BREAKING: Louisiana Executes Former Police Officer Antonette Frank for Triple Murder |Death Row 2025
Tonight, we have that fixed again. Ameilia Strahan explains how a former New Orleans police officer on death row for more than 30 years. Early one Saturday morning, she and an accomplice, Rogers Laus, robbed it. During the heist, the pair shot and killed the restaurant owner’s two children and fellow NOPD officer.
All three victims Frank knew well. Both Frank and Lac cause were found guilty and were on death row together until 2019 when the cause was removed through a deal with the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. In the early 1990s, New Orleans was a city on the edge. The glossy postcards of jazz clubs, powdered beignets, and mardigraph floats painted a picture of charm and rhythm.
But beneath the brass band laughter, the city was bleeding quietly. Crime had seeped into every street corner, every dark alley, and every broken promise. The police department, the one institution meant to protect its people, was just as fractured as the city it served. The crack epidemic had gutted neighborhoods, leaving behind hollowedout homes and forgotten families.
Gunfire echoed nightly, so familiar that people no longer ducked when they heard it. Homicides reached record highs, and the morg became a revolving door. By 1993, New Orleans ranked among the most dangerous cities in America, and trust in the police was almost non-existent. For years, the New Orleans Police Department, known as the NOPD, had been drowning in corruption.
It was a department that had lost its moral compass, its structure, and the respect of the very citizens it swore to protect. Some officers moonlighted as criminals. Drug money disappeared into pockets. Guns were planted, reports rewritten, and crimes conveniently ignored. When the public saw a police cruiser, they didn’t feel safe.
They felt wary. Inside the department, things weren’t much better. Morale had hit rock bottom. Officers were leaving faster than they could be replaced, and the pay was so low that many of those who stayed found second jobs to make ends meet. Others simply cut corners or turned a blind eye for a bribe.
The department needed bodies, people who could fill uniforms and stand behind the badge, regardless of how qualified they were. Desperation replaced discipline, and that desperation opened the door for someone like Antoanet Renee Frank. She was 23 years old when she applied to join the force. Young, ambitious, and determined to make something of herself.
On the surface, she seemed like the kind of recruit the city needed. Bright, energetic, and black. In a time when racial tension still ran thick through Louisiana’s veins for a department trying to rebuild public trust, especially in its black communities, she appeared to be the perfect candidate. What they didn’t realize, or perhaps what they chose to ignore, was that beneath her ambition lay deep psychological fractures.
Her application was filled with inconsistencies. She lied about her education, her work experience, and parts of her family history. But with the department desperate for new hires, the red flags were brushed aside. When she sat for her psychological evaluations, a mandatory step for every recruit, her problems became clearer.
The first time she failed, the second time she failed again. The psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Scuria didn’t mince words in his evaluation. He described her as emotionally unstable, indecisive under pressure, and lacking confidence. Traits that could spell disaster for someone carrying a gun and enforcing the law. His recommendation was simple.
Do not hire her. But the NOPD didn’t listen. They couldn’t afford to. They were losing officers by the week, and the city’s murder rate was spiraling. The system needed new uniforms, not new warnings. So, Antwanet Frank was quietly allowed to reapply. Her paperwork was shuffled, her record conveniently adjusted, and within months, she was accepted.
On February 7th, 1993, Antwanette Frank became an officer of the New Orleans Police Department. 3 weeks later, she graduated near the top of her class at the academy. Her instructors called her disciplined, focused, and hungry to prove herself. But no one knew that the cracks Dr. Skura had seen were already widening from the first days of patrol.
Something about her unsettled her colleagues. She was socially awkward, distant, almost robotic. She avoided small talk, rarely joined her partners for coffee or conversation. When things got tense, she froze. Her hesitation could have cost lives. Veteran officers whisper that she wasn’t fit for the streets.
Others said she lacked empathy, that her eyes didn’t seem to reflect emotion. just calculation. Within 6 months, her supervisors considered sending her back to the academy for retraining. She had become the officer no one wanted as a partner. Yet, despite all of this, Frank managed to cultivate a different image in public.
She attended community meetings, smiled for photos, and accepted awards from local civic groups like the Kiwanis Club. She was even named officer of the month more than once. To the public, she was a symbol of progress, a young black woman in uniform, proof that the NOPD could change. To those inside the department, she was a ticking time bomb.
The praise wasn’t based on performance. It was public relations. In a department desperate for redemption, she was a face they could put on a poster, a reminder that not every headline had to be about corruption. But beneath that thin layer of recognition, Antwanet Frank was unraveling. At home, her life was quiet but fractured.
She carried secrets she didn’t talk about, pain she didn’t process, anger that never found an outlet. She lived with emotional isolation that made her seek control in unhealthy ways. And the badge, the uniform, the authority, it all gave her that control. For a woman who’d grown up feeling powerless, the badge became her armor, but it also became her weapon.
Behind the calm smile of a police officer was a mind in conflict. She wasn’t just breaking rules. She was bending them to her will. She wasn’t there to protect the law. She was testing how far she could twist it. What no one in the department could see was that Antonet Frank had already begun crossing lines.
Lines between duty and desire, between justice and obsession, between right and wrong. And soon she would meet someone who would pull her across that line completely. a man who mirrored her darkness and fueled her hunger for control. His name was Rogers Lars. By late 1994, Antinet Frank’s badge still gleamed, but her moral compass was long gone.
The uniform gave her authority, but inside she was restless, hungry for power, attention, and control. She had started to see herself not as an officer of the law, but as someone above it. Her loneliness, resentment, and quiet rage blended into something darker, something dangerous. Then one night, on a routine call to one of New Orleans most dangerous neighborhoods, she met him.
It was a humid evening in the desire housing projects, a place where poverty and violence went hand in hand. The streets were dimly lit, littered with broken bottles and whispers of drug deals that never stopped. It was the kind of place most officers entered with their hands already on their holsters. A shooting had been reported.
When Frank arrived, the scene was chaos. People shouting, sirens echoing, and somewhere in the crowd, a young man bleeding on the pavement. His name was Rogers Lars, and he was only 18. He wasn’t dying, just wounded, a bullet grazed to the shoulder. But the way he looked up at her, defiant even in pain, caught her attention. He didn’t thank her.
He didn’t plead. He smirked as if to say, “You don’t scare me.” Something about that moment changed her. For years, Frank had lived behind a mask of discipline and quiet rage, her emotions suppressed by years of instability and loneliness. But this young man, this reckless, fearless boy, made her feel something.
She couldn’t explain it, but she felt drawn to him. Maybe she saw herself in him, someone who didn’t fit, someone who refused to follow the rules. In the following weeks, she began seeing him again. What started as small encounters, checking on him, asking about his injury, grew into late night conversations, then rides in her personal car, then her police cruiser.
Before long, Roger’s Lars became a regular presence by her side. At first, her fellow officers thought he was just a friend, maybe a family member. Frank told them as much. “He’s my knee. He’s my nephew,” she’d say. Other times, she called him a trainee. But no one was fooled for long. He was young, sharp, and already deep in New Orleans drug trade.
The kind of person she was supposed to arrest, not protect. Their relationship broke every rule in the book. Officers weren’t allowed to associate with known felons, let alone become romantically involved with them. But Frank didn’t care. The rules no longer applied to her. In Laaz, she found someone who made her feel powerful.
With him, she wasn’t the awkward, quiet officer others looked down on. She was the one in control. The badge, the gun, the uniform, they all made her untouchable. And Rogers adored it. He liked to brag about dating a cop. He liked the thrill of being close to danger of sitting in a patrol car while other officers nodded respectfully as they passed by.
To him, Antuinet Frank wasn’t a woman. She was access to authority, to weapons, to places he could never go alone. And she gave it to him freely. He rode in her cruiser. He wore her jacket. She even let him carry her badge on occasion. Together they played a dangerous game, pulling over cars, flashing her police credentials, and shaking down drivers for money.
Frank would stand there calm and confident while Rogers pointed his gun and demanded cash. They became partners in crime. For Frank, it wasn’t about the money. It was about control, the thrill of being on both sides of the law, the power to enforce and to exploit. For Rogers, it was the rush of danger. Together, they blurred the lines between justice and corruption until there was no line left.
The warning signs were obvious, but no one in the department stopped her. Her colleagues had heard rumors, seen Rogers riding along, but complaints were buried under bureaucracy. The NOPD was still short staffed, still desperate to keep uniforms on the street. Frank stayed on patrol. Then came the night that should have ended everything.
One evening in February 1995, Frank and Lars attended a party on the West Bank. On their way home, they pulled over two young men for reasons no one ever clearly understood. Maybe it was a traffic dispute. Maybe it was a show of power. What’s certain is that Rogers pulled a Tech 9 pistol, a weapon infamous for its brutality, and aimed it directly at the men.
The situation could have turned deadly if fate hadn’t intervened. A passing sheriff’s deputy noticed the confrontation and stopped. What he saw was almost unbelievable. A uniformed NOPD officer standing calmly beside an armed man threatening civilians. Instead of disarming Rogers or calling for backup, Frank vouched for him.
She told the deputy everything was fine. “He’s the good guy,” she said. No arrests were made. No reports were filed. The story vanished. But inside the department, whispers grew louder. Officers talked about her strange behavior, her reckless decisions, and her relationship with Lars. Some wanted her suspended, others transferred, but once again, the system looked away.
The department had seen worse. By then, Antonet and Rogers were inseparable. They shared everything: plans, secrets, lies. Their relationship had crossed from forbidden to criminal and their next step would seal their fate forever. They started talking about money, about how they could get out of New Orleans, start fresh somewhere new.
But to do that, they needed cash and a lot of it. And Antuinette knew just the place to get it. She worked off dduty security at a small Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans East called Kim An. The owners, the VU family, were hardworking immigrants who treated her like one of their own. They trusted her. They even gave her a key.
They had no idea that the woman they trusted to protect them was already planning their destruction. In March 1995, Antuinet Frank and Rogers Lars began plotting a robbery. “A simple job,” she said. “Quick, clean, easy. No one had to get hurt. The restaurant made good money and the Vu family usually kept their cash inside the building overnight.
But Rogers wasn’t interested in easy. He wanted domination. And Frank didn’t stop him. Together, they formed a plan that would lead to one of the most shocking nights in Louisiana’s history. A night where a trusted officer would cross the final line between protector and predator. The badge that once symbolized honor would soon become the emblem of betrayal.
It was the night of March 3rd, 1995, a humid Friday in New Orleans East. The Kim Anan Vietnamese restaurant sat quietly on Bullet Avenue, its neon sign flickering like a dying heartbeat. Inside, the Vu family was closing for the night, unaware that their small restaurant would soon become the scene of a massacre that would horrify the entire city.
The views were hardworking immigrants who had built their dream from nothing. Hauvu, 24, the eldest sister, managed the front with calm authority. Chauvu, 23, handled the money and paperwork. Kuangvu, just 17, was still in high school, but helped mop floors and clean tables after hours. They were a close-knit family, known for their kindness and for treating their staff like family, too.
On most nights after closing, they’d eat together before locking up. It was a peaceful ritual until Antwanet Frank walked into their lives. Frank had been working part-time security at Kiman for several months. The VU family trusted her completely. They paid her in cash and even gave her a key to the back door so she could come and go freely.
They saw her as a protector, a police officer who looked out for them in a dangerous neighborhood. But lately, Chow had started to feel uneasy around her. Frank’s visits had become more frequent, and sometimes she’d show up with a young man, Rogers Lars. He wasn’t polite and Chiao didn’t like the way he looked at them.
His eyes carried the kind of cold confidence that only came from someone who wasn’t afraid of trouble. That Friday, Antuinette and Rogers came by the restaurant twice before midnight. They ordered food, laughed, and acted casual. Too casual. When they left the second time, Chiao whispered to her sister, “I don’t have a good feeling tonight.
” Ha shrugged it off. She’s a cop, Chow. were safe, but they weren’t. Just after 1:30 a.m., Frank and Lars returned for a third time. The neighborhood was asleep, the air heavy and still. Inside, Kim Anu siblings were cleaning up for the night, tables wiped, chairs stacked, floors mopped. The cash from the evening sales sat hidden in the kitchen microwave, wrapped in plastic, and tucked behind a tray. It was more than $10,000.
their payroll, their tips, their savings. It was a secret only family knew. But Antuinette Frank wasn’t just family. She was trusted. And trust was the weapon she carried most effectively. Frank parked her car around the back and used her key to unlock the door. Rogers followed behind her, carrying a 9mm Taurus pistol.
Inside, the lights buzzed faintly over empty tables. They were not there to eat this time. But what Frank hadn’t expected was that another police officer was already inside. Officer Ronald A. Williams II, a 25-year-old patrolman, was working the same off-duty security job Frank once held. He was everything she wasn’t. Respected, steady, and genuinely committed to his oath.
He had no idea that one of his own was about to betray him. Officer Williams saw the door open and stepped toward the sound. He barely had time to speak before Roger’s Lars raised his gun. The first bullet tore through his neck. The second hit his back. The third struck him in the head. He collapsed instantly, still in uniform, his service weapon untouched.
The young officer died before he could even reach for it. Antuinette stood there silent, watching. The man who represented everything the badge was meant to stand for now lay bleeding at her feet. She didn’t stop Rogers. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even move. For her, the line between duty and betrayal had already been erased.
After killing Officer Williams, Frank and Rogers turned their attention to the View family. They stormed into the kitchen where Ha, Chiao, and Kuang were finishing up their closing duties. Frank pointed her gun and ordered them into the walk-in cooler. Ha tried to speak, “What’s going on?” But Frank shouted, “Get in the cooler now.” Terrified, they obeyed.
The family huddled inside, trembling in confusion and fear. Frank demanded money. She turned to Kuang, the youngest, and asked where it was hidden. “I don’t know,” he cried. Her response was brutal. She hit him across the face with her pistol, splitting his skin open. Blood splattered across the white tile floor. She tore through cabinets, opening drawers, slamming doors, searching for cash. Then she remembered the microwave.
She opened it and there it was. Bundles of bills stacked neatly wrapped in rubber bands. $10,000. She could have taken the money and left. But she didn’t. As Chiao and the kitchen worker watched from the cooler, Frank turned back toward Ha and Kuang. Ha pleaded, “Please don’t hurt us. Please.” But mercy wasn’t in Frank anymore.
The gunfire echoed through the small restaurant. Three shots for Ha, six for Kuang. When it was over, the only sounds left were the faint hum of the refrigerator and the slow drip of blood onto the floor. The massacre lasted less than 5 minutes. Inside the walk-in cooler, Shia Vu pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
She could hear every shot, every cry. She watched through the small crack in the door as her siblings were executed by someone she once called friend. She wanted to move to help them, but her body wouldn’t obey. She was frozen, paralyzed by fear, anchored by disbelief. When the gunfire stopped, Frank and Rogers grabbed the cash and left.
Their footsteps faded, their car engine roared, and then there was silence. For several minutes, Chiao didn’t move. She waited, terrified they might come back. The restaurant felt like a tomb. The air thick, the silence heavier than any sound. Finally, she gathered the courage to crawl out. She stepped over her brother’s body, shaking uncontrollably, and stumbled through the back door into the night.
Her bare feet slapped the pavement as she ran toward a neighboring house. She pounded on the door, screaming for help, her voice cracking under the weight of what she had seen. It was 2:15 a.m. when the 911 call came through. Officer down, triple homicide, Kiman restaurant. As patrol units raced toward Bullet Avenue, no one could have guessed that the killer would soon come back.
But that’s exactly what Antuinet Frank did. Minutes after the murders, she returned to the restaurant, still wearing her police uniform. She had borrowed a marked NOPD squad car, hoping to blend in with the responding officers. Her plan was simple and chilling, returned to the scene, pretend to help, and eliminate the remaining witnesses. When she arrived, police lights were flashing across the parking lot.
Officers were taping off the scene. Reporters were already gathering. Frank walked through the chaos with eerie calm. She moved toward the back entrance, the same one she had unlocked earlier that night, but fate intervened. Xiao Vu, still trembling and hysterical, saw her. Her body went cold. She screamed, pointing directly at the uniformed figure walking toward the building. That’s her.
That’s the one who did it. She killed them. She killed my brother and sister. Every head turned. For a moment, no one knew what to do. Antoanet Frank was a cop. She was supposed to be one of them, but Shiao kept screaming. “That’s Antoanette. She’s the one who shot them.” Frank froze. Her calm expression faltered for the first time.
She tried to play it off, pretending to be confused. “What’s going on here?” she asked, her voice unsteady. But it was too late. The truth was out. Within minutes, she was surrounded by officers. They disarmed her, cuffed her, and led her away as other detectives watched in stunned silence. One of their own had just been accused of executing another officer and two civilians.
And this time, the NOPD couldn’t bury it. When detectives searched Frank’s belongings, they found more evidence connecting her to the crime. And later that morning, when they arrested Rogers Leay, he was wearing Officer Williams’ wristwatch and using his police issued gas card. It was the final proof. The case was airtight. The protector had become the predator, and the city of New Orleans would never be the same again.
The early hours of March 4th, 1995 were thick with confusion and disbelief. Outside the Kiman restaurant, the air buzzed with sirens, police radios, and the flicker of red and blue lights reflecting off wet pavement. Officers whispered among themselves, not yet ready to believe what they had just witnessed.
One of their own, a uniformed New Orleans police officer, had been led away in handcuffs, accused of slaughtering her colleague and two civilians. It was unthinkable, a betrayal that struck at the very foundation of trust the badge was supposed to represent. News of the crime spread across New Orleans like wildfire. Reporters arrived before dawn, their cameras flashing as investigators carried out the bodies of Officer Ronald A. Williams II, Harvu, and Kuangvu.
The restaurant, once filled with the warm scent of food and laughter, was now a crime scene dripping with tragedy. By sunrise, every television station in the city had broken the story. Police officer arrested in triple murder. The headline alone stopped people in their tracks. The public couldn’t comprehend it.
Antwanette Frank had been a familiar face, the smiling black officer at neighborhood events, the one who shook hands with children and talked about community safety. To them, she wasn’t just a cop. She was proof that the system could still do good. Now she was a killer. Within hours, the police chief called an emergency press conference.
His voice trembled as he read from a prepared statement, avoiding eye contact with the sea of microphones in front of him. We are deeply saddened to confirm that officer Antwanet Frank has been arrested and charged in connection with the murders of Officer Ronald Williams and two civilians. This department does not and will not tolerate corruption, violence, or betrayal within its ranks.
But everyone listening knew the truth. The department had tolerated it for years. At headquarters, Frank sat in a gray interrogation room, still wearing the same uniform from the night before, her badge now removed. Her hands were cuffed, her face calm, her eyes hollow. Detectives tried to read her, but she was expressionless, detached, as if she were watching someone else’s life fall apart.
When asked about the murders, she denied everything. She claimed she had gone to Kiman that night to check on the family after hearing about a robbery. She said she’d stumbled upon the scene after the fact, but the story didn’t match the evidence. The surviving witness, Shiao Vu, had identified her on the spot. Her fingerprints were on the microwave where the cash had been hidden, and ballistics matched her personal service weapon to the bullets found in the victims.
Still, she didn’t break. When detectives asked why she came back to the scene, she simply said, “Because I was a cop. I wanted to help.” But the calmness in her tone didn’t sound like guilt. It sounded like defiance. Meanwhile, a second team of officers had already located Roger’s Lars at a friend’s apartment. When they found him, he was wearing Officer Williams wristwatch and had the slain officer’s chevron gas card in his pocket.
It was almost surreal, as if he wanted to be caught. He smiled during his arrest. “You got me,” he said, grinning. “But I ain’t the only one.” In the days that followed, detectives pieced together the timeline of betrayal. They discovered that Frank had been planning the robbery for weeks. She’d chosen Kiman because she knew the family kept their cash on site and trusted her completely.
She had worked there long enough to know the layout, the habits, and the perfect time to strike. They also found that she had borrowed a squad car from another officer hours before the crime, a move clearly meant to make her appear on duty if anyone saw her in the area. The media turned the story into a national spectacle.
Newspapers across the country ran front page headlines. Cop kills fellow officer in cold blood. Badge of betrayal. Talk shows debated what had gone wrong in the New Orleans Police Department. How could someone who failed psychological exams twice, who had shown clear instability, be hired and allowed to carry a gun? For many citizens, the case became more than a murder story.
It was a symbol of everything broken in the city’s justice system. At Officer Ronald Williams’s funeral, hundreds of officers stood shoulderto-shoulder in full uniform, their faces solemn beneath the Louisiana sun. The weight of betrayal hung in the air. Williams had been respected, dependable, and deeply loved by his colleagues.
He had served only four years on the force. Now he was gone, killed by the same department he had dedicated his life to. As his flag draped casket was carried from the church, officers saluted in silence. The public watched and wept. Antuinet Frank’s mugsh shot appeared on television screens across America. The same face that once symbolized hope for diversity in law enforcement now embodied its darkest failure.
Talk radio hosts ranted about corruption, race, and betrayal. Citizens called for accountability. Others demanded answers. “How could they let her wear that badge?” one caller shouted during a live segment. Another voice, softer but angry, said if she was unstable, the department killed that officer, too. Meanwhile, inside the NOPD, morale collapsed.
Officers were ashamed, frustrated, and angry, not just at Frank, but at the system that had allowed her to slip through. For years, the department had ignored red flags, covered up misconduct, and protected bad officers for the sake of appearances. Now, they were paying the price. While the city mourned, Antuanette Frank remained unnervingly composed.
In her jail cell, she spent hours staring into space. Guards later said she was polite but cold, like she was thinking through a story she’d already written. When her lawyer came to visit, she spoke softly, almost detached. “They’re lying about me,” she said. “I didn’t kill anyone.” But even her own defense team struggled to believe her.
The prosecutors, led by district attorney Harry Konik, Senior, were already preparing for a death penalty case. They had a surviving eyewitness, physical evidence, and a clear motive, greed, and power. But beneath that, there was something deeper, a psychological portrait of a woman who had spent her life craving authority only to use it for destruction.
To the state, Antoanet Frank wasn’t just a murderer. She was the embodiment of corruption, proof that the system could turn protectors into predators when no one was watching. By the end of March 1995, both Frank and Lars were indicted on three counts of first-degree murder. Their trials would be separate, but equally damning.
Inside Orleans Parish Prison, Frank began to show cracks. She refused to eat some days, pacing in her cell, whispering to herself. At other times, she appeared confident, even arrogant, as if convinced she could talk her way out of anything. But the evidence was overwhelming. The community wanted justice. The department wanted redemption, and the victim’s families wanted peace.
When the trials began, the courtroom would be packed, not just with reporters and spectators, but with officers who still couldn’t believe that one of their own had turned into a killer. The city that had once embraced Antoanet Frank now recoiled from her. She had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.
The badge that had once given her power was gone. Now it was a symbol of her betrayal, a reminder of how trust, when corrupted, can destroy everything it touches. The trial of Antwanet Frank began in the fall of 1995, just 7 months after the murders. By then, New Orleans was a city still trembling. The shock of her betrayal hadn’t faded.
It had only hardened into anger. The idea that a sworn police officer, a protector, could execute not only civilians but a fellow cop was almost too much for the city to bear. Inside the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, the air felt electric, heavy with tension and disbelief. News cameras lined the steps outside, reporters jostling for position.
People stood in long lines hoping to get a seat inside, not because they expected surprises, but because they needed to see justice happen with their own eyes. Antuinette Frank entered the courtroom in shackles, her uniform long gone. She wore a beige prison jumpsuit, her hair pulled back neatly, her face expressionless.
To the casual observer, she could have been mistaken for a witness, maybe even a cler. But those who knew what she had done saw something else entirely. They saw the face of betrayal. Sitting just a few rows behind her were the VU family’s surviving relatives. Beside them, in crisp police blues, were the parents and colleagues of Officer Ronald A.
Williams II, the man who had died in uniform that night. Their faces were carved with grief and quiet rage. Frank didn’t look at them. She kept her eyes fixed on the judge, on the ceiling, on anywhere but the people whose lives she had destroyed. When the trial began, District Attorney Harry Connik, Senior, a man known for his precision and calm authority, rose to deliver the state’s opening statement. He didn’t shout.
He didn’t dramatize. He simply said, “This case is about trust, power, and the deliberate decision of one police officer to use that power for evil.” He paused, then turned toward the jury. She had a key. She had a badge. And she had a choice. Antuinette Frank chose murder. The room fell silent.
The prosecution’s case was devastatingly clear. They laid out the timeline of March 3rd, 1995, piece by piece, using witness statements, forensic evidence, and Frank’s own actions to build an unbreakable chain of proof. They showed photographs of the Kiman restaurant after the murders, the blood soaked kitchen tiles, the overturned chairs, the bullet holes in the freezer door.
Jurors flinched as they looked. Ballistics matched the bullets to Frank’s personal service weapon. Her fingerprints were found on the microwave where the stolen cash had been hidden. And then there was the most powerful evidence of all, the living voice of a survivor. When Shiao Vu took the stand, the courtroom fell utterly silent.
She was composed but trembling, her voice soft yet unshakable. She described every detail of that night. The moment Frank forced her siblings into the cooler, the sound of gunfire, the horror of watching her sister and brother die. Then she told the court what she saw when the police arrived.
“I saw her,” she said, pointing at Frank. “She came back. She was in uniform. She wanted to kill me, too.” Her words hung in the air like smoke. Frank didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry. She simply stared ahead, her face unreadable. But for the jury, the damage was done. Frank’s defense attorneys seemed almost defeated before they began.
They called no witnesses. They offered no alternative theory. They didn’t argue self-defense or mental breakdown. They merely suggested that the surviving witness might have been mistaken. That maybe Roger’s Lars had acted alone. But the evidence was too strong, the story too coherent. Even Laz’s own trial, which had concluded just months earlier, had already sealed the narrative.
He’d been found guilty and sentenced to death. The jury in Frank’s case knew what kind of person she had chosen to stand beside. The defense tried to humanize her, hinting at a difficult upbringing, a controlling father, a childhood of fear and emotional neglect. But there was no psychiatric testimony, no plea for mercy.
It felt hollow, an afterthought. Observers whispered that her lawyers had given up. One of the final witnesses called was Detective Donald Lewis, the lead investigator. He walked the jury through the crime scene step by step, describing the moment his team found Officer Williams’s body and how the entire department went silent when they realized who the prime suspect was.
He ended his testimony with a single haunting sentence. She wore the same uniform he did and she put a bullet in his head. There was no objection. There didn’t need to be. The truth was undeniable. On October 19th, 1995, after days of testimony and evidence, the jury withdrew to deliberate. Reporters expected a long night.
The courtroom emptied halfway with people stepping outside for air or coffee. But within 22 minutes, the jury returned. When the foreman stood to read the verdict, the air felt frozen. Even the judge’s voice seemed to quiet. On the count of first-degree murder, we find the defendant, Anuanet Renee Frank. Guilty. A collective gasp rippled through the room. The Vu family wept.
Officer Williams’s mother closed her eyes, whispering a prayer under her breath. Frank remained motionless. Her expression never changed. The next day, after only 45 minutes of further deliberation, the same jury returned with their recommendation, the death penalty. Judge Dennis Waldron’s voice trembled slightly as he read the sentence aloud.
Antoanet Frank, you are hereby sentenced to death by lethal injection to be carried out at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel. The courtroom erupted in emotion. Some cried, some applauded, some just sat in stunned silence. As deputies led her away, Frank turned her head slightly toward the gallery.
Her voice was almost a whisper, but reporters caught it. “I didn’t do it,” she said. “They’ll see.” But no one believed her. The trial might have ended there. The story closed and filed away, but fate had one more secret to reveal. Months later, in late 1995, a neighbor’s dog began digging beneath the wooden floor of Frank’s former home in the St.
Ro neighborhood. The owner thought little of it until the dog unearthed what looked like a human bone. When police arrived and excavated the area, they found a full skeleton buried beneath the house. The remains were identified as Adam Frank, Antwanet’s father. He had been reported missing two years earlier by none other than Antoanette herself.
Detectives concluded that she had murdered him long before she joined the NOPD, hiding his body under her house like a buried secret she hoped the world would never find. The discovery stunned even the most hardened investigators. It painted a picture of a woman whose violence didn’t begin with greed or betrayal. It began at home.
Though prosecutors didn’t charge her for the murder, they quietly acknowledged that this was likely her first kill. When the sentence was handed down, the public felt a mix of closure and exhaustion. The city had demanded justice, and it had been served. But beneath the relief, there was sorrow, a deep recognition that something had been broken long before that night in March.
The New Orleans Police Department began a slow reckoning, reviewing its recruitment procedures, psychological evaluations, and background checks. Years later, those changes would still be cited as part of the department’s long road toward reform. As for Antwanet Frank, she was transferred to the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, where she became the only woman on the state’s death row.
The guards described her as quiet, polite, and often withdrawn. She spent her days reading the Bible, writing letters, and maintaining her innocence. Outside the prison walls, the debate about her continued. Some saw her as a monster who deserved her fate. Others, influenced by later reports of childhood trauma, argued she was a broken product of an even more broken system.
But for the families of her victims, there was no moral complexity left to consider. They had buried their loved ones, and nothing could undo that. Years after her conviction, a framed photograph of Officer Ronald A. Williams II still hangs inside the NOPD headquarters, a reminder of the night one of their own was taken by another.
The officers who walk past it don’t say much. They don’t have to because everyone in that building knows that the most dangerous kind of evil isn’t always the kind that hides in the dark. Sometimes it wears a badge. And for the city of New Orleans, that truth will never fade. By the end of 1995, Antonet Frank was already locked away, convicted, condemned, and forgotten by most of New Orleans.
The city wanted to move on, to bury the pain she caused and the shame she brought upon the badge. But fate, as if determined to remind everyone of how deep her darkness ran, wasn’t finished with her story. It began in the most ordinary way imaginable, with a dog digging in the dirt. In late December of 1995, in the St. Ro neighborhood where Frank had once lived, a neighbor noticed their dog obsessively pouring at the earth beneath a raised wooden house.
At first, they assumed it was chasing the smell of a rat or an old bone, but then the digging unearthed something round and pale, a skull. The neighbor froze, staring down at the exposed bone before running to call the police. Within hours, the small home on Congress Drive was surrounded by investigators from the New Orleans Police Department, the same department that had once proudly issued Antwanet Frank her badge.
Detectives crouched beneath the house, shovels in hand, carefully uncovering layer after layer of dirt. Then came the rest, ribs, femurss, the fragile remains of a full skeleton. Tattered clothing still clung to some of the bones. casual wear, malesized, faded by time and soil. It wasn’t just another homicide. The discovery carried a name that made even the most jaded officers pause.
Adam Frank, Antuinette’s father. The revelations stunned everyone. Two years earlier, Antwanette had filed a missing person’s report for her father. She told police he’d left home one day and never returned. She said he was depressed, maybe suicidal. No one looked deeper. No one questioned her story.
But now, investigators believed the truth was far darker. The body under the house wasn’t just evidence. It was a confession in bone and dirt. Adam Frank had been shot once in the back of the head, execution style. There was no struggle, no sign of a fight. Whoever killed him had done so with precision and buried him under the same floor where they later slept.
When detectives revisited Antoanet’s background, they began to see a pattern, a life built on control and deception. Interviews with family members painted a grim picture of her childhood. A doineering father, years of emotional and physical abuse, and a girl who grew up feeling powerless in her own home.
Psychiatrists who later evaluated her said she likely killed Adam to reclaim that power, to destroy the man who had broken her spirit and dictated her every move. It wasn’t an act of self-defense. It was an act of defiance. But there was something even more chilling in that interpretation. If her father’s murder had given her a sense of control, then the murders at Kim Anne were an evolution of that same need, amplified, externalized, and unleashed on others.
The protector had been born from a killer. In prison, Antonet Frank never spoke publicly about her father’s death. When questioned by psychologists years later, she offered fragmented statements, hints of trauma, memories of abuse, accusations that her father had been violent. Whether those claims were true or part of her manipulation, no one could ever fully confirm.
What was certain, though, was that the murder of Adam Frank had planted a seed. It revealed a pattern of emotional detachment and the illusion of control that defined her every action afterward. In one report written by a forensic psychologist, a single line summarized her perfectly. Antoanet Frank buried her rage where no one could see it until it exploded.
And that explosion years later had claimed three more lives. As the years stretched on, Antuinette Frank’s name faded from headlines, but never from history. She became the only woman on Louisiana’s death row, confined to a small windowless cell at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.
Her world shrank to concrete walls and routine. She woke at dawn, ate in silence, and spent most days reading religious texts or writing letters she rarely sent. Guards described her as calm, polite, eerily detached. She rarely spoke of the outside world. When other inmates asked what she was in for, she would sometimes say, “They think I killed a cop.” She never said, “I did.
” Through the 2000s and 2010s, her appeals wound their way through the courts, each one rejected. The evidence was too strong, the testimony too consistent, but she remained defiant, alternating between denial and fragile attempts at redemption. In interviews, she sometimes quoted scripture. God forgives, she said once.
But people don’t. Then nearly three decades later in 2023, something unexpected happened. Louisiana’s governor at the time, John Bell Edwards, publicly stated his opposition to the death penalty. He urged the state to reconsider its death row cases, citing moral, racial, and financial concerns. His statement sent ripples through the justice system and through the gray corridors of the prison where Antwanet Frank sat waiting.
Dozens of inmates filed clemency petitions, Frank among them. For the first time in 30 years, she saw a faint light of possibility. But when the state board reviewed her case in 2024, they denied her request. They ruled that her crimes were cold, deliberate, and beyond redemption. Still, she refused to give up.
In April 2025, her attorneys filed a motion requesting a new sentencing hearing, citing her history of childhood trauma, psychiatric instability, and ineffective legal defense during the 1995 trial. For the first time in decades, the court agreed to review her case. Her new hearing was scheduled for December 2025, a date that now hangs over Louisiana like a storm cloud.
For some, it represents one final chance at mercy. For others, its justice delayed for too long. Nearly 30 years have passed since that terrible night at Kiman. The restaurant is gone now, boarded up, forgotten by most, replaced by new buildings and new faces. But the people who remember still whisper about it.
They remember the kindness of the VU family, the bright smile of Officer Williams, and the stunning betrayal of the woman who wore the same uniform as their protectors. Today, Antwanet Frank is 54 years old. Her once youthful face has hardened into the weary calm of someone who spent half a lifetime waiting.
She has outlived her victims by decades. Yet her story remains frozen in 1995, a time when the line between good and evil blurred in the glow of police lights. In the halls of the New Orleans Police Department, a framed photograph still hangs, a picture of Officer Ronald A. Williams II smiling proudly in his uniform.
Beneath it, a small brass plaque reads, “He served with honor and was betrayed by one of his own.” Every officer who walks past that photo knows the story. Every rookie who puts on a badge is told about Antoanet Frank, not as a legend, but as a warning. Because her story isn’t just about one woman’s descent into murder.
It’s about what happens when a system ignores its cracks. When a department desperate for numbers overlooks the danger behind a smile, when the badge meant to protect becomes the very thing that destroys. If you drive past the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women today, you’ll see high fences topped with wire, flood lights that burn through the night, and the soft hum of cicadas from the surrounding fields.
Inside those walls, in a small concrete cell sits a woman who once represented hope and justice. Now she represents their betrayal. In the stillness of her cell, Antoanet Frank waits. Perhaps for forgiveness, perhaps for the needle, perhaps for nothing at all. Outside, the world keeps moving.
The city she once patrolled has changed, healed, evolved. But the scars she left, the kind carved into trust, never truly fade. Some stories of evil end with a monster being caught. This one ends with a mirror showing what happens when the protector becomes the predator, when the badge turns against its oath, and when silence allows the unthinkable to unfold.
And somewhere, deep beneath an old house in St. Ro, lies the echo of her first crime, her father’s bones, the buried seed of her downfall, the secret that started it all. 30 years later, her story still whispers one truth that New Orleans can’t forget. Evil doesn’t always hide in the shadows. Sometimes it wears a badge.
Her next court hearing is in December 2025. He will get to know her fate and her execution date
