Mom of murdered Melina Frattolin reveals daughter was afraid to take trip with dad before she was killed

Murdered 9-year-old Melina Frattolin pleaded not to take a trip with her dad just months before he allegedly murdered her on a vacation near Lake George, the girl’s grieving mother testified Tuesday.Kali Galanis revealed that her ex, Luciano Frattolin, wanted to take Melina to his native Ethiopia for two weeks in January 2025, but their daughter protested, “she didn’t want to go,” Kali said from the stand.Kali said that she had become uncomfortable with Frattolin’s overseas plans with Melisa.She said she had concerns about her traveling with Frattolin after their 2019 breakup because her lawyer cited cases of estranged spouses taking children overseas and refusing to return with them.Early last year, when Galanis was scheduling Melina for summer camp, she reached out to Frattolin to coordinate.He said he wanted to take the girl back to Ethiopia, but something didn’t sit right with her about the suggestion.“He had changed the dates and was now suggesting a longer trip,” she said in court, citing “troubling and alarming things” Melina told her that her father had said about her unwillingness to return to the east African nation that led her to ultimately cancel the trip.“I became uncomfortable,” Galanis said.“I was not ok with that anymore,” she said of the Ethiopia trip.Luciano, 46, the Ethiopian-born founder of a Montreal-based company called Gambella Coffee suggested via email the pair instead travel to New York for their 2025 trip.They wound up traveling across Connecticut and New York until the day she was supposed to return to the family home in Quebec, at which point authorities said he filed a bogus kidnapping report about the girl – barely an hour after she called her mother ahead of their flight back.

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