Robert Allan Fratta Execution + Crime + Last Meal + Last Words | Texas Death Row Inmate
Tomorrow, a man is set to die for hiring a hitman to kill his wife. Farah Frada, a mother of three, was shot to death in her Atascacita home back in 1994. Our grace white find the defendant Robin Alan Frada guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment signed by the foreman. Today’s story is for a murder to higher plot.
When you get married, you dream of forever. But when the marriage turns cold and bitter, sometimes walking away is the only sane choice. He didn’t file for divorce. He didn’t seek counseling. Instead, he made a decision that would forever stain his name in the darkest pages of Texas history. Frada had told a female friend that he was looking for hitmen, specifically those of African-American descent, to assassinate his wife.
When he finally found one, the pay was $3,000 and a jeep. Fra was a former public safety officer, a man sworn to protect. But behind that badge was a bitter ex-husband with a deadly obsession. His wife, Farrada, had filed for divorce. She feared him and she had every reason to. Months before her murder, someone broke into Farah’s home. She screamed.
The intruder fled, but the message was clear. Someone wanted to hurt her. When police brought Robert in for questioning after the murder and was asked a simple question, what should happen to someone who kills another person? Fra replied coldly. They should rot in prison forever. Then came the second question. What about a husband who kills his wife? Freda paused, smirked, and said, that depends.
He didn’t hide his hatred. Co-workers had heard him say it before. I’m going to kill her. Many thought he was joking, but Farah knew better and she paid the price for loving the wrong man. After the interview with investigator just a day after the death of his wife, he could be seen smiling at the camera. This is the story of Robert Allan Fra, a father, a cop, and a convicted killer who chose murder over moving on.
Today we will talk about his crime, last word and last meal before execution. Welcome to True Crime Matter. Thank you for sticking with us. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the comments below. November 9th, 1994, Atascacita, Texas. It was around 6:45 p.m.
when Farah Frada returned home from a local hair salon. She had just cut her shoulderlength hair short. Something friends later said was a sign that she was emotionally moving on from the ugliness of her divorce proceedings. According to Farah Fred attorneys, she said Farah was no longer comfortable of his sexual demands. Things like asking her to excrete in his mouth, so he eat it.
You, this sounds so disgusting, and to pee in his mouth. This is a sexual fantasy called copperilia and copperia. So on that day, Farah parked her red Mustang convertible in the garage of her home at 13718 Napier Lane. As she stepped out of the car, a masked man rushed in. Two gunshots, loud, close-range. One hit her in the head, one in the neck.
She collapsed immediately. The shots were heard by a neighbor who looked outside and saw a man in black hiding near Farah’s home. She picked up the phone and dialed 911. While on the call, she watched the gunman flee. Farah was still in her garage, lying face down in a pool of blood. She had no chance of survival.
EMS pronounced her dead when she was airlifted to a nearby hospital. She was only 33 years old as at the time of her murder. At the time of the murder, Robert was at church with their three children, something that was wildly out of character. He never took the kids to church. That night, he returned home acting strangely calm.
Witnesses said he didn’t seem shocked or devastated. Instead, he appeared detached. When police got to the crime scene, they couldn’t recover any evidence except for the 911 call placed by the neighbor who said a black guy with a mask was seen hiding by the corner and he had gotten away with another car who came and drove away.
Police were immediately suspicious. Farah had filed multiple complaints about Robert during their divorce. She told friends and her attorney she feared he might kill her. Her lawyer even said when her father got to the scene, he immediately said Bob Fra has done it. He had threatened to kill on several occasions. She believed she would be murdered and she believed Robert would be behind it.
Still, Robert had a clean alibi. He was with the kids. But something about the timing and his behavior didn’t sit right. Detectives started digging. Days after the murder, Robert Freda was brought in by Harris County investigators. They needed answers and fast, but what they got instead was chilling. Robert didn’t flinch, didn’t cry, didn’t ask about how Farah died or who did it.
In fact, he laughed during questioning. Detectives were stunned by his calmness. His answers were straight and his expressions cold. One investigator said it was like talking to someone who didn’t care if his wife was murdered. He just didn’t care. For nearly 5 months after Farrada’s murder, investigators in Harris County hit a wall.
The crime scene was clean, the gun was gone, and her ex-husband, Robert Alan Frada, had an alibi. He was at church with their three kids, but detectives never let go. Behind the scenes, they were chasing whispers. Robert’s co-workers remembered him talking too casually about getting rid of his wife.
Some even said he asked if they knew a hitman, but talk isn’t evidence and without a weapon or eyewitness, the case stalled. Then in March 1995 came the break. Exactly 5 months after the crime was committed. Howard Gidri, a 17-year-old known to Houston police, was arrested in an unrelated bank robbery. While he was being pursued, they recovered some of the cash, guns, and ballistic from him.
Below is the evidence of the cash and ballistic recovered from him. The revolver he used was recovered. When that gun was tested, ballistic results confirmed it was the same weapon used to kill Farrada in her garage back in November, and the purchase led directly to Bob Frada. Now, detectives had a match and a suspect.
They brought Gidri in again. At first, he clammed up. Then, slowly, the story poured out. Gidri confessed he was the shooter, but he hadn’t acted alone. He took them to the crime scene and cracked open the case. He said a lot of things which only the person that did the crime would say. He named Joseph Price Dash as the man who drove him to Farah’s house.
Price Dash handed him the gun. The plan was clear. Wait in the shadows. Kill her when she stepped out of the car, then vanish. And who ordered the hit? Robert Frada. Gidri said he paid us. When 17-year-old Howard Gidri dropped the name Joseph Price Dash, investigators finally had a thread to pull and they pulled hard.
Gidri had confessed to being the triggerman, but said he was just the end of a chain. It was Price Dash, a 39-year-old former mechanic with a long rap sheet who organized the logistics. He supplied the murder weapon, picked Gidri up after the hit, and most crucially acted as the go-between for the real mastermind. Robert confessions alone weren’t enough.
Prosecutors needed evidence to back it up. They began digging and what they found confirmed everything Gidri said. Investigators subpoenaed phone records from November 1994. On the days leading up to Farah’s murder, Frada had made several calls to payoneses and Pristach’s home. They trace calls made from a pay phone outside a local convenience store.
The same one where Gidri said he called after the murder. It matched the time Farah was killed, just after 6:30 p.m. on November 9th, 1994. Surveillance logs and phone tower pings placed Pristach’s vehicle near Farah’s neighborhood that night. Witnesses from the area remembered seeing a suspicious car parked not far from the Frder residence around the time of the shooting. Then came the kicker.
Witnesses who knew Price Dash personally said he had been talking weeks before about being involved in something big. One informant recalled him mentioning a cop who wanted his wife taken out. That cop, of course, was Robert Frada. With a murder weapon linked to Gidri, a confession tying it to Price Dash, and electronic records placing the two in contact with Frraa.
Detectives had enough. In May 1995, Joseph Price Dash was arrested at his home in Houston, Texas. Police found additional firearms in his possession and seized his vehicle. Suspected to be the getaway car used the night Pharaoh was ambushed. Price Dash didn’t confess. He lawyered up fast, but the digital trail, the timeline, and Gidri’s detailed account boxed him in.
And now with both ends of the hit exposed, the man who pulled the trigger and the one who planned it, the focus turned to the man who paid for it all. June 1995, Robert Frraa was taken into custody at his home in Missouri City, Texas. Frada didn’t resist, didn’t act surprised. To police, he seemed emotionless like a man who thought he was too smart to get caught.
All three, Freda, Price Dash, and Gidri were charged with capital murder. Now, barely 7 months after the mother of three was gunned down in her own garage, the case was cracked wide open, not by fingerprints or eyewitnesses, but by ballistics and a guilty conscience. And for the first time, the public saw the full picture.
This wasn’t a random act of violence. It was murder for hire. It was planned, paid for, carried out, and the man who ordered it was once a cop. By the time Robert Alan Frada stood trial, the public already knew the story, but no one could forget it. The image of Farah Frada, a 33-year-old mother of three killed in her garage, haunted Houston.
But what chilled people even more was who orchestrated it. Her ex-husband, a former Missouri City police officer, the father of her children. And the trial was unlike anything the Harris County courtroom had seen in years. The prosecution’s case was brutal in its clarity. Robert Frraa had a motive. A nasty divorce, custody battles, and a $235,000 life insurance policy on Farah.
He had an opportunity. He dropped his kids at church, something he never did, to create an alibi. And he had means. He recruited Joseph Price Dash, who then brought in Howard Gidri, a teenager desperate for cash. In court, prosecutors painted Freda as a manipulative man who wanted control at all costs.
He didn’t just hate his wife, he wanted her erased, silenced permanently. Then came the bombshells. Phone records showed calls between Freda and Price Dash in the days leading up to the murder. Grey’s confession played in court described how he waited in the shadows of the garage, how he pulled the trigger twice, and how they drove off in Pristach’s car.
The jury also heard from co-workers who said Frada had openly joked about needing to get rid of her. The murder plot didn’t start in a dark alley. It started in a gym. Robert Frrada was a regular at a local fitness center in Humble, Texas, a place where he lifted weights, exchanged small talk, and quietly looked for someone to kill his wife. It wasn’t subtle.
According to prosecutors, Freda asked at least seven people over several months if they knew anyone who could take care of his problem. The problem? Farah, his aranged wife. She was seeking full custody of their three kids and wasn’t backing down. In Frada’s eyes, she had to go. One of the first people he approached was the gym owner, a man who considered Frada a friend.
Frraa leaned in and asked straight out, “Do you know someone who can kill my wife?” The owner thought it was a joke, but Frada kept asking again and again. He’d laugh. He’d say it casually, but the message never changed. That gym became ground zero for the conspiracy. That’s where he crossed paths with Joseph Price Dash, a fellow gymgoer with a criminal past.
A man who didn’t laugh it off. Price Dash listened. He had access to people, guns, getaway cars, and more importantly, he had Howard Gidri, a desperate teenager willing to pull the trigger for money. During trial, the prosecution hammered this point. This wasn’t a spur-of-the- moment crime.
This was a man who shopped for a hitman like he was looking for a mechanic. At a gym, in broad daylight, Freda’s hit list wasn’t written down. It was whispered rep after rep, bench after bench until someone finally took him seriously. That’s how a fitness center turned into the staging ground for murder. In April 1996, Robert Frada was convicted of capital murder.
April 24th, 1996, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Next came Joseph Price Dash, tried separately in July 1996. His trial lasted just over a week. The evidence, phone logs, Gidri’s testimony, and his own criminal record sealed his fate. Mary Jip’s testimony was the final nail in the coffin. For years, Robert Frada had denied everything.
No fingerprints, no gun, no confession. But when Mary, Joseph Pristach’s girlfriend, took the stand, the jury finally saw through him. She wasn’t some random witness. Mary had been in the room, not during the murder, but close enough to feel its echo. She told the jury that weeks before Farah’s death, she overheard her boyfriend and Freda whispering in the gym locker room.
The plan was already in motion. Freda wanted his wife dead, and Price Dash was going to help make it happen. She didn’t say anything back then. She told the court, “I turned my back. But the night of the murder, everything changed. She came home to find Howard Gidri, a teenager she barely knew, sitting outside in all black.
Minutes later, Price Dash walked in, tossed a revolver into her bedroom, and calmly emptied the shells into her kitchen trash. Then he looked at her and said the words she could never forget. Yes, she’s dead. Mary didn’t go to the police that night. But when detectives finally confronted her, warning that she could be charged for withholding evidence, she cracked.
She told them everything. the meetings, the payones, the loaded gun, the casings tossed in her trash. She even wrote down the gun’s serial number, something she’d done out of instinct. That serial number matched the murder weapon. That’s when the house of cards started collapsing. Her words didn’t just connect the dots.
They gave the plot a face, a voice, and a motive. And in that courtroom, as she broke down in tears, the jury didn’t just see a murder for higher plot. They saw a premeditated execution ordered by a man who wanted custody more than he wanted Farah alive. Mary’s silence almost buried the truth, but her testimony brought it roaring back to life.
July 8th, 1996, Price Dash was found guilty. July 11th, 1996, sentenced to death. Then came Howard Gidri, the triggerman. only 17 at the time of the murder. He sat quietly in court as his own confession played aloud. The jury saw him not as a scared kid, but a willing killer. March 27th, 1997, Gidri was convicted of capital murder.
April 16th, 1997, sentenced to death. Gidri was convicted of capital murder. April 16th, 1997, sentenced to death. But the story didn’t end there. Years later, the fifth circuit court of appeals overturned all three convictions due to issues around co-conspirator confessions being introduced improperly. Each man was retrieded and each man was convicted again.
This was when Mary Jip testified about the night of the murder, even with new juries, even with new defense strategies. The facts were too strong. In 2009, Freda was sentenced to death the second time. But through it all, he remained expressionless, unmoved. Even as prosecutors read Farah’s name aloud, even as his children testified against him, even as the jury said the word guilty, he never apologized, never took responsibility, never showed remorse, just cold silence from a man who paid for murder, watched it unfold, and tried to walk away. But now, the state of
Texas was going to finish what he started. January 9th, 2023. Inside the Palinsky unit in Livingston, Texas, the clock was ticking. For Robert Allen Frada, a former police officer turned convicted murderer. This was the last full day of his life. Nearly three decades earlier, he had orchestrated the cold-blooded murder of his ex-wife, Farrada, shot in her garage while he took their three young children to church to create a perfect alibi.
Now, justice has come full circle. Frata spent the day like any other condemned man in Texas. Alone in his cell, he ate the standard prison meal, the same bland dinner served to every inmate. He was served a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with scrambled eggs, cereal, and a cup of milk, which was the standard prison meal served that day.
No last meal request because Texas outlawed that tradition years ago after a death row inmate abused it by ordering a feast he never touched. But Freda’s silence was more disturbing. He had never shown remorse. Not when he was convicted in 1996. Not during his retrial in 2009, and not now.
As the state prepared to end his life outside the prison walls, his children, now adults, weren’t pleading for mercy. They supported the execution. In the words of his daughter, “My mother never got to see us grow up. She missed our first prom. She missed childbirth. She missed everything because our father took her life. At 6:00 p.m.
, Frada was moved from Palunksky to the Huntsville unit, the site of Texas’s execution chamber. Dressed in white prison garb, shackled at the wrists and ankles, he made the final walk. A straight line between past sins and the state’s ultimate punishment. That same evening, his attorneys filed 11th hour appeals challenging the use of expired pentabarbatital, the drug used in Texas executions.
They claimed it could cause excruciating pain. A federal judge temporarily paused the execution, but hours later, both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the US Supreme Court rejected the appeals. Clemency was denied. At 6:39 p.m. on January 10th, 2023, Frada lay strapped to the gurnie for lines fed into both arms. Behind the glass, witnesses watched intense silence.
Among them, Farah’s brother and Frat’s own children, stone-faced. When asked if he had any last words, Freda said nothing. No apology, no explanation, no plea for forgiveness. The execution began. Frraa exhaled deeply, snorred several times, and then went still. At 7:49 p.m., he was pronounced dead. The man who once paid to have his wife silenced had met his own state sanctioned end.
Quietly, legally, and alone. For the family of Farafrada, it was not a celebration, but a long overdue justice. The father who took their mother’s life would never steal another moment again. In the years after Robert Frata’s execution, the stories of Joseph Price Dash and Howard Gidri continued on Texas death row. Joseph Price Dash, the middleman who drove the trigger to the crime scene, never made it to execution.
On June 19th, 2025, at age 70, he died of natural causes in his cell at the Palinsky unit. More than two years after Frata’s death, his passing closed the final chapter on a man who’d once turned murder into a transaction. Howard Paul Gidri, the 17-year-old triggerman who pulled the trigger in Farah’s garage, remains on death
