Twenty-four years is a long time to wait for a knock on the door. For the family of Frank Weiss, that knock finally came this week — and it came with handcuffs.
The Frisco Police Department announced Monday the arrest of Lisa Honrud, 55, a Waxahachie resident and the wife of Weiss, in connection with his 2002 murder. Weiss’s body was discovered near Lake Lewisville, within Frisco city limits, more than two decades ago. The case went cold. Life moved on — for everyone except the people who loved him.
A Cold Case Cracked Open
What broke the case? A combination of things, according to investigators: advancements in investigative techniques, modern forensic technology, and critically, new information from a key witness. That witness — whoever they are — apparently provided enough to push detectives over the finish line and secure an arrest warrant against Honrud. She was booked into jail Monday.
Frisco Police Chief David Shilson didn’t mince words in a statement following the arrest. “We are thankful for our investigators who have put countless hours into this case, as well as the Waxahachie Police Department for their assistance with this arrest,” he said. “For 24 years, the Weiss family has waited for answers. Today’s arrest is an important step toward justice, and we will continue working until everyone involved is held accountable.”
That last line is worth sitting with. “Until everyone involved is held accountable” suggests investigators may not believe Honrud acted alone. Whether additional arrests follow remains to be seen — but the phrasing is deliberate. Police chiefs don’t typically ad-lib that kind of language.
Frisco’s Cold Case Unit Has Been Busy
The Weiss arrest isn’t an isolated win for Frisco detectives. It’s part of a broader pattern. Last year, the department’s cold case investigators revisited a 2017 capital murder that had similarly gone unresolved. Detectives Kyle Marks and Sanja Trtanj reopened that case in 2023, and earlier this year it ended with a jury convicting Kerrico Carr, 44, of McKinney. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis issued a pointed statement after that sentencing, one that reads almost like a warning. “Violent criminals should know that there is no statute of limitations for murder, and police and prosecutors never forget,” he said. “This conviction brings delayed justice to a grieving family and ensures a violent murderer will never be free to walk our streets again.”
Back-to-back cold case resolutions — one from 2002, one from 2017 — in the span of a few months. That’s not coincidence. That’s a unit that’s been quietly, methodically doing its homework.
What It Means for Families Left Behind
There’s a particular cruelty to unsolved murders that goes beyond the loss itself. It’s the not knowing. The wondering whether anyone is still looking, whether the case file is gathering dust in a cabinet somewhere, whether justice is simply never going to arrive. For the Weiss family, that uncertainty stretched across more than two decades — graduations, holidays, ordinary Tuesdays — all of it shadowed by an unanswered question.
Still, an arrest is not a conviction. Honrud faces the full weight of the legal process ahead, and the case will need to be proven in court. The justice Chief Shilson referenced is not yet complete — it’s in motion.
But for now, at least, someone is finally being made to answer for what happened near Lake Lewisville in 2002. And for a grieving family that’s been waiting nearly a quarter century, that’s not nothing. That’s everything.
