Investigators say the frantic AMBER Alert was never about rescuing Melina; it was about covering up what had already been done. As officers combed highways for a white van that didn’t exist, they instead found the 9‑year‑old’s body in a shallow pond, discarded off the route home from a summer vacation. The father who publicly wept and performed panic for cameras is now accused of murdering the child he once called “the light of his life.”
In court, the entrepreneur who flaunted luxury trips and expensive cars suddenly claimed he couldn’t afford a lawyer. Reports from Montreal painted a darker backdrop: crushing debts, unpaid child support, a bitter split from Melina’s mother, who’d won full custody years earlier. Prosecutors say he chose annihilation over accountability. A mother is left to bury her only child, and a community is left to grapple with the question no one can answer: how does a parent cross that line?
