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Antoinette Frank’s Background

Antoinette Renee Frank was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, on April 30th, 1971.

She was abused by her father, Adam Frank, as a child. Adam was treated with Anti Psychotics by the Veterans Administration in the early 1970s, and they documented his admissions of choking his two-year-old daughter and throwing her against the wall.

As a teen, the abuse got worse and allegedly turned sexual. Reports indicate her father violated her and impregnated her three times after she turned 16. Each time, she had an abortion.

She reported trying to delete herself multiple times as a youth. Throughout all the abuse, her biggest goal in life was to be a police officer.

Law enforcement career

When the 21-year-old applied to the New Orleans Police Department in early 1993, she presented a pleasant persona and said she had never been fired from a job.

The man who examined her saw through her fake niceness and learned she had been fired from a previous job.

He considered her low integrity and felt she was shallow and superficial. He said she should not be hired.

The department had a loophole that allowed prospective officers to get a psychiatric evaluation from a private doctor. Frank did that, and the assessment was positive.

Unfortunately, the department was desperate to recruit new officers. They believed having more African Americans on the force would ease racial tension in the community, so they hired her on February 7th, 1993.

She went straight to the Academy and graduated on February 28th at the top of her class.

But when she got into the field, she was a terrible cop. She was shy and didn’t make decisions fast enough. Six months into her career, her superiors considered sending her back to the Academy for additional training.

They never took that step, but they evaluated her performance more frequently than other officers.

Meeting Rogers Lacaze

On November 25th, 1994, Frank made contact with a known drug dealer, Rogers Lacaze, after he was shot. The two got close as she wanted to help him turn his life around, but he brought her into his criminal life instead.

She would bring him to crime scenes and let him drive her cop car. It’s also believed they pulled over and robbed a few motorists.

When she wasn’t on duty or hanging with Lacaze, she worked security at Kim Anh, a Vietnamese restaurant the Vu family ran.

Another cop, 25-year-old Ronald Austin Williams II, also worked at the restaurant when he was off duty. The married father of two had been on the force since 1991.

Frank learned Williams was making more than her at the restaurant, so she and Lacaze decided to rob the place.

Crime

They went to the restaurant on March 4th, 1995, to get food, then left, but they came back a second time. Chau Vu let the two out, and afterward, she couldn’t find the front door key.

When she saw them approaching the entrance a third time, she got suspicious and hid the money in the microwave.

Frank opened the door with the stolen key and immediately started pushing Chau, Quoc Vu, and another worker toward the kitchen. Williams was confused and began to follow to see what was going on. That’s when Lacaze shot him in the neck; he followed up with shots to Williams’s head and back.

Chau, Quoc, and the other workers hid in the cooler while Lacaze and Frank were distracted. Unfortunately, their other brother and sister, 23-year-old Ha and 17-year-old Cuong were left behind on the dining room floor.

Frank searched the kitchen for the money, but she couldn’t find it. Lacaze pistol-whipped Cuong to get him to reveal the money’s location. Frank eventually located the money, then she shot Ha three times and Cuong six times.

The murderous duo fled the scene, and Frank dropped Lacaze off at a nearby apartment.

Quoc bravely escaped the cooler and went to a friend’s home nearby to call 911.

Frank knew she had left a witness behind, so when she heard the 911 call on her police radio, she borrowed a car and returned to the restaurant. She parked in the rear and entered the establishment through the back door. Chau saw her and fled through the front door into the arms of responding officers.

Chau pointed the finger at Frank, and both were questioned in the restaurant. Frank was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Her buddy Lacaze was picked up later that night and was also charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

Convictions

Lacaze went to trial on July 17th, 1995. Along with eyewitnesses, the prosecution had evidence of Lacaze using Williams’s credit card minutes after the triple murder.

Lacaze got on the stand and lied, saying he was playing pool with his brother at the time of the crime.

A jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to death. He was re-sentenced to life in prison in December 2019.

Frank went on trial two months later. The jury deliberated for 22 minutes before finding her guilty on all counts. A judge sentenced her to death on October 20th, 1995.

The now 54-year-old is still awaiting execution. She is the only woman on Louisiana’s death row.