result.

But the officers also told Frattolin that every officer in the state was stopping white vans and searching for his daughter after an Amber Alert went out.

“Did it go out in Canada?” Frattolin asked.

At the end of the recording, one of the officers can be heard telling Frattolin that they were repeatedly asking him the same questions to make sure he had not fabricated the story about the kidnapping.

In his cross-examination, defence attorney Eric Weyand asked Smith whether he was aware Frattolin had suffered a head injury that affected his memory. Smith said Frattolin had not mentioned it.

The defence had previously argued in its opening statement in the trial that police had failed to investigate evidence about a kidnapping after assuming Frattolin was guilty.

The girl lived in Montreal with her mother who is also expected to testify at the trial, which resumes on Monday.

Prosecutor Carrie Daly told the court on Thursday in her opening arguments that police had found a bag of Frattolin’s muddy clothes near the marsh where Melina’s body was located.

She said police also found notes in his car describing plans to “end her suffering.”

Police say Frattolin and his daughter were scheduled to return to Montreal on July 19, 2025, the day she died.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 24, 2026.

Erika Morris, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Jury hears tape of New York police search for murdered Montreal girl

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