A Charismatic Real Estate Agent Meets His End
(“Separation Anxiety,” Forensic Files)
Tech snafu: If the pictures aren’t visible in this post, read it here
When it came to brokering deals on houses, David Nixon had great instincts. He “could sell a screen door to a submarine,” according to one friend.
In the 1990s, the personable 6-foot-4-inch Texan’s name dotted the Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘s real estate ads, where he advertised homes with “commercial grade appliances” and “pool & cabana.”
Early exit. By the millennium, he was collecting commissions on million-dollar spreads.
But he didn’t always make the right decisions when managing his money or his personal relationships, and it ultimately cost him his life at age 40.
For this week, I looked for additional information on the case and whether Tracey Frame — the younger woman who cut down David Nixon in the early years of his mid-life crisis — is still in prison. So let’s get going on the recap for “Separation Anxiety,” the 2010 episode of Forensic Files, along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Friendly skies. In 1990, David Nixon married Donna Lella and they had a son the following year.
They enjoyed a happy union until David began an affair with a big-haired flight attendant referred to as Lisa Hill on TV and Lisa Hemby in court papers.
After divorcing Donna, he married Lisa. That relationship lasted for just a couple years, and things had turned so stormy toward the end that David obtained a temporary protective order against Lisa.
Making a splash. Soon after, he met Tracey Frame at a party. A number of sources give her occupation as accountant, but she was really a bookkeeper who had taken some accounting classes and liked to tell people she was a CPA, according to Detective Larry Hallmark’s interview on the “Tracey Frame” episode of Snapped.
Whatever the case, David found her crystal green eyes and confident personality irresistible, and they settled into a house on Pecan Hollow Court in Grapevine, an upscale lakeside community known for socializing, boat-riding, and general high living.
Tracey and David were a popular, fun-loving couple, but they began arguing about money a lot, according to acquaintances.
Uncle Sam in pursuit. Despite that he bought Tracey a Lexus and took her on ocean cruises, she reportedly resented the child support he paid Donna for their son, Nicholas.
The finances behind Tracey and David’s shared home aren’t completely clear, but one report said that she had contributed about $80,000 of her own money toward the four-bedroom three-bathroom abode and he paid for the rest. (Not sure of the purchase price in 2002, but the house is worth $488,000 today, according Zillow.)
At the same time, David was also around $100,000 in debt to the IRS and, as Forensic Files watchers know, folks who owe money to the government sometimes turn to inadvisable solutions (Amy Bosley) instead of sucking it up and finding a way to pay off their tax bill.
Cops called. In David Nixon’s case, he attempted to shield his house by putting it in Tracey’s name. But once their relationship deteriorated, she intended to keep the property all to herself.
On April 9, 2002, he called 911 for help after he came home to find she had changed the locks. “Basically, it’s my house,” he told the operator. “I was dumb enough to put it in my girlfriend’s name.”
Tracey eventually allowed him in the house that night, and the visit from the police ended in no arrests.
Off the radar screen. Little did David Nixon know that Tracey had far more insidious plans to ensure she could stay ensconced at the 2,647-square-feet residence in Grapevine.
On April 20, 2002, Donna Lella called police after David skipped a dinner date with Nicholas, then age 10, and didn’t answer his phone.
No one remembered seeing David Nixon after April 18, 2002, when he showed a property in Southlake to a prospective buyer, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Horrifying sight. Four days later, a motorist alerted emergency services of a fire in the parking lot of an abandoned building in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Police found a burning body wrapped in blue camping tarp and a blanket with fibers characteristic of electric blankets; gasoline had been used as an accelerant.
It looked as though someone tried to stuff his body into a drainpipe at the scene, failed, and then left him there to burn beyond recognition.
Chief suspect. An investigator would later tell 48 Hours Mystery‘s “Secrets and Lies on Grapevine Lake” that the blaze consumed the body to such a degree that he couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Dental records identified the remains as those of David Nixon.
Although Forensic Files made the investigation into the murder sound like a long haul with early leads centering on second wife Lisa as well as Donna — whose son would be receiving David’s $500,000 insurance payout — the police actually arrested Tracey Frame just a few days after the body turned up.
“Once everybody heard that David was missing, I don’t think there was a soul who didn’t say, ‘Tracey did something,'” his friend Karl Ekonomy later told Snapped.
Seat shifter. Donna Lella told 48 Hours Mystery that David had a premonition Tracey would kill him.
Investigators would ultimately conclude that Tracey shot David in his sleep, then wrapped him in the electric blanket and tarp. In the house, police had found electric blanket controls without the blanket.
She used a hand truck to move his body — he weighed nearly 100 pounds more than she did — into a rented Penske moving vehicle, and abandoned his white Lexus in a Tom Thumb supermarket parking lot, investigators alleged. The driver’s seat had been moved forward, as though someone shorter than 6-foot-4 had driven it; Tracey is 5-foot-7.
Penske problem. Employees from H&H Janitorial Supply told police a woman matching Tracey’s description came into their store to buy cleansers and asked how to get blood out of her carpet. They suggested trying muriatic acid.
Next, investigators found video footage of a woman who looked like Tracey buying muriatic acid at the Tom Thumb supermarket. She used her customer loyalty card when she paid. (Forensic Files, Snapped, and 48 Hours Mystery all made a big deal of how cheap Tracey was to risk getting caught to save less than 50 cents on her purchase but, to be fair, getting out your plastic discount card is pretty much an automatic reflex these days.)
Additional security footage caught Tracey parking David’s Lexus in the lot and also leaving the Penske truck there, presumably because it would have raised suspicions to have it parked in front of her house for a long period of time.
Get your story straight. And Tracey seemed to know, before anyone told her, that David’s body suffered trauma. When authorities informed Tracey about the murder, her first words were, “How did they identify him?” according to trial reporting from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
An unregistered small-caliber gun that David kept in the house was missing and Tracey had recently bought a new mattress.
It also came out that Tracey had given varying explanations for why David disappeared. She told Donna Lella that he had gone on vacation, but told an investigator he had moved and was working out of state. When Gary Yarbrough, the managing director of David’s real estate office, asked about his whereabouts, Tracey said she had no idea.
Speak ill of the dead. On the police video of her initial interrogation, Tracey came off as weepy and pathetic, but she was confident and articulate three years later in her interviews with 48 Hours Mystery, which covered the case from pretrial (Tracey had been free on $100,000 bail with an electronic ankle bracelet since 2002) to conclusion.
At the 2005 trial, a buddy of the victim, John Hartenbower, testified that their friendship dwindled after he got involved with Tracey Frame. The prosecution alleged that Tracey interfered with David’s other relationships.
Tracey’s defense claimed the woman in the security footage wasn’t Tracey and that someone else had used her customer loyalty card at the Tom Thumb. Her side also tried some smear-the-victim tactics, alleging that David was involved with prostitutes and had gambling debts that might have prompted someone to kill him.
New Man in Her Life. Team Tracey contended that Jerry Vowell, a used car salesman who owed money to David, might have killed him to cancel the debt. (Vowell said on TV that he had repaid David.) Or maybe an anonymous robber killed David, who often walked around with large amounts of cash on his person, according to Tracey.
Tracey’s new fiancé, a British dentist named Roland Taylor, maintained she was nothing like the intimidating shrew the prosecution portrayed. He would later tell 48 Hours Mystery that Tracey had a strong motive to keep David alive because he owed her money. He also said Tracey was a sweet person who just wanted to “love and be loved.”
In March 2005, a jury took four hours to convict Tracey Frame, then 35, of first-degree murder. She got 40 years and will be eligible for parole after 20.
She lost an appeal in 2006.
Sweet gig? Today, Tracey Ann Frame resides in the William P. Hobby Unit in Marlin, Texas. Although she will have a shot at parole, her Texas Department of Criminal Justice record makes no mention of a date, but it notes that she’s eligible for visitation.
“Hobby” seems an apt name for the institution because it offers prisoners opportunities to work in a peach orchard or with horses or security dogs.
Her release date is Sept. 29, 2044, when she’ll be 74 years old.
You can watch the 48 Hours Mystery about the case on YouTube (thank you to reader Kattrinka for sending in the new link).
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
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15 years later, I wonder if she has admitted guilt. The evidence was overwhelming. His son should around 25 now and hopefully he will show up at her parole hearing. She is a fiend.
Thanks, Rebecca – one I don’t recall, unless this is the one in which the handtruck used to transfer the body left a bruise-like mark across the perp’s waist as she lowered the heavy truck in reverse out the vehicle (was that in the ep or maybe another show about this case I’m thinking of…?) If the latter’s correct, this was indeed further forensic evidence against her as she couldn’t convincingly account for why she had that mark.
He went through Donna, Lisa, and Tracey – all low-rent names here in UK.
Sounds like a slam-dunk, with a desperately unconvincing defence tactic (it wasn’t her on store video – possible – and it wasn’t her using her discount card in store – come on…!) Indeed, she seems to’ve been totally oblivious to the possibility of being recorded, and as this was the 2000s, when it was ubiquitous, that was plain stupid, even if, as you suggest, discount card use is almost reflexive.
The dentist b/friend’s ‘defence’ doesn’t stand scrutiny, either: the vic may’ve owed her money, but I’m guessing the house’s value that she thought would absolutely be hers post-mortem was far more than anything he owed her (and in any case per debts he may not’ve been able to pay had he lived – indebtedness here being a double-edged sword for the defence). The dentist is a naive fool.
This woman’s evil: premeditated (and horrible) murder, depriving a son of his father, trying to throw another under the bus, and all for (the aggravating feature of) money. I’m therefore surprised she only got 40 yrs and with parole. She should’ve got life in my view, and I hope she serves no fewer than 25 yrs.
As the above poster, Michael, states, hopefully the son will ensure parole is minimised.
Yep, it was the one with the hand truck. I didn’t bring up that evidence because the video footage and purchase record pretty much sewed up the case.
Thanks!
What the heck is a “low-rent” name?
With all the overwhelmingly compelling evidence, I fathom why Tracy didn’t at the very least get a life sentence. Not in the slightest is it inferred that she was a victim of some sort, that should be granted any leniency. If anything I think David, while not perfect, got caught in a cold-blooded vindictive gold digger’s web and tragically couldn’t get himself out in time. This is sad enough, but to think of his son who grew up without a father because of such foolery is the saddest.
Quite: this seems absolutely a case of LWOP: premeditated murder for financial gain, and nothing to mitigate. If she doesn’t get it, why would anyone (unless multiple- or child-murder, torture, or terrorism)?
Not saying I support widespread use of LWOP, just that others get it and for less.
I wonder if that dentist is still backing her? I think she was just using him. I see a lot of other people talking about how she didn’t get life. I don’t understand it either.
Just because she is good looking, simple but true.
Sexy cold bloded bitch.
Kind of beautiful; makes her even more dangerous.
Silly defence when there was so much evidence against her.
I’m surprised she did not claim he was assaulting her, she killed him in self defence and then panicked and tried to get rid of the body. She would have got 20 years and out on parole now.
Indeed; that might sow a seed of doubt in the jury that this wasn’t cold-blooded murder, but if I were a jury member I’d absolutely require evidence of assault or at least a history of physical abuse, precisely ‘cos this is such easy mitigation for women to use: ‘he assaulted me/was abusive/I feared for my life…’ Interestingly, in this case it was the vic husband fearful of her: he told someone he thought she was trying to poison him, and that if anything happened to him the content of his safe at work should be given immediately to his ex-wife, not Frame – docs that prevented her from seizing assets.
Parole Eligibility Date: 2024-09-29; let’s hope she serves her full sentence (which should’ve been LWOP).
She was always a bitch that had to be the center of attention in school. She looked down on her own family, even her sister. Couldn’t stand her. None of this surprises me. I lived down the street from her at one time.
Thanks for writing in with your experience from the front lines! TF is a reminder…sometimes evil wears a pretty face.
Graduated with her… pretty self centered.
Why didn’t she get a life sentence? The guys get life sentences, or death penalties, for 1st degree murder. Haven’t seen otherwise. The judge went “easy” on an attractive female? She was a bad person. Selfish, greedy, evil, cold-blooded, and she planned the whole thing out. It was very cruel and premeditated. She also deprived a son of his father. More proof that these narcissistic, pretty female types, get away with things, much more than others.
Well said.
Thank you!! Appreciate the response, not everyone is fooled, by the American legal system, which can be a farce, often times.
In England she would have gotten 15 years and served 9. At least the US actually punishes people.
Interesting–and good to hear something positive about the U.S. justice system.
So true. To this day, I do not understand why she did not get a life sentence. There was nothing to mitigate her crime.
Jodie Arias (sorry for bad spelling) syndrome. She is alive thanks to the pretty face.
She got sentenced to forty years? Come on!! Feminists bitch about equality but forget how often they get lighter sentences across the board, than men. This was Texas. A death penalty state. That’s what she should’ve got. I’m all for equality under the law–if it’s applied equally. Clearly not everyone is equal under the law.
Excellent comment, 100%, these “double-standards” need to be eliminated, asap!! Men are the vast majority, of homeless, and incarcerated, in America! Men are the ones that suffer the most, die in BS wars, and no one is protecting us!!
What? You need women to PROTECT you now too? Must we do everything? No wonder so many of you are celibate. Jeez. Men today are so lame, such “victims.” So not hit.
If you improve your reading comprehension, you would know I wasn’t asking for women to protect men, lol. First of all, that would never happen. Observing the self-serving nature, of 90%+ of Western women, that is an impossibility!! Lol! And no, you women “do not do everything for men.” Quite the opposite hun. You fought for equality, but only ~5% of women, have real impacting careers. Most of these strong, “independent women,” end up in small studio’s, ages 35+, with their cats, lol !! Look around you, everything was built by man. You crack me up.
Back to my main point: Society does not protect men. Since we are viewed as expendable. There are no groups to protect us (women have groups), the legal system does not “cut us breaks” (like this woman had), we lose 90% of the time in Divorce Court, forced alimony, forced child support. Again, the vast majority of homeless are men.
LOL. First, no, you have an issue with reading comprehension. He said nothing about women protecting men. Second, haven’t you noticed — men are better at being women in every turn…
It’s still available as a 48 Hours program on YouTube.
“Secrets and Lies on Grapevine Lake”
It’s a 48 hours Mystery series. Apparently some of the original 48 Hours shows have been reclassified and retitled. The man’s preteen son shows up clutching his head as he talks on the preview trailer. It’s wild.
Best chance of finding it is searching on YouTube for the title I’ve put between quotation marks. The Mystery series pops up in front of the 48 Hours and it appeared on its own as next in sequence when I finished a normally titled 48 Hours episode.
Who knows why they do these things or when they’ll change them.
Actually Jethro women get 8x more time than men.
Bunk. Men recieve up to 63% higher sentences for crimes than women.
You’re correct, Brock: women demonstrably get lesser sentences than men for equivalent crime *overall* or *on average* (ie, there are plenty of cases — probably most — of equivalence, of course). For example, for less serious felonies that would normally result in custodial sentence, the woman’s having children may and does explicitly result in non-custodial alternative for the children’s sake. This ‘generosity’ is not extended to fathers. While the child’s needs should take primacy, even if fathers were equally treated, unfairness to non-parents remains. The law is in this context imperfectly fair.
Of course, serious felonies such as drug-dealing and homicide would regardless result in imprisonment (not least because the parent is a potential danger to her children).
Crudely the discrepancy between male and female treatment is sometimes attributed to the notion that ‘men are bad and [bad] women are mad’: that men are constituted to be more likely to engage in crime than women — true — and that female criminals are somehow ‘opposing’ their female constitution, so in that sense are more mad than bad. It’s nonsense, but the is a cultural vestige of such thinking. There’s a strain of such thinking among more extreme feminists who attribute female criminality ultimately to male cause (as the notionally more powerful, oppressive, coercive etc sex).
who cares
is her boyfriend still with her? Wondering if he has lasted all thse years?
Not sure. Hope he’s moved on with this life.
He’s married to her and says he will fight to get her out and wait for her. What a clueless buffoon.
Oh, dear….
The 48 Hour episode is now on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocadZcsxTOw Lies and Secrets on Grapevine Lake.
I came across this case a few days ago and found it a stark reminder of always remembering that while you might think you’re living your best life, there’s often someone who sees you as a stepping stone to their best life. Having myself as a single man moved to Dallas about the same time as David got married and started making serious money, I understand why he divorced his first wife. This is common in Dallas where there are more women (very beautiful thin women) than men, mostly in medium to low paying jobs (flight attendants, waitresses, bookkeepers, strippers). The comment of living in an apartment and driving a Honda is pretty much reality. The first night I was there I ran into a woman celebrating her third divorce. She was only 25, her girlfriends, all 25 or younger, all had at least one divorce under their belt. Any attractive, successful guy will feel like he’s a kid in a candy store in the Metroplex area. Hence David linking up with the stereotypical big breasted blonde stewardess as the second wife, which was likely doomed from the start since he didn’t want to change his partying, whoring and gambling ways. Women like Tracey are always around the fringes of Dallas society. Too poor and not connected, they get ahead on their temporal looks and know they have a small window to snare a producer, a cash box. These payday boys are always out at the lake parties, at the many charity events around the city and at every nightclub in town. David was a little too stupid and too late to realize this type. He thought as a “player” he knew all the angles but Tracey was playing a different game, and one David was not even aware of. His putting his house in her name to prevent the Fed’s collecting taxes was a big mistake, particularly when he was simultaneously telling the first wife that “If I die, Tracey Frame did it.” He literally put the gun in her hand when he signed that house over while at the same time thinking since he paid for the house, he could dismiss her at any future time. I’m sure to this day she believes, and with some evidence, he forced her to kill him since he was going to rob her of her home.
Wow, thanks for sharing your perspective on this — great insights into a culture of superficiality and gold-digging.
‘His putting his house in her name to prevent the Fed’s collecting taxes was a big mistake, particularly when he was simultaneously telling the first wife that “If I die, Tracey Frame did it.”’
Yes — incomprehensible. Which is worse: the Feds grabbing your assets or the women you’ve identified as wicked and potentially deadly grabbing your assets… and your life? Perhaps another hedonistic indulgence was is issue: drugs addling his thinking.
It’s another of FF’s common themes, such as deadly medics: women killing men for their assets (whereas male killers — much more common anyway — are more commonly presented as killing women to ‘replace for a newer model’).
There was a blub about her losing her unborn child, and the dude was to blame. If true, that would explain everything. And the lesser sentence. IMHO.
Tracy is the poster girl for The Picture of Dorian Grey. She was attractive in the beginning of her relationship with David but by the time the Dateline episode aired, her beauty was gone. She destroyed many lives. PCARS
Why did they never note is David had a gun registered to him …. and I do think she did it I mean how would the cleaning guys know what she had purchased doubt that was public knowledge at the time they were questioned and what is the chance she had all the cleaning supplies purchased in her house! Lastly why did they never search the lake for hard evidence she could of easily shot him elsewhere why the house was clean of evidence. This is one circumstantial case I actually support the guilty verdict but that’s probably why she didn’t get life bc it was circumstantial evidence. I just got done watching 48hr episode and was googling if she was still in prison and came across this site.