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The Case of Robert Fratta
That Chapter's 28-minute breakdown, the fullest single telling on file.
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Farah Fahmida Fratta (née Baquer), born August 5, 1961, in Guildford, Surrey, England, married Robert Alan Fratta, a public safety officer in Missouri City, Texas, in 1983. The couple had three children. In March 1992, Farah filed for divorce, alleging bizarre and deviant sexual demands by her husband. The divorce and custody proceedings lasted two years and were marked by acrimony. Multiple co-workers and friends of Robert Fratta later testified that he had repeatedly expressed intent to kill his wife, including discussing methods such as shooting her or staging a carjacking, and that he had asked several people, including a colleague, to help find a hitman.
In 1994, Fratta approached gym acquaintance Joseph Andrew Prystash, who agreed to find a gunman. Prystash recruited his neighbor, 18-year-old Howard Paul Guidry, to carry out the killing. On the night of November 9, 1994, after dinner with her children, Farah was alone at her Atascocita home when she was shot twice in the head by Guidry in her garage; neighbors witnessed the shooting and observed the getaway car, driven by Prystash. Police suspected Robert Fratta's involvement but lacked sufficient evidence to charge him at the time. In December 1994, a family court awarded custody of the children to Farah's parents, Betty and Lex Baquer, and the presiding judge reportedly found Fratta unfit as a parent due to suspicion of his involvement in the murder; Fratta was also fired from his job.
The case remained unsolved until March 1, 1995, when Guidry was arrested for an unrelated bank robbery and found with a .38 caliber revolver traced to Fratta. Ballistics linked the weapon to the murder, and Prystash's girlfriend, Mary Gipp, told police Guidry was involved. Fratta and Prystash were then arrested and charged with capital murder, along with Guidry.
Each defendant was tried separately. Fratta was convicted on April 18, 1996, and sentenced to death on May 3, 1996. Prystash was convicted on July 8, 1996, and sentenced to death on August 2, 1996. Guidry was convicted on March 20, 1997, and sentenced to death on April 16, 1997.
Guidry was granted a retrial in 2005 due to prosecutorial misuse of hearsay evidence; he was reconvicted on February 23, 2007, and resentenced to death on March 1, 2007. Fratta was granted a retrial in 2007 after a federal judge found procedural issues with the original prosecution; he was reconvicted on May 14, 2009, and resentenced to death on May 29, 2009.
Subsequent appeals by all three men were rejected over the following decade. Fratta was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit on January 10, 2023, after the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to intervene. Joseph Prystash died on death row on June 19, 2025, before his execution could be carried out. As of 2025, Howard Guidry remains on death row.
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