Antoinette Frank

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Antoinette Frank
Mugshot of Antoinette Frank.
Born April 30, 1971 (1971-04-30) (age 37)
Flag of Louisiana New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Penalty Death
Status Incarcerated at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, St. Gabriel
Occupation Police officer

Antoinette Frank (born 30 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 worked 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.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Frank had an unstable childhood, but she had wanted to become a police officer since she was a small girl.

Frank was from a broken family: her brother was a fugitive from law, 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 police officer in Louisiana, she lied about her psychological problems.

[edit] Police career

Frank served in the New Orleans Police Department for less than a 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.

[edit] The murders

On March 4, 1995, Frank and LaCaze visited Kim Anh, a Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans East. After midnight, as the employees cleaned the closed restaurant, Chau Vu, sister of two of the victims, went into the kitchen to count money. She entered the dining room of the restaurant to pay Officer Ronald A. Williams II for the night, when she noticed Frank approaching the restaurant.

Frank and LaCaze had been at the restaurant twice earlier in the night to get left over food to eat. When Chau had let her out on the last visit, she could not find the front door key. With Frank returning again for a third time, Chau sensed something was very wrong, so she ran to the kitchen to hide the money in the microwave.

Frank entered the front door using the key that she had taken from the restaurant earlier, and walked quickly past Officer Williams, pushing Chau, another of Chau's brothers, Quoc, and a restaurant employee into the doorway of the restaurant's kitchen. Williams started to follow asking them what was the problem when shots rang out.

As Frank turned back to the dining room of the restaurant, Chau grabbed Quoc to hide somewhere. LaCaze had been behind Officer Williams and shot him in the back of the neck, severing his spinal cord, instantly paralyzing him. The officer was shot again in the head and in the middle of his back, as he lay on the floor.

Chau, Quoc, and the employee hid in the rear of a large walk-in cooler in the kitchen, turning out its light as they entered. They did not know the whereabouts of Chau's and Quoc's other sister and brother, Ha and Cuong, who had been sweeping the dining room floors when Frank entered the restaurant. From inside the cooler, Chau and Quoc could partially see the kitchen and the front of the restaurant. Chau initially could see Frank looking for something in the kitchen. As Frank moved out of Chau's line of vision, additional gunshots were fired. Quoc next observed Frank searching where the Vus usually kept their money. Quoc saw Frank walk to the part of the kitchen where the bodies of his brother and sister were later found.

Frank and LaCaze were shouting and demanding the money. Ha and Cuong did not know where Chau had hidden the money. Twenty-one year old Ha was shot three times as she knelt pleading for her life and seventeen year old Cuong was shot seven times and pistol whipped. After Frank and LaCaze left the premises, Quoc emerged from the cooler, ran out the back door of the restaurant to a nearby friend's home to call 911 to report the murders. Chau tried frantically to call 911 on her cell phone, but she being inside the cooler she could not receive a signal.

Frank dropped off LaCaze at a nearby apartment complex, both knowing that there were witnesses left behind. Frank heard the 911 call on her portable police scanner saying that an officer was down at the Kim Anh restaurant. She returned to scene, parked in the rear, entered through the back door of the restaurant. She made her way through the kitchen to the dining room where Chau waited for help at the front door. As Chau bolted through the restaurant's front door to the safety of arriving officers, Frank immediately identified herself as a police officer. Chau tells Frank she knows what she did and cries to the officers that Frank had performed the crimes.

Chau and Frank were questioned in detail seated at different dining room tables of the restaurant. Frank was taken to police headquarters for additional questioning, where she later confessed to the crimes along with LaCaze. Frank and LaCaze were arrested and charged with first degree murder.

[edit] Trial and conviction

Frank and LaCaze were indicted by an Orleans Parish Grand Jury on April 28, 1995. Their trials were severed, and LaCaze was tried first on July 17–July 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. She was formally sentenced to death on October 20, 1995.

[edit] Aftermath and current developments

Frank's father had stayed at her home not too long before the robbery, then he disappeared. The police found a human skull with a bullet hole in its head buried under Frank's house not long afterwards.

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. On May 22, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the death penalty should be upheld.

On April 22, 2008 State Judge Frank Marullo signed the death warrant for Antoinette Frank. According to the warrant, Frank is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on July 15, 2008. In May, however, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a 90 day stay of execution effective June 10 pending ongoing appeals[1].

[edit] Legacy

In 2004, former ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) agent Chuck Hustmyre released a true ctrime book called Killer with a Badge, which is based on Frank's life and the restaurant murders.

The incident was also fictionalized in Season 6 of the television series Homicide: Life on the Street. The episode was titled "Saigon Rose."

[edit] Sources

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ N.O. cop killer's execution canceled. The Times-Picayune. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
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