Antoinette Frank

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Antoinette Frank (born 30th April 1971) is a former New Orleans police officer who was convicted of one of the most notorious crimes in recent New Orleans history: the robbery of a restaurant where she was working as a security guard, and the murders of three people, including her partner on the police force, who was also a security guard at the restaurant. Frank is one of two women on Louisiana's death row at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.

1 Early life
2 The murders
3 Trial and conviction
4 Sources

[edit] Early life

Frank had an unstable childhood, but there was one thing that was clear to her since she was a small girl: she wanted to become a police officer.

As a teenager and, later on, young adult, Frank suffered from being a member of a broken family: her brother was a law fugitive, her father would appear in her life only occasionally, and Frank became distressed about these issues, needing psychiatric help.

According to author Chuck Hustmyre, a former police officer himself, when Frank applied to become a cop in Louisiana, she lied about her psychological and psychiatric condition in order to be hired as a police officer.

Frank served in the New Orleans Police for less than one year and was hired despite being caught lying on several sections of her application. During a shooting, she met her future boyfriend, an alleged drug dealer named Rogers LaCaze, who had been badly injured during the shooting and who required help from Frank that night, as well as hospitalization.

Frank and LaCaze fell in love quickly. The couple shared a passionate relationship. Perhaps feeling that LaCaze brought her the solace she needed in life, Frank became so infatuated with the young man (who was 18 at the time), that she even let him drive her police car around.

[edit] The murders

On March 4, 1995, Frank and Lacaze visited Kim Anh, a Vietnamese restaurant in east New Orleans, Louisiana. As the restaurant was closing early that morning, Chau Vu, sister of two of the victims, went into the kitchen to count money. She reentered the dining room of the restaurant to pay Officer Ronald Williams, when she noticed Frank approaching the restaurant yet again. Sensing something was wrong, Chau Vu ran back to the kitchen and hid the money in the microwave before returning to the front of the restaurant. Using a stolen key, Frank and Lacaze entered the restaurant and began to walk quickly to the back of the building, pushing Chau, one of Chau's brothers, Quoc, and a restaurant employee along with her. Shots rang out, and Frank ran back to the front of the restaurant. Chau, Quoc, and the employee hid in a cooler in the kitchen, concerned because they did not know the whereabouts of Chau's and Quoc's sister and brother, Ha and Cuong. From inside the cooler, Chau and Quoc could partially see the front of the restaurant. Chau initially could see Frank, who appeared to be looking for something. Frank moved out of Chau's line of vision, and then the three hiding heard additional gunshots. Quoc next observed Frank searching in the area where the Vus usually kept their money. He then saw her walk over to the area where he later found the bodies of his brother and sister, and he heard more gunshots. After Frank and Rogers Lacaze left the premises, Quoc emerged from the cooler and called 911 to report the murders.

Antoinette Frank had obtained an off-duty job as a security guard at the restaurant along with officer Williams, who considered her to be a friend. Frank arrived to the scene minutes after the first officers to arrive were there, and she proceeded to study the scenario where the murders took place. She approached Chau, asking her what happened. Chau found another officer and reported what she had witnessed. After Chau was interviewed in more detail, the defendant and Rogers Lacaze were arrested and charged with first degree murder

[edit] Trial and conviction

Frank and Rogers Lacaze were indicted by an Orleans Parish Grand Jury on April 28, 1995. Their trials were severed, and Rogers Lacaze was tried first on July 17-21, 1995, found guilty as charged, and sentenced to death. Frank's trial began on September 5, 1995, and on September 12, 1995, the jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts and recommended a sentence of death as to all counts. The defendant was formally sentenced to death on October 20, 1995.

Frank's father had stayed at her home not too long before the robbery, then he disappeared. The fact that the police found a human skull with a bullet hole in his head buried under Frank's house not long after her father's disappearance, also helped her become a prime suspect of the restaurant murders.

In 2004, former cop Hustmyre released a book named "Killer With a Badge", which is based on Frank's life and the restaurant murders.

On October 18, 2006, Frank's attorneys argued before the Louisiana Supreme Court that her death sentence should be overturned because she was denied state-funded experts to help prepare for the sentencing phase of the trial.