Mother testifies daughter feared overseas trip with father months before her death

In a courtroom in Essex County, a mother recounted the quiet signals she and her daughter had both read correctly — and the one moment they could not have anticipated. Kali Galanis testified that nine-year-old Melina had refused an overseas trip with her father months before prosecutors say he killed her during what was meant to be the safer alternative: a summer drive through the American Northeast. The case asks a jury to weigh a father's alleged violence against a backdrop of fractured family trust, international custody fears, and a child whose own voice, in the end, could not save her.