Original subtitles

♪♪♪

[somber music]

♪ Once I thought I knew something ♪

♪ Showed my hand and lost someone ♪

I was 32 years old when I handled the Fratta case.

There aren't that many times in a courtroom

where kids have to testify,

and you always try to avoid it.

Even when they're the victim, you try to avoid it.

You give the case away, you plea it out.

This was different.

I met you when you were just seven years old.

What do you remember about any of it? Anything?

- All of it. - Do you really?

- Most of it, yeah. - Wow.

In November of 1994,

a very vivacious young lady named Farah Fratta

had just gotten her hair cut

when she drove home, parked in her garage,

and was surprised there by a man with a gun.

Her neighbors heard gunshots, and Farah was evacuated

by life flight to the hospital that night.

It wasn't easy to piece together this horrible crime

that left three young children without their mom.

The investigators followed this trail that led through

a whole bunch of pretty sketchy, shady characters,

but it all led back to just one person.

The first charges that were filed

on this case made it land in my court.

This was only my sixth death penalty case

that I ever handled.

We felt the need to use Farah's seven-year-old son

on the witness stand to testify.

My boss felt it was the wrong thing to do.

As a brand new mother myself,

and knowing how you feel about your baby,

to ask any child to testify in a trial

is a huge, horrible thing, maybe even scarring.

Ultimately, we decided to do that.

We felt like the evidence needed that to happen.

This was the first big, different, crazy case

that I ever handled, and a case that,

literally, they wrote a book about,

because you can't make up a case like this.

♪♪♪

[birds chirping]

[soft echoing tones]

It's a Wednesday evening.

My son Caleb was crying.

I started to nurse him,

and I'm sitting on my couch in my living room.

Farah, who lived across the street,

her garage door went open, and the lights come on.

And she's backing up into her driveway.

And I hear a pop.

[popping sound]

I see Farah fall in her garage, and then I hear another pop.

[loud pop]

Immediately in my mind, I'm thinking,

she has boys that are playing around.

But I looked at my husband, I said, "if she doesn't get up

in two seconds, I'm calling 911."

- And she didn't get up. - [phone beeping]

In the midst of all of this, the lights in the garage go off.

And I see this man come out from behind a tree,

and he comes up to the road.

My husband started to go outside,

and I was yelling at him not to go,

but he's like, he has to check on her.

He knelt down by her,

and he could tell that she was still breathing,

but she was shallow in her breaths, like she was dying.

Farah has three kids, and our concern is,

where are the kids?

It was very hard to believe this was happening

in our neighborhood, right in front of us.

I get the call to the crime scene.

I grab Daniel Blomberg, who was a partner of mine.

We are responding from the sheriff's office

as the forensic investigation team.

[loud siren]

The initial report I get is that there is

an adult female victim identified as Farah Fratta.

She's been shot.

As I walked into the scene, the garage door's open.

I see the reporting deputies from the constable's office,

and there's a bunch of what we in the unit call uh-oh blood.

In other words, enough blood came out of the victim

that it looks like she might not make it.

And so at that point,

the judgment is made that it's the right thing to do

to fly her on the helicopter to the hospital.

I get my partner started on photography,

and I start looking around.

I inventory the garage.

In the vicinity of what looks like where the crime took place,

there's an automobile, there's bloodstains on the floor,

there's medical refuse on the floor.

I see a bunch of her property, purse and other items,

and those items look like they're undisturbed.

When you see that, well, it's not a robbery--

most likely.

I don't find any bullet casings, so kind of indicating to me

they either cleaned them up or maybe used a revolver.

The first person that we want to talk to

and try to rule out is the husband.

We found out Robert Fratta was the husband

of Farah Fratta, the woman that had been shot,

but they were in the process of getting divorced.

Lots of neighbors had come out, and that's when Bob showed up.

And the kids were in the car.

Bradley, the eldest, was seven, Daniel was six,

and Amber was four years old.

The scene was already taped off,

and I just remember being approached by a lot of cops,

and it was just a chaotic scene.

I went to the car and I said,

Bob, don't let the kids out of the car.

And Amber looked at me and she said,

"did something happen to my mommy?"

It's like they knew.

That broke my heart.

That's when we start hearing

something has happened, I didn't know what.

I wanted to see my mother,

but I was told that I couldn't see her right now.

She is being transported to a hospital

and that I could see her in the morning.

My brother and sister were younger than me,

so... their reactions weren't much.

But I didn't know what exactly was going on,

and then when I heard that I was going to be staying

with my grandparents that night, I was afraid.

♪♪♪

[rising tones]

At the crime scene, well, I'm talking to Robert.

He was not asking questions that you would think

someone would be asking when they find out

that his wife and mother of his children had just been shot.

He's focusing on telling the story about his alibi.

"Hey, I couldn't have done this.

I was with my kids at church."

[dramatic whoosh]

Robert was asked to come to the homicide office

for an interview.

He obviously works out.

I guess you could call him a bodybuilder.

When one cop is interviewing another cop,

they're aware that the person they're talking to

knows all the rules.

They know the game. They know the law.

They know how to work all that

to their advantage more than the typical suspect.

He told me that he had taken his children

to church that night.

He checked two of the children,

the younger ones, into a nursery.

And the oldest was preparing for his first communion.

It was obvious that he knew the procedures

for interviews and interrogations.

He was speaking freely the whole time,

answering the questions, and denying any involvement.

My interview with Robert, it just did not feel right.

He didn't appear too troubled by what had just happened.

It just makes me think, what is wrong with this guy?

And that's just a clue that he's hiding something.

Robert's interview lasted 14 hours,

from the time he was brought down

until the time he was released the next morning.

I remember Bob Fratta walking out

of the sheriff's department,

where all the reporters were swarming him,

right after he's brought down to be interviewed.

And he looks into that camera and does the whole,

"How do I look?" thing to the camera.

Like it's all a big, fun game.

Thinking, wow, your wife was just shot.

You just took your children there and saw all that.

And you're up here today in your pretty blue jacket,

shining for the camera.

He had an alibi, but I think Robert

was involved in this somehow.

He had this alternate lifestyle.

What he was doing was not normal.

That's when he decided he had to take care of Farah.

She knew Farah and she knew what was going to happen,

and she didn't do one thing to stop it from happening.

[gentle music] [birds chirping]

[train horn blowing]

BRADLEY: The next morning we woke up

to my grandmother waking us up in bed

and telling us that our mother had died.

There wasn't anything after that

that she would say that happened.

She didn't tell us that my mother was murdered.

I did not know exactly what happened.

I did not know that she was shot.

But I knew that she was no longer with us.

And after that, probably for the next two, three hours,

we just stayed in that bed and all cried.

So Lex and Betty Baquer,

Farah's parents, took their grandchildren,

and they gave these three kids a home.

During the investigation, we spoke to

some of Farah's friends so we could get a better idea

of what was going on within the family.

I met Farah working at American Airlines.

I actually worked in the office and she was a ticket agent.

We were very good friends. We talked every day.

Farah was very quiet, very shy.

She was just sweet, a good person.

Farah's family came here from the UK.

She started working for American Airlines,

and that's how she met Bob.

He was a ticket agent too, and they seemed to hit it off.

He could charm the pants off anybody.

They had a great time together.

They had three beautiful kids, and they were happy.

It didn't start falling apart 'til later.

It took a while because Bob put up a good front,

but he was actually very selfish, all about him,

even when it came to the kids.

And then Bob was abusive to Farah, but not physically.

He knew her weaknesses.

Bob knew that Farah was insecure about her body.

He latched onto her insecurities and made them worse.

I mean, it's one of the reasons why she got breast implants.

So then she not only just wanted to divorce him,

she wanted the kids and custody, him to pay child support.

They were fighting over three children

and they were fighting over the money and property.

During the divorce, Farah was deposed,

and some really nasty, ugly things

had finally been spoken publicly

about Bob Fratta for the first time.

The divorce proceedings revealed that Robert had this...

alternate lifestyle.

That he would go to some seedy areas of Houston.

That he liked to frequent topless clubs,

you know, leather bars, that sort of thing.

He preferred very kinky sex.

That kind of sex is what he really liked,

and he wanted her to do that.

And she had told other people

she was disgusted by it and couldn't do it anymore.

She was ready for that part of her life to be over with.

A lot of Robert's life revolved around the gym.

So we spoke to people at the gym.

We found out that Robert was telling them

about the difficulties he was having at home.

He would also tell them how he was getting ready

to lose everything because of this divorce.

Robert was not happy about it,

that he was concerned that he would not have any money,

that he would be broke,

that he would have to pay child support.

And that's when we found out that he was asking people

if they knew anybody that would kill her for him.

Law enforcement learned

Bob Fratta approached a lot of people

about, "do you know somebody that can kill my wife?

Hey, I got some extra money, do you want to kill my wife?"

No one knew how serious to take him.

Most people that knew Bob knew he talked a lot.

They thought that he was not serious about it,

that he was blowing steam.

When we found out that Robert's alibi was at St. Mary's,

we went there and questioned employees

and other people that were at the church that night.

We found out that he was acting very strange.

Getting up to make phone calls.

It got to the point where employees of the church

were getting angry with him

because he was answering the phone,

instead of letting church staff answer the phone,

like he was expecting phone calls.

Law enforcement talked to Bradley.

Bradley had a great memory.

Bradley remembered that night

that daddy was on the phone at church.

That daddy didn't usually even come in to church

when they went to catechism, but he did that night.

We asked for the toll records from St. Mary's.

I wanted to see who he was calling,

or who was calling into the church.

Bradley remembered that Bob took

all three of the kids to Wyatt's Cafeteria after church.

He even remembered his daddy using the payphone there.

While eating there, two times, at least to my knowledge,

left us sitting in the booth

and went to a payphone to make phone calls.

When we received the toll records from St. Mary's,

a woman named Mary Gipp came up.

We found out that calls were being made

from the church to Mary Gipp's phone

and from Mary Gipp's phone to the church.

And also calls were going to a pager,

which was registered to Mary Gipp.

The detectives were also able to identify calls

made from Mary Gipp's phone to Wyatt's Cafeteria that night.

And the calls were coming in

about the time that Farah was killed.

The question is, who's Mary Gipp?

And could she be involved with the murder of Farah Fratta?

♪♪♪

Mary Gipp was contacted by detectives

and questioned, but Mary was reluctant to talk.

She did not offer any information

about calls with Robert Fratta the night of the murder.

The detectives know that her phone

is involved around the time of the murder,

but they don't really know what that means.

She didn't want to admit she knew anything.

She balked. She stalled.

She did everything she could

to avoid helping law enforcement.

But there's nothing to arrest her for at this point.

So the detectives needed to figure out a way

to get Mary Gipp to want to talk to 'em.

[dramatic music]

[tense music]

We found out that calls from Robert Fratta

during the time that this murder occurred

were going to a phone and to a pager

registered to Mary Gipp.

But Mary was reluctant to talk about the murder.

KELLY: If you think someone really,

really does know more information,

you can play the hardball game

where you threaten to take them to a grand jury,

threaten to file charges.

So in exchange for immunity, Mary Gipp agrees

to tell the sheriff's department everything she knows,

to cooperate completely and to testify.

She tells them that she's in a serious relationship

with a man named Joe Prystash.

They were living together in an apartment.

She then says that Bob and Joe Prystash met at the gym,

where she also went. They all knew each other.

And that at some point,

Bob Fratta approached Joe Prystash at that gym

about, "do you know somebody that can kill my wife?"

We learned from Mary Gipp

that he was offered $2,000 and a Jeep to do it.

Joseph Prystash agreed to carry out the murder.

But the sheriff's office knew that Joe Prystash

wasn't going to be the shooter

because the shooter is a Black male.

Joe Prystash was the getaway driver,

because he drove his car that night

that had a burnt-out headlight.

Mary Gipp told the sheriff's department that their neighbor,

Howard Guidry, was the person who shot Farah Fratta.

Mary Gipp knew it was about to go down,

yet she didn't call one person and warn them.

Not Farah, not the police, not anybody.

- She let it happen. - [gunshots]

[dramatic musical sting]

Mary Gipp told us that after the murder,

Prystash came back home and brought the weapon.

During that time, Mary wrote down

the serial number of the weapon, which was a .38 revolver.

And she decides, "hey,

my insurance for me to stay out of trouble

is to jot down this information."

Four months after the murder, law enforcement discovers

the serial number was linked to a .38 Smith & Wesson,

and law enforcement already had the gun in evidence.

In March of '95, there was a robbery at the Klein Bank.

KELLY: Howard Guidry was involved

in the Klein Bank robbery.

He got caught and arrested, and he had that gun in his backpack,

which led to being able to identify that weapon

as being the murder weapon that killed Farah Fratta.

They run the serial number on the gun through ATF,

and it comes back registered to Bob Fratta.

On March 8, 1995, Howard Guidry was brought to the office

for an interview, and gave a full confession.

Prystash gave him the gun.

The plan was to drop him off at the Fratta house,

wait until Farah came home and shoot her,

and then Prystash would come pick him up,

and they would make their getaway.

Joe Prystash was arrested.

He was brought in and interviewed,

and he admitted his involvement.

We have the murder weapon. We have Mary Gipp.

We know of the involvement of Joe Prystash and Howard Guidry.

We know that Bob Fratta's the one pulling all the strings

and masterminding all this.

It's time to get all three of them

indicted for capital murder, because it's a murder for hire.

A murder for hire is a special kind of murder under Texas law,

and anyone involved, middleman, triggerman, hirer,

are all guilty of the same thing, capital murder,

and they can all three get the death penalty.

I was on the couch playing a board game.

My grandparents were watching the news, and all of a sudden,

my father pops up on TV in handcuffs.

I still at that time did not know

it was because of what he did to my mother.

What I felt at that time was curiousness.

Why is it going on?

Bob Fratta, Joe Prystash, and Howard Guidry

were all indicted for the capital murder of Farah Fratta.

I was a chief in the 230th District Court.

I was a pretty new chief.

I was only 32 years old.

I was pregnant with my second child.

This turned out to be

the sixth death penalty case that I handled.

So I was new. I was young.

I was just learning everything back then.

So you have three defendants.

Often, prosecutors would pick to try the shooter first.

In most people's minds, they're the worst one.

In my mind, the worst person here is Bob Fratta.

He's the mastermind, and he's a cop.

We tried Bob Fratta first.

We went into it knowing his would be the most difficult,

so the evidence wasn't as obvious and simple for him

because he's not the shooter.

So the case against Bob Fratta was circumstantial.

You don't have a confession.

There was no videotape.

There was no eyewitness.

And that was the risk, that was the concern.

[dark tense music]

KELLY: Bob Fratta's on trial

for the murder of his wife, Farah Fratta.

My job is to show the jury that divorce is the motive,

and to try and make them see the pieces of the story

that prove that Bob, even though he wasn't there that night

and he truly was alibied,

was in charge of the whole thing that went down.

The thing that I think drove Bob over the edge

to find someone to kill his wife

is that in their very nasty divorce, Farah was deposed

in a law office, not in a courtroom.

And for the first time, she acknowledged

what was going on in their sex life.

Things that he made her do,

and that he's a sexual deviant.

We found out that Robert preferred

to have people defecating on him during sex.

KITTY: Bob was sick.

What he was doing was not normal.

She just couldn't handle it.

Nobody could handle something like that.

So Bob and Farah Fratta

were fighting over custody of the three kids.

They were fighting over money,

and I think Bob Fratta was worried that his sexual desires

were about to be made very, very public.

That's when he decided he had to take care of Farah.

[dramatic percussion]

Bob Fratta had

what a lot of people would call the perfect alibi.

Catechism class for his kids

during the window of the time of the murder.

Bradley was seven, Daniel was six, and Amber was four.

Even though there were other witnesses,

and ladies at the church that saw Bob Fratta that night,

the only people that were with Bob Fratta

the entire night were his three children.

So my boss at the time, Casey O'Brien,

and I went round and round about,

that do we put his seven-year-old son

on the witness stand in front of the jury

to talk about his dad, who he loved?

What would a jury think?

Would they be so mad at us for doing that

that they wouldn't do their job?

I didn't think so.

And Casey just felt it was the wrong thing to do.

But Bob Fratta's never gonna testify,

so how am I gonna prove Bob Fratta was taking

all those phone calls at St. Mary's

and at Wyatt's Cafeteria that very night?

Bradley was there, which is why we called him as a witness.

He was so little.

And he sits up there on the chair,

and where do you think he looked? At his dad.

And he looked at his dad almost the whole time.

He would look over at me and answer the questions,

but it was the first time he had seen his dad

in a very long time, because Bob was in custody.

And he doesn't know what all this means.

I doubt he knew that he was testifying against his father.

The prosecutor part of me was coldly thinking,

let's focus here.

The mother part of me wanted to cry

and just yank him off and take him out.

I mean, look what he'd been through.

He buried his mom. His life has changed.

He's now living with his grandparents.

He has no parents,

and now he's testifying in a courtroom.

Doesn't get worse than that.

But he's answering my questions,

and he remembered everything

with hardly any hesitation or confusion.

Bradley's testimony is the connecting dot

between all the phone calls that Bob Fratta made that night

from the church, and from Wyatt's cafeteria.

The phone records show that those calls were all made

from Bob Fratta to Joe Prystash,

who was using Mary Gipps' phone while he was with Howard Guidry

on the night of the murder.

We were able to match up two phone calls

that went to the Wyatt's Cafeteria

where Bob Fratta was the night of the murder.

One call came before the shooting,

and one came after.

The defense didn't have a lot

of cross-examination questions with Bradley.

There's no way anybody could ever think

that he was making it up or lying,

not in that little boy voice, the way he said it.

And I think that he broke the jury's heart.

♪♪♪

- Hi, Bradley. - Hi, Kelly.

- Can I give you a hug? - Yeah, absolutely.

You still look the same!

- You do, too. You look better. - Wow, you look so good.

- You look so young. - Thank you.

I was really dreading seeing Bradley.

I wondered for so many years, how's he doing?

How's he really doing?

And I never reached out to him

because I appreciate that anything having to do with me

is a reminder of the worst thing in his life.

I still, to this day, wonder how much impact

that had on Bradley psychologically,

or how he grew up dealing with the fact

that he testified against his own father.

We took a lot of criticism and flack

- for putting you on stage. - I bet you did.

Having to go through all that as a baby, seven years old.

I had no idea why I was answering

- these questions for you. - Right.

I had no idea that my dad was the one being charged.

So I'm pretty sure I smiled at him when I looked at him.

- You did. You went like this. - Yep, I remember I waved.

The crucial part of connecting your dad

to the scene was all those phone calls.

Yes, ma'am. I remember being at church that night.

I remember him walking away from us

multiple times to use the phone.

I remember specifically two times at Wyatt's Cafe,

him leaving us at the booth that we were at

to go use the payphone.

Did you ever, in the years since then, when you got older,

wonder why legally we made you do that,

I made you do that? Did you ever wonder that?

No. It was needed. I know it.

All I wanted was justice for my mother

and I wanted the truth.

And if that had to come out from me

for people to know as well, then that's how it had to be.

I appreciate you, is what I want you to know out of anything.

KELLY: You're very sweet.

I said I wasn't going to cry, but...

So did I.

You mean a lot to a lot of us.

You mean a lot to my family.

Thank you.

In most of our solicitations

of capital murders that I've handled,

the mastermind had to ask around a little bit

or talk about it a little bit.

Bob Fratta had a big mouth, and he was braggadocious.

And at the gym is where he talked the most.

He would try to get other people to help him out,

"taking care" of his wife.

And we put those people on the stand too.

The defense countered,

said it was literally locker room talk.

All men say that about their wives

when they're going through a divorce.

"Oh, come on, he was just kidding."

But he did it to too many people,

including at work where he was a cop,

so that didn't really play.

In every murder case, you have to put on

someone who knows the victim to talk about

the circumstances going on in Farah's life at that time.

We already knew that we couldn't use Farah's dad,

because he was too angry.

He lost his baby. He was mad.

And we didn't think that Lex could keep it cool.

We thought the safer play

was to put Betty Baquer on the stand, Farah's mom,

because we thought she could handle it a little better.

Betty gets on the stand.

She's looking into the eyes of her son-in-law,

who killed her baby.

And she lost it.

Betty starts screaming at Bob and calling him a monster.

The defense stands up, starts screaming, mistrial, mistrial.

They're objecting.

The judge is yelling at the jury,

"take 'em out, take 'em out."

Oh boy, here we go.

[tense music]

We put Betty Baquer on the stand, Farah's mom,

and she immediately starts screaming at Bob

and calling him a monster.

The defense stands up, starts screaming, mistrial, mistrial.

It's bad, but you gotta remember poor Betty.

When Bob Fratta got arrested, she saw it on TV.

She's never been able to confront him

with the knowledge that he killed her baby.

And I'm trying to tell her,

"you gotta be cool, you can't cry.

Just answer my questions. Don't be rude."

All the rules that we ask them to follow, they're hard.

I really wonder how any family can ever keep it together.

I'm pretty sure I would lose it.

I'd be one of those people coming over the railing

trying to get you.

The judge yelled at her, he yelled at me,

but denied the motion for a mistrial,

told us to straighten it up, and we started again.

After we set up the weeks and days

that led to Farah Fratta's murder,

we get to the actual plan

that they actually carried out the day of the murder.

It was important for the jury to understand that Bob,

even though he wasn't there that night,

was in charge of the whole thing that went down.

And Joe Prystash, at the time,

his serious girlfriend was Mary Gipp.

She is a hugely important witness for this case.

In Texas, you need to be guilty

of helping commit the offense of capital murder.

Mary Gipp didn't do that.

She was aware it was going on,

but she did not help the capital murder happen.

She's the connect-the-dot witness

between Joe Prystash to Howard Guidry to Bob Fratta.

Mary Gipp made me sick. I couldn't stand her.

She knew Farah, and she knew it was going to happen,

and she didn't do one thing to stop it from happening.

You try to always judge your witness

through the lens of a juror,

because that's what counts, their vote.

A juror doesn't care about my legal requirements.

They just know how they feel.

So I appreciated a jury is going to hate her.

And I said that in opening statement.

My line was,

"you're gonna meet a lady that you can't stand.

"She's going to make you sick to your stomach,

"and she's going to disgust you.

Even if you hate her, you still have to believe her."

The main thing we were worried about was,

does she come across as credible enough for a jury

to believe she's telling the truth?

Mary Gipp testifies that on November the 9th, 1994,

she sees Joe Prystash get dressed all in black,

walk out the door,

and tells her he's going to go pick up Howard Guidry.

She knows why they're leaving and what they're leaving for.

She remembers that Joe Prystash comes back home.

He tells her it's done.

He had that gun, that .38.

So she was able to write down

the serial number to that .38 that was used,

because she knew that what they were doing was wrong.

And she anticipated that one day,

law enforcement was going to need that information.

There's one person that I will never, ever forgive,

- and that's Mary Gipp. - I understand.

I know that she knew what was going to happen.

- And she didn't do a damn thing. - And she didn't do a damn thing.

She didn't pick up the phone and call anybody,

and she didn't try to stop it.

And she has to live with it every day,

knowing what a horrible, selfish, weak person she is.

I guess that's punishment enough.

I think her life has been pretty horrible ever since that day.

- All the consequences, right? - Yeah. Yep.

Her whole life is different because of it.

Yeah.

When Mary Gipp testified,

the defense was kind of in a quandary,

because they wanted to attack her character with the whole

"you're a lousy human being because you knew

this was going to happen and you did nothing."

But if you do that, you're acknowledging

that everybody knew it was going to happen,

and they still participated in it.

They also tried to discredit her

because she stayed with Joe Prystash,

even after she knew what he did and what he was capable of.

The defense cross-examination wasn't effective enough

to undermine her credibility, in my opinion.

So when she got off the witness stand,

I remember thinking, yes, she did a good job.

The defense's final argument was a compilation

of all of our evidence is just circumstantial,

and they tried to undermine the credibility of Mary Gipp.

They made the argument that that night at church,

when his alibi was catechism for the kids

and he was on the phone a lot,

what's the big deal? Bob's always on the phone.

That doesn't mean he was communicating

about her murder that night.

And the most important argument they made

is that because there was an eyewitness to the shooting,

we all know that Bob Fratta

wasn't the shooter because that was a black male.

In our closing argument, we were telling the jury again

why we put on each and every witness,

and what the point of their testimony was.

We talked about the divorce and the trigger,

the fact that the world is fixing to know

what a sick bastard Bob Fratta is,

in addition to the custody

and all the rest of his controlling issues.

And in the whole wide world,

who in the world will want Farah Fratta dead but Bob?

If you're not the trigger man,

but you provide the weapon, you're assisting.

If you're encouraging someone to do it

by giving them money like Bob Fratta,

that makes you a party, an accomplice.

We want the jury to understand that

even though he wasn't there, and he was smart enough

to use some fools to do it for him,

don't let him get away with it.

He's the puppeteer here. He's the mastermind here.

Hold him accountable. He's guilty of capital murder.

Jury goes out to deliberate guilt.

If Bob Fratta's not found guilty,

then what do you do with the other two?

[ominous dissonant tones]

After less than two hours of deliberation,

the jury found Robert Fratta guilty of capital murder.

It is always satisfying when a jury

comes to such a quick verdict,

because they see the evidence the same way we do.

I was not in court when the verdict came in.

I'm at my grandparents' house,

and my grandfather comes with my grandmother,

and sits all three of us down

and he proceeds to tell us that our father

is responsible for our mother's death.

And that our father was going to be going away as well.

We were never going to see him again.

I couldn't process my father had someone kill my mother.

I still looked at my father like he's my father, you know,

and I'm still trying to understand

why or if this is even real.

But at that time, I turned on my father.

He was responsible for my mother's death.

He's behind bars, and anger came towards him.

And just basically running through my mind

with the question, why?

Now, to me, the real trial begins.

Was he going to get the ultimate punishment

in the state of Texas,

and that's the death penalty.

Same jury is asked to go back there and vote,

does the defendant get the death penalty,

by answering these questions.

Is he a future threat?

And is life more warranted than the death penalty?

Here was the challenge in this case.

Bob Fratta was not the shooter.

And him being a cop and a first offender,

would that make just one juror decide,

okay, he doesn't need the death penalty?

And if they decided that, one juror,

then we've lost the death penalty.

♪♪♪

The jury came back with a punishment verdict,

and it didn't take them very long.

REPORTER: It was a bittersweet moment

for the family of Farah Fratta.

On this day, family members watched

as her husband was sentenced to die for arranging the murder.

The heinousness of this crime,

the planning and the premeditation

and the kind of man that he is, he deserved the death penalty.

Besides just knowing that he's guilty,

what about the fact that his punishment

was the death penalty?

I liked it at first, when I was younger.

As I grew older, I thought, you know,

I don't care if he would just sit in jail

for the rest of his life, to be honest with you.

In 1994, we did not have life without parole.

So had your dad gotten a life sentence,

it would have been a life sentence for--

one day, he would have been eligible for parole.

So that was the choice the jury had:

life and death. Okay?

The next case we tried was Joe Prystash's,

and his jury also gave him the death penalty.

The last case we tried was Howard Guidry's case,

and again, the jury gave him the death penalty.

Every single person involved in committing this crime

received the death penalty,

and that's the only case that I know of

in the United States of America where that's happened.

What do you remember about your mom?

I have specific memories that I can remember,

you know, us going to the pool

or her working out, just little things.

- Remember how pretty she was? - Yeah.

Okay. At one point you tried

to reach out to your dad and talk to him, okay?

I went and saw him, my brother and I.

- When? - When I was 18,

and my brother was 16 or 17.

So y'all went to death row to see him?

- Uh-huh. - Wow, tell me about that.

I just wanted to hear...

- maybe he would confess to me. - Or say he's sorry.

A sorry or anything, but he just...

constantly wanted to say he's innocent.

How much time did your dad spend asking about y'all?

It wasn't much. I mean, it was...

honestly just him trying to convince us

that he's behind bars for no reason.

I've never been to an execution. You went, huh?

As long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to go.

Did he say anything to you?

- Nothing. - He didn't?

- No. - Did he say anything at all?

They asked him if he had any last words and he said no.

- Really? - That was it.

Okay. Wow.

I think I really have one question for you.

Like, you are 100% certain it was Bob.

- Oh, yeah. - Yeah. That's all I'm asking.

Oh, Bradley. There's no doubt about it.

When Bradley asked, are you sure my dad did it?

[bittersweet piano music]

I tried not to let it show on my face but I just, I was like,

I wanted to cry and I wanted to scream.

Deep down in his heart,

He's still that little boy whose daddy killed his mom.

And that's a horrible thing to have to accept

and you just don't want to ever believe it, do you?

Thank you. Tell your brother and sister and grandma--

- I will. - Okay.

- I'm proud of you. - Thank you.

Your mom would be very proud of you.

I know. I know she is. Thank you, Kelly.

- Thank you for everything. - Thank you.

I learned so much from this horrible crime.

I learned about what divorces do to people.

And also, everybody knows that most cops

are there for the right reason,

but this case reminds us all that there are bad cops.

And when you have a bad cop,

that can be a really difficult case to have to handle.

This case, too, reminds you when people say things like,

"hey, do you know anybody that'll help me kill my wife?"

Take it seriously. Call them out on it.

Do something. If one of those people

that Bob Fratta popped off to had said something,

Farah would still be alive today.

♪♪♪