Corrupt Police Officer Robert Fratta EXECUTED | Texas Death Row Inmate
On the surface, Robert Fraa was just another cop, but inside he was a ticking time bomb. One who believed murder was easier than losing a custody battle. This is the chilling story of a father who orchestrated his wife’s assassination in cold blood and the two men he dragged into the shadows with him.
It’s a tale of betrayal, obsession, and justice delayed but not denied. Welcome back to Death Row Diaries, where we dig deep into the lives and final days of the most twisted criminals ever to walk Death Row. If you think you’ve heard it all, you haven’t heard this. Today we expose the shocking truth behind one of the most infamous murder for higher plots in American history.
Masterminded not by a gangster or a drug lord, but by a suburban cop with a grudge. Before we pull back the curtain, hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. You won’t want to miss the stories we have coming. Faraha had dreams like anyone else. love, marriage, family.
She was born on August 5th, 1961 in Guildford, Sururi, England. Graceful, intelligent, and grounded, she moved to the US to pursue a new chapter. That chapter began in 1983 when she married Robert Allen Fraa, a Missouri city public safety officer in Texas. Together they built a life. Three beautiful children, a quiet home in the suburbs. To outsiders they looked like the American dream.
But dreams can be deceiving. Behind the closed doors of their picture perfect home, Farah’s life was unraveling. Friends and family later revealed that Robert was doineering, obsessive, and disturbingly controlling, especially in their private life. He didn’t treat her like a wife, more like a possession, someone to dominate, someone to mold.
His sexual demands, as Pharaoh would later allege, were not just bizarre, they were degrading. She kept quiet, trying to protect her kids, but the emotional toll was mounting. By 1992, she’d had enough. That year, Farah filed for divorce. What followed wasn’t a split. It was a war. The divorce dragged on for two full years, and every moment was bitter.
At the center of the fight, custody of their three children. Robert was enraged. Farah had moved on emotionally and mentally, but Robert couldn’t let go. He didn’t just want custody. He wanted control. And if he couldn’t have it, no one could. This wasn’t just a man dealing with heartbreak. This was a man unraveling. Fraa became obsessed.
His co-workers, fellow officers, reported hearing him talk casually, even gleefully about killing Farah. One gym buddy said Robert spoke openly about using a gun. Another claimed Robert described staging her death to look like a carjacking. He even brought a firearm to a nightclub while floating the idea. It wasn’t just talk.
It was a manifesto in the making. Multiple witnesses, including officers from his own department, later testified that Robert made repeated statements about hiring someone to kill his wife. One female friend recalled him specifying he was looking for a hitman, preferably someone who was African-Amean, to throw off suspicion.
At a local diner, he even asked another acquaintance if he knew someone who could take care of Farah. No one stopped him. No one alerted the authorities. Maybe they thought he was joking. But Robert Frada wasn’t joking. He was hunting. What would you do if your friend, especially a police officer, spoke casually about committing murder? Let us know in the comments.
And if this story has your heart racing already, give this video a like so we can bring you more real life horror from behind bars. By 1994, Robert Fraa was 37 and furious. His custody case wasn’t going his way. He’d been ordered to pay child support. His reputation at the police department was crumbling.
So, he stopped talking and started doing. That year, he approached Joseph Andrew Pristache, a 38-year-old gym buddy with a criminal record and a dark streak. Robert didn’t just vent. He asked for help. Not in handling the divorce, but in ending it with bullets. Pristache agreed for a price. He introduced Robert to a teenager from his neighborhood, 18-year-old Howard Paul Gyri, a kid who at that age should have been chasing dreams, not executing murder plots. But Gyri needed money.
and Robert Fraa was offering $1,000 for the kill. Pristache, the middleman, would get $2,000 and a jeep. The deal was struck. November 9th, 1994. The trap was set. Farah had dinner that night with Robert and their kids. It was a normal evening, quiet, routine. She didn’t know it would be her last. After dinner, Robert took the children out.
Two went to the church nursery, one to catechism class. Farah returned home alone. She was likely getting ready to wind down for the night. Instead, she walked into her garage and into an ambush. Waiting for her was Howard Gyri. He stepped out of the shadows and fired two rounds.
Both bullets struck Farah in the head. She died instantly. The killer fled the scene, hopping into a getaway car driven by Pristache. It was a textbook execution. But there was one problem. Farah had neighbors and they saw everything. Some described the shooter as Africanamean. Others thought he was a white man dressed in black.
But all of them saw someone running. All of them saw the car speed off. Still, when police questioned Robert Fraa, now a winnower, he was calm, cold, not a single tear. One investigator later said Fraa didn’t seem shocked. Didn’t ask who had done it. Didn’t express grief. Instead, he just moved on. He thought he got away with it. For months, the case stalled.
The police had suspicions. Everyone suspected Robert, but they lacked hard evidence. Meanwhile, Robert fought to regain custody of the children against Farah’s grieving parents. He lost that battle, too. The court ruled that Farah’s parents, Betty and Lex Backer, would raise the children. Robert was deemed unfit for full custody.
He was granted limited visitation under supervision and 15-minute phone calls with his children. Judge Robert Hinahosa made it clear Robert’s alleged involvement in the murder made him too dangerous to be apparent and still the evidence was thin. That changed in March 1995. Howard Gyri was arrested for an unrelated bank robbery.
Inside his backpack, police found a revolver, a .38 Charter Arms, just another weapon until it was traced back to Robert Frada. Turns out Farah had given that very gun to her father for safekeeping. But in the summer of 1994, Frada convinced him to return it. That same gun would later match the bullets found in Farah’s garage.
Then came the domino effect. Joseph Pristach’s girlfriend, Mary Gip, cracked. She told police everything. How Pristach was the getaway driver. How Gyri pulled the trigger. How Robert Frada orchestrated the entire thing. With that testimony and the ballistic evidence, police arrested all three. Frada, Pristach, and Gyri.
The hunt was over. The trials were just beginning. Want to know how these men face justice and whether any of them escaped the needle? Make sure you’ve subscribed and turn on the bell so you don’t miss the jaw-dropping stories like this. Sometimes justice comes from the most unexpected places. On March 1st, 1995, 4 months after Farah’s murder, a completely unrelated crime cracked the case wide open.
Howard Gyri, the teenager who pulled the trigger, was arrested for a bank robbery. At the time, he was just another young man in cuffs. But when investigators opened his backpack, they found a 38 caliber revolver. That detail might have gone unnoticed until someone ran the serial number. That gun wasn’t just any weapon. It was registered to Robert Frada, the same gun Farah had once feared.
The one she handed over to her father for safekeeping. The one Frada convinced him to give back months before she was murdered. When the Houston Police Department’s Firearms Examiner ran tests, everything clicked. One of the bullet fragments found in Farah’s garage matched that very gun. Another fragment, though too damaged to confirm, was traced to the same manufacturer.
But evidence wasn’t the only thing falling into place. Witnesses were starting to talk. The most damning came from Mary Gip, Pristach’s girlfriend. In an emotional interview, she told investigators what she’d known all along, that Frada had planned it, Pristach had coordinated it, and Guyri had carried it out.
One confession led to another. Within days, all three were under arrest. And finally, the prosecution had what it needed. A motive, a weapon, a witness, and a conspiracy that pointed straight to Robert Frada. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but when they turn, they grind. Frada, Pristach, and Gyri were each charged with capital murder, the most severe charge under Texas law.
Prosecutors were clear. They wanted the death penalty. Each man would face trial separately. No shared defense, no shared courtroom. They wouldn’t be able to hide behind one another. Fra was up first. His trial began on April 9th, 1996. The courtroom was packed. Cameras outside, reporters inside.
People wanted to see what justice would look like for the former cop turned accused killer. The prosecution’s case was devastating. Ballistics experts tied the murder weapon directly to Frada. Multiple witnesses testified to Frada’s obsession with killing Farah. Former friends, gym buddies, and fellow officers recalled conversations where Frada casually talked about hiring a hitman.
And then there was the money trail. Frada paid Pristach $2,000 and a jeep and Guyri got $1,000 for pulling the trigger. A clinical psychologist testified that Frada viewed women as subservient little girls and lacked empathy for others. It took just 9 days for the jury to reach a verdict. Guilty of capital murder. During sentencing, Farah’s mother, Betty Bacher, took the stand.
Her words were simple but haunting. She is a monster. She took away my daughter and tried to take away my grandchildren. On March 24th, 1996, the jury returned with a unanimous decision, death by lethal injection. Pris Dash stood trial next, beginning on July 1st, 1996. His role in the murder, the getaway driver, the coordinator, the recruiter was undeniable.
Mary Gibbs testimony devastated the defense. She laid bare every detail. How prist introduced Gyri to Frada, how they coordinated the plan, how they laughed afterwards. The jury took just 17 minutes to convict him. On August 2nd, 1996, he too was sentenced to death. The final trial came in March 1997. Howard Gyri was just 21 years old when he stood trial for a murder he committed at 18.
His defense argued that a life sentence would be punishment enough. That after four years on death row, Gyri had changed, but prosecutors weren’t buying it. He’d executed a woman, an innocent mother, in her own garage. The jury agreed. On March 27th, after initially deadlocking, they returned a verdict of death. Within a year, all three men sat on Texas death row.
If you’re still watching, hit that like button. It helps our channel grow and reach more true crime fans like this. And drop a comment. Should the death penalty be applied to cases like this? Or is life behind bars enough? You might think that would be the end. Three trials, three sentences, three men on death row.
But this case was far from over. In 1998, Howard Gyri made headlines again. This time for a failed prison escape involving five other inmates. But that wasn’t the worst of it. In February 2000, he and another death row inmate, Ponchai Wilkerson, took a female correctional officer hostage. For over 13 hours, the two men held her at knife point, demanding better conditions for death row inmates.
Activists were called in to negotiate. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the standoff ended peacefully. Still, the incident showed how volatile death row life could be and how far some inmates were willing to go to fight their fate. In 2005, a federal court ruled that Gidri’s original trial was flawed.
Key evidence had been mishandled. Witnesses had repeated hearsay. The court granted a new trial. On February 19th, 2007, Gidri was retrieded. Witnesses returned. So did Forest grieving family. The jury heard it all again and once again returned a guilty verdict. On March 1st, he was sentenced to death again. Frada followed suit.
In 2007, a federal judge ruled that his conviction relied too heavily on confessions from Gidri and Pristache. Confessions he couldn’t cross-examine. His trial, too, was tainted. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in 2008. Fra would get a second chance. On May 5th, 2009, the retrial began, but this time the confessions weren’t allowed in court.
The prosecution had to rely solely on circumstantial evidence and witness testimony. And still it was enough. Even Fra’s own children, now adults, took the stand against him. They had changed their last names to Bakir after their mother’s parents. To them, their father was a monster. On May 14th, the jury found him guilty again.
On May 29th, they gave him death again. Justice delayed but not denied. If you think retrials are fair or just loopholes for killers, let us know in the comments and make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more death row cases coming that’ll leave you speechless. Even after his second death sentence, Frader wasn’t done fighting.
He filed appeal after appeal, reaching as high as the US Supreme Court. But every time the answer was the same, denied. Then in July 2022, the state of Texas moved forward with his execution order. His lawyers made a final attempt to stop it, claiming that Texas was using expired lethal drugs. They argued it violated his rights, calling it cruel and unusual punishment.
The court didn’t agree. On October 12th, 2022, a Texas judge signed Fra’s death warrant. His execution was set for January 10th, 2023. The night of his execution, Fra showed no remorse, no emotion, no final words. His eldest son, Bradley Bakir, and Farah’s brother, Zayn, attended the execution. So did Andy Cahan from Crimestoppers.
They watched through the glass as the man who destroyed their family lay strapped toward Gurnie. At 7:49 p.m. after a single dose of pentobarbatital, Robert Frada was pronounced dead. 28 years, two trials, three children left without a mother, and finally closure. As of 2025, Joseph Pristach died on death row in June 2025.
His cause of death undisclosed. No one mourned him. Howard Gry remains on death row, still fighting, still alive, still unrepentant. Fra’s case wasn’t just about murder. It was about abuse of power. A man who wore a badge and used it to manipulate, intimidate, and eventually destroy. He didn’t pull the trigger, but make no mistake, he planned every detail.
And in the end, he paid for it with his life. If you found this story chilling, drop a comment. Subscribe to Death Row Diaries for more real life stories where justice finds even the most untouchable criminals. And share this video because Far’s story deserves to be heard.
