Accused killer dad of Montreal girl may have struggled with child support as massive debt revealed
His social media posts indicate a robust lifestyle as a coffee company owner and a lover of expensive sports cars.
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The Canadian man accused of killing his daughter was reportedly in massive debt and struggling to pay child support.
Luciano Frattolin, 45, was charged with the second-degree murder of his nine-year-old daughter Melina, after her body was found following his claims that she had gone missing while the pair were vacationing in upstate New York.
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Frattolin appeared in court Monday where he told a judge that he was broke and unable to afford a lawyer.
His social media posts, however, indicate a robust lifestyle as a coffee company owner and a lover of expensive sports cars.
“As an Italian I am supposed to love Ferrari, but I am truly addicted to Porsche,” he captioned one video on Instagram.
On the Instagram account of Gambella Coffee company, one of Frattolin’s several business interests, he is described as an “experienced entrepreneur with a proven track record of building diverse, high-performance businesses,” including real estate, construction, mining “and, of course, coffee.”
Frattolin, who was born in Ethiopia, called his daughter “beautiful” and “the light of his life.”
But the write-up also noted his obsession with keeping “perfect order” in his home, forcing him to learn to live with Melina’s “messy art projects” and “chaotic” toys.
The bio, which has since been removed from the Gambella’s page, alludes to a life of painful hardships he’s had to endure, including “incidences of racism,” “feelings of isolation” and the death of his father as a teenager.
He also referred to an “unfortunate event” in February 2019 “which seriously affected his well-being” and for which “the road to recovery was long and arduous,” La Presse reported.
Cops said at a press conference Monday that he and his former wife separated that same year.
Frattolin was more than $200,000 in debt stemming from business dealings in Montreal.
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He is currently involved in five lawsuits that were all filed this year — he is the plaintiff in four of the suits, court records show.
In the one where he is the defendant, he is being sued for more than $83,000 by a bank.
He also has $97,000 in unpaid credit card debts from Café Gambella, another coffee shop bearing the same name as his online java business, according to Le Devoir.
Frattolin had no criminal record in the U.S. or Canada, and was not known to authorities for domestic violence, according to authorities.
He and his daughter were vacationing in the Lake George area before her death — and about 50 km from where her body was found.
Before the discovery, Frattolin claimed his daughter was snatched by two men in a white van at a rest stop, about an hour after she called her mother to inform her they were on their way back to Quebec.
The abduction claims were determined “untrue” by authorities after the child’s body was found in a pond.
The motive behind the alleged homicide is still under investigation.
Frattolin was charged with second-degree murder — which could carry a life sentence in New York — as well as concealment of a human corpse.
He pleaded not guilty. He is due back in court July 25.
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