Texas executes ex-cop who hired two hitmen to shoot his wife dead 30 years ago
Rachel Ellis
Updated on March 30, 2026
A former Houston-area police officer was executed 30 years after hiring two hitmen to kill his wife as their divorce turned bitter while they fought for custody of their three sons.
Robert Fratta, 65, spent 27 years on death row for orchestrating his 33-year-old wife Farah Fratta's murder in 1994. He was executed on Tuesday at Huntsville prison in Texas, and was pronounced dead at 7.49pm, 24 minutes after the lethal dose was injected.
Fratta refused to give a final statement. When asked by the warden if he had anything to say, Fratta replied: 'No.'
His spiritual adviser, Barry Brown, prayed over him for about three minutes prior to the execution. Brown, who held Fratta's right hand while he prayed, asked for prayers for 'hearts that have been broken...for people who grieved and those who will grieve in days ahead.' He asked God to 'be merciful to Bobby.'
Brown resumed praying as the lethal drugs began and Fratta closed his eyes and took a deep breath and then snored loudly six times. Then all movement stopped.
Fratta's eldest son, Bradley Baquer, was among witnesses watching Fratta die. The death row inmate did not acknowledge or look at him as he stood at the window to the death row chamber.
Robert Fratta, 65, spent 27 years on death row for orchestrating his 33-year-old wife Farah Fratta's murder in 1994. He was executed on Tuesday at Huntsville prison in Texas, and was pronounced dead at 7.49pm, 24 minutes after the lethal dose was injected
His wife, Farah, 33, (pictured) was ambushed in her garage and shot in the head in November 1994
At the time of the killing, Fratta and his wife were going through a custody battle over their three kids (pictured). One of their sons, Bradley, witnessed his father's execution
Prosecutors say Fratta organized the murder-for-hire plot in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard Guidry, to ambushed Farah.
She was shot twice in the head in her home's garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita and neighbors called the police after witnessing the shooting.
Fratta, who was a public safety officer for Missouri City, had long claimed he was innocent, but investigators grew suspicious after finding out they were going through a custody battle over their three children. Court documents also revealed his 'sexual appetites' was the reason the pair were getting divorced.
His lethal injection on Tuesday was delayed for little more than an hour until the last of a flurry of final-day appeals cleared in the US Supreme Court and Texas' highest courts, the Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Fratta's lawyers argued unsuccessfully that prosecutors withheld evidence that a trial witness had been hypnotized by investigators, leading her to change her initial recollection that she saw two men at the murder scene, as well as, a getaway driver.
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ShareProsecutors have argued the hypnosis produced no new information and no new identification. They had also said that Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her, telling one friend: 'I'll just kill her, and I'll do my time and when I get out, I'll have my kids,' according to court records.
Prystash and Guidry were also sent to death row for the slaying, but their execution dates have not been set.
Fratta was also one of four Texas death row inmates who sued to stop the state's prison system from using what they alleged were expired and unsafe execution drugs. That lawsuit failed late Tuesday,
He spoke out about the death penalty prior to his execution, calling the process 'torturous.'
'I never gave any thought to the death penalty, even though I was a police officer, and now that I’m going through it, I can understand how it’s so ridiculously tormenting for the inmates to be put through this,' he told the Death Penalty Action group on Sunday.
The hitmen hired by Fratta, Joseph Prystash and Howard Guidry, are both on death row for the murder of Farah Fratta
Fratta (pictured) was executed on Tuesday at Huntsville prison in Texas. Ahead of his execution, Fratta said: 'To have you knowing the day and time and everything that you’re gonna die, and it’s prolonged and everything that they put you through beforehand. This is torturous. I guess at my age, I’ll be 66 next month if I make it, but I’m kind of ready to go, so that’s how I’m doing it also...I’m just tired of 27 years of suffering'
Fratta's son Bradley was there to witness his father's death, but said his dad never looked him in the eye, nor apologized
'To have you knowing the day and time and everything that you’re gonna die, and it’s prolonged and everything that they put you through beforehand. This is torturous.
'I guess at my age, I’ll be 66 next month if I make it, but I’m kind of ready to go, so that’s how I’m doing it also...I’m just tired of 27 years of suffering.'
The Supreme Court and lower courts previously rejected appeals from Fratta's lawyers that sought to review claims arguing insufficient evidence and faulty jury instructions were used to convict him. His attorneys also unsuccessfully argued that a juror in his case was not impartial and that ballistics evidence didn't tie him to the murder weapon.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week unanimously declined to commute Fratta's death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a 60-day reprieve.
Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his conviction was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions from his co-conspirators shouldn't have been admitted into evidence. In the same ruling, the judge wrote that 'trial evidence showed Fratta to be egotistical, misogynistic, and vile, with a callous desire to kill his wife.'
He was retried and resentenced to death in 2009.
Fratta was one of the few inmates who tried to sue Texas for allegedly using expired drugs, but his case failed. He also said in an interview on Sunday that the death penalty is 'torturous,' but 'I’m kind of ready to go, so that’s how I’m doing it also...I’m just tired of 27 years of suffering'
Andy Kahan, the director of victim services and advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston, said that Farah's father, Lex Baquer, who died in 2018, raised Robert and Farah's three children with his wife.
Betty Baquer said in 1996 that he 'cannot wait for the day when I see him laying on that table, waiting to get the injection.'
'That will be justice for me,' she said at the time.
Kahan, Fratta's son Bradley Baquer, and Farah's brother, Zain Baquer, were among witnesses watching Fratta die. Fratta never acknowledged them or looked at them as they stood at a window to the death chamber.
'Bob was a coward in 1994, when he arranged the murder for hire of his estranged wife,' Kahan said after the execution. 'And 28-plus years later, he still was a coward tonight. When he was offered an opportunity to at least extend an olive branch to his son that he knew was watching this.
'And he still chose the coward's way out. He could have said: "I'm sorry."'
Fratta was the first inmate put to death this year in Texas and the second in the US. Eight other executions are scheduled in Texas for later this year.
