Antoinette Frank Execution + Last Meal + Last Words | Louisiana Death Row Inmate
Killing a cop is one of the deadliest sins in America. But when the killer is a cop, and not just any cop, but Antwanette Frank, a young officer who gunned down her own partner and two civilians, the betrayal is unforgivable. The badge became her mask for murder. So what happens when the protector becomes the predator? What does the state do when one of its own turns deadly? This is the case of Antuinette Frank, a death row inmate for more than 30 years.
Welcome to True Crime Matter, where every story we tell is grounded in facts, drenched in truth, and harder to forget than you think. Subscribe, tap the bell, and stay locked in. Because this case, it’s more than murder. It’s betrayal in uniform. New Orleans, Louisiana, early 1993. The city was desperate.
Homicide rates were soaring. Trust in law enforcement was at rock bottom. Officers were walking away from the badge faster than the department could hire them. The New Orleans Police Department, once considered one of the most corrupt in the country, was crumbling from the inside. Murders, drug scandals, resignations, public outrage.
They needed new blood fast. So when 23-year-old Antuinette Renee Frank applied to join the force, she looked on paper like hope. Young Africanamean, a local face from Lef Parish, born April 30th, 1971. Educated, ambitious. She wasn’t just a potential officer, she was a symbol. In a majority black city racked by racial tension, the NOPD believed officers like Frank could help build trust where it was long broken.
But the cracks were there from day one. Frank’s application was riddled with false information. She lied on several sections including about her education and personal history. Then came the psychological evaluations standard procedure for all NOPD recruits. She failed both twice. Dr. Philip Scuria, a psychiatrist contracted by the department, issued a clear warning. Do not hire her.
His report stated that Frank lacked emotional stability, decisiveness, and had a worrying absence of confidence under pressure. She wasn’t just a risk. She was the kind of person you don’t put in uniform. Period. But the NOPD was running out of options. Officers in New Orleans at the time earned significantly less than cops in cities like Houston or Atlanta. Morale was at an all-time low.
On top of that, an outdated rule required that all officers live within city limits, drastically shrinking the pool of qualified applicants. That rule wouldn’t be lifted until 2014, too late for the damage already done. So, the department did what many broken systems do. They looked the other way.
Frank was quietly given a second chance to apply. This time, her application sailed through. On February 7th, 1993, she was officially hired. 3 weeks later, on February 28th, she graduated from the academy near the top of her class. From the outside, she looked like a star recruit, but the truth, she was already unraveling.
Her fellow officers described her as awkward, emotionally detached, and distant. She avoided social interactions. She froze under pressure. Some said she looked like she didn’t belong in the uniform at all. In fact, by August 1993, just 6 months into the job, her supervisors were ready to send her back to the academy for retraining. One officer put it bluntly.
She didn’t know how to be a cop. She was placed under frequent supervisory review. Whispers grew louder. Was she unstable, unfit, a liability? But while many inside the department had doubts, outside she was being celebrated. Frank received officer of the month awards from the local Kowanas club.
She smiled for photos, shook hands at community events. Her commendations painted her as a model cop, a face of change, a story the department could point to. But those awards, they weren’t about performance. They were about PR. The truth was Antwanet Frank was already living two lives.
One was the uniform, the badge, and the polished smile. The other, darker, hidden, was a growing obsession with control, violence, and chaos. No one in the department knew it yet. But in less than 2 years, she would walk into a quiet restaurant in New Orleans East, pull out her service weapon, and murder three innocent people, including one of their own.
And the signs, they had always been there. By early 1994, officer Antuinet Frank had barely made it through her first year on the force. She was 23, assigned to routine patrols across the New Orleans East District, far from the tourist lights of the French Quarter. Her file was already cluttered with disciplinary notes, failed evaluations, and repeated concerns about her behavior in the field.
She was quiet, withdrawn, but no one expected what came next. One night in late 1994, Frank responded to a 911 call near the Desire Housing Projects. A notoriously dangerous neighborhood off Alvar Street. A young man named Rogers Leesay had been shot. He was just 18 years old, a smoothtalking street dealer with a sharp grin and a growing reputation in New Orleans drug trade.
Frank kneled beside him in the street. He wasn’t dying, just bleeding. And he was charming. Some say seductive. It should have been a routine call. But something snapped in Frank that night. Some officers believed she saw him as a victim she could save. Others, they think she saw something darker.
A partner, a mirror, someone who didn’t care about rules either. Their connection grew fast and dangerously quiet. Within weeks, Leesay was riding in Frank’s personal vehicle. Then he was spotted in her NOPD squad car, even at active crime scenes. Frank told curious officers he was her nephew. Sometimes she said trainee, but the truth was simpler. They were lovers.
The relationship was strictly forbidden. Frank didn’t care. Despite knowing that Leesay was a known felon, despite clear violations of NOPD policy, she kept him close. She introduced him to fellow officers, let him wear parts of her uniform, handed him a badge. She even let him sit in on police interrogations. By early 1995, rumors were everywhere, and Frank wasn’t hiding anymore.
Witnesses claimed the pair had begun committing robberies together, using her authority to pull over cars, then shake down drivers for money. One report suggested she flashed her badge while Leay’s brandished a weapon, an illegal TD9 pistol. But the most disturbing incident came just weeks before the massacre.
In February 1995, Frank and Leay were seen leaving a party together on the West Bank. On the drive home, they allegedly pulled over two young men. A confrontation erupted. The case pulled the TC9 and pointed it at them. A civil sheriff driving by stopped, stunned to see a cop standing calmly beside an armed man. “Frank didn’t disarm Lease. She didn’t arrest him.
She vouched for him.” “He’s the good guy,” she told the deputy. “It’s under control.” No charges were filed. No report made. The story vanished inside the NOPD. Some tried to sound the alarm again. Frank’s behavior was erratic. Her connection to a violent suspect wasn’t just inappropriate. It was dangerous. But it didn’t matter.
New Orleans was still short staffed. Officers were stretched thin. And complaints about Frank never seemed to stick. So she stayed on the street, gun on her hip, lease in her car, and a storm brewing just beneath the surface. Because by March 1995, the two were plotting something bigger. They knew the Kim on Vietnamese restaurant well on Bullard Avenue in New Orleans East.
Frank worked off duty security there. The Vu family paid her in cash. They trusted her. They even gave her a key. And she had just one question on her mind. How much money was in that building? It was a quiet Friday night in New Orleans East. The kind of night where the air hangs heavy with humidity and silence.
Located at 3800 block of Bullard Avenue just off Interstate 10, the Kim on Vietnamese restaurant had closed for the evening. The Vu family, hard-working immigrants from Vietnam, were tidying up as they did every night. Ha Vu, 24, and her younger brother, Kuang Vu, just 17, were mopping floors, wiping tables, and preparing to lock up.
In the kitchen, their older sister, Chiao Vu, 23, tucked the day’s cash into a microwave, a routine hiding spot no one outside the family was supposed to know, but someone did. That someone had a key. Antwanet Frank, now 24 years old and still an active duty officer with the New Orleans Police Department, had worked off duty security at Kimon for months.
The V had trusted her, called her part of the family. They even paid her in cash for private patrol shifts to keep the restaurant safe in the crimeridden neighborhood. They never imagined she’d use her badge to rob them or worse. Earlier that night, Frank had already come by twice with Rogers Leay’s now 18 in tow.
They claimed they were hungry, grabbed leftover food, joked around, but something in Frank’s demeanor felt. Chauvu noticed it. She told her siblings she had a bad feeling. Something was wrong. Then, just after 1:30 a.m., Frank came back a third time. This time, she came alone. Except she wasn’t. Lees followed close behind, armed with a 9mm handgun, later identified as a Taurus PT92.
Frank used her stolen key to unlock the back door and let them both inside. Officer Ronald A. Williams II, 25, was on duty that night, too. Working the same private security detail Frank once held. A proud NOPD patrolman, Williams was well-liked, respected, and most critically not in on the plan. He didn’t know he was about to be ambushed by one of his own.
As Williams moved through the dining area, he caught sight of Leay stepping from the shadows. The first bullet struck him in the neck. He collapsed instantly, paralyzed. The second shot hit him in the back. The third right in the head execution style. The shooter Rogers Lease, the accomplice, Twinette Frank. And the motive, money, control, chaos.
In the chaos, Frank stormed into the kitchen. He found Ha Vu, Kuang Vvu, and a terrified kitchen worker. She forced them into the walk-in cooler. Then she turned to Kuang and demanded the money. He didn’t know where it was. She pistolhipped him, screamed, threatened. Still no answer. Eventually, she opened the microwave and found over $10,000 in cash, tips, savings, and payroll.
And then she raised her gun and shot Hau Vu three times. Then she turned and fired six bullets into Kuang Vu, killing him on the spot. The third worker, terrified and silent, managed to hide in the shadows. So did Xiao Vu, crouched and trembling in the cooler, heart racing. She knew the killer. She knew her name.
She’d eaten dinner with her. Now she was watching her murder her siblings. And then just as fast as they came, Frank and Leay left, disappeared into the darkness. But the nightmare wasn’t over. March 4th, 1995, roughly 2:10 a.m. in New Orleans East. The streets were quiet, but inside the Kim on Vietnamese restaurant on Bullard Avenue, the silence was drenched in blood. Three people were dead.
Officer Ronald A. Williams II, 25, shot three times in the dining area. His body still in uniform, badge on his chest, service weapon untouched in its holster. Ha Vu, 24, executed with three close-range bullets after begging for her life. Kong Vu, just 17 years old, gunned down with six shots to the chest and torso.
But two witnesses had survived. Xiao Vu, 23, and a frightened restaurant employee whose name was later withheld for protection. They had hidden inside the walk-in freezer, crouched in darkness, listening to their siblings being murdered just feet away. They waited. Minutes passed like hours. Eventually, Chiao crawled from the cooler and slipped out the back barefoot and shaking.
She bolted across the neighboring lot and banged on a nearby door, screaming for help. At 2:15 a.m., a 911 call was placed from a residence adjacent to Kimon. The report was shocking. Officer down, triple homicide, suspect fled. But no one, not even the dispatcher, could have predicted what would happen next.
Just minutes later, Antuinette Frank returned to the crime scene. She wasn’t in plain clothes. She wasn’t hiding. She came back wearing her full New Orleans Police Department uniform, badge shining, pistol holstered. She had borrowed a marked squad car from another officer and pulled up like she was just another first responder on the scene.
Frank walked straight through the back entrance of the restaurant. The same door she had used to enter during the robbery. Her gun was still with her, her face calm. She was there to kill again to finish what she and Lease had started. Two witnesses were still alive. She needed them gone, but fate had other plans.
Just as Frank entered the building, Chiao Vu, still panicked and shaking, spotted her from the front of the restaurant. Her scream pierced the silence. She did it. That’s her. She shot my brother and sister. Chiao didn’t hesitate. She ran into the arms of a real NOPD officer, pointing directly at Frank in uniform. Frank froze.
He tried to play it cool. Claimed she didn’t know what was happening. Said she had just arrived. She even began investigating the scene, pretending to check for survivors. But Chiao wouldn’t back down. She kept shouting her name over and over. That’s Antuinette. She’s the one who killed them. Real officers at the scene were stunned. They knew Frank.
He was one of them. But within seconds, their confusion gave way to cold, sick realization. A fellow cop had murdered another officer and civilians and was now impersonating a responder to cover her tracks. She was immediately detained. Her gun was taken, her uniform searched, her story fell apart. By 3:00 a.m., Antuinette Frank was in custody.
Later that morning, detectives picked up Roger’s lease at a friend’s apartment. He was wearing Officer Williams department issued wristwatch and had used and had used the slain officer’s chevron gas card just an hour earlier. The evidence was stacking up fast. But no one knew, not yet, that the darkest part of Frank’s story hadn’t even been discovered.
Because less than a year later, a neighbor’s dog would start digging under her house. And what it found would change everything. When Antwanette Renee Frank, a sworn officer with the New Orleans Police Department, was arrested on March 4th, 1995 for the brutal murder of three people, it sent shock waves across Louisiana. A police officer, one of their own, not only implicated in a robbery and triple homicide, but also accused of executing a fellow officer in uniform.
This wasn’t just a crime. It was a crisis of faith. The people of New Orleans, already weary from police scandals and department corruption, couldn’t believe it. The headlines didn’t make sense. An OPD officer accused in massacre. Teen drug dealer and police woman charged with triple murder. Citizens watched in disbelief as local news aired mugsh shot of 24year-old officer Antuinette Frank and her boyfriend 18-year-old Rogers Leesay, a known street dealer with a violent past.
And inside the NOPD, silence, embarrassment, rage. Frank had slipped through their hiring system after lying on her application, failing psychological exams, and earning whispered complaints from fellow officers. Now she was in shackles facing three counts of firstdegree murder. The question on everyone’s mind, would Louisiana finally hold one of its own accountable? Both Frank and Leay were indicted by an Orleans Parish grand jury in the months following their arrest.
The evidence was overwhelming. Surveillance footage and 911 timelines placed them at the scene. A 38 caliber Taurus PT92 recovered from Leay’s matched the bullets in officer Williams body. Frank’s fingerprints were found inside the Kimon restaurant on the microwave where the money had been hidden.
And most damning of all, surviving witness Chauvu had pointed directly at Frank, screaming to officers. She killed my brother and sister. She shot the officer, too. The city held its breath. In July 1995, Rogers Leayes was tried first. He showed little remorse. His decision to use officer Williams Chevron gasard just minutes after the murders left no doubt about his involvement.
Within days, the jury found him guilty on all charges and returned a death sentence. But it was Frank’s trial in October that drew the biggest crowd. The courtroom was packed with reporters, retired officers, victims, families, and civilians who had once trusted her badge. Held in the criminal district court for Orleans Parish, Frank’s trial began under tight security.
District Attorney Harry Kik senior, father of the famous musician, led the prosecution team with surgical precision. The state didn’t need theatrics. They had evidence and witnesses. Chiao Vu took the stand and recounted in harrowing detail how Frank forced her family into the kitchen, demanded money, and executed her siblings.
Forensic experts tied bullet casings to Frank’s personal weapon. Her attempt to return to the crime scene as a responding officer was described as a bold effort to kill remaining witnesses and manipulate the investigation. And yet, despite the stakes, Frank’s defense team fumbled. They had subpoenaed 39 witnesses but called none.
They didn’t argue trauma. They didn’t paint her as a manipulated woman. They barely fought. To observers, it looked like surrender. When the jury finally rose to deliberate, you could hear the stillness in the courtroom. No one even touched their coffee. Reporters prepared for a long night, but it only took 22 minutes.
A record for a capital murder verdict in the city of New Orleans. Frank stood emotionless as the jury foreman read the verdict. Guilty on all counts. The next day, after only 45 more minutes, the jury recommended the death penalty. On October 20th, 1995, Antuinette Frank was sentenced to die by lethal injection.
She was immediately transferred to the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, becoming the only woman on Louisiana’s death row at the time. And as the steel doors slammed shut behind her, everyone assumed that was it. Justice had been served. The case was over. But it wasn’t because months later, under the floorboards of a modest home in Saint Rock, a neighbor’s dog began to dig.
And what it uncovered beneath Antuinette Frank’s old house was another body, one no one had been looking for. In the St. Rock neighborhood just off Congress Drive, a neighbor of Frank’s former residents noticed her dog scratching obsessively beneath the raised wooden frame of the vacant home. At first, it was dismissed as normal behavior.
Then the dog dragged something out, a human skull. Detectives with the NOPD homicide division were called in immediately. They secured the property and began a controlled excavation beneath the house. what they found buried in a shallow unmarked grave chilled even seasoned investigators. A complete human skeleton, torn clothing consistent with casual men’s wear, and one unmistakable detail, a gunshot wound to the back of the skull.
Execution style. Within days, investigators matched the remains to a 1993 missing person’s report filed by Antwanet Frank herself. The man reported missing her own father, Adam Frank, a former US Army veteran. According to the original report, Antwanette claimed Adam had left the house and never returned. There was no follow-up investigation, no media coverage, just a form and a lie.
Now, his body had been found buried beneath the floorboards of the same home Antuinette lived in when she first applied to the New Orleans Police Department. It didn’t take long for investigators to draw their conclusions. Antuinette Frank didn’t just kill her partner. She didn’t just execute two innocent restaurant workers.
She murdered her own father and lived on top of his grave. In later psychiatric evaluations conducted during her time on death row, Frank finally opened up about her childhood. She described Adam Frank as abusive, violent, and controlling. She claimed he had sexually assaulted her, physically beat her, and dominated every corner of her life.
A psychologist who interviewed her wrote, “She buried her rage where no one could see it until it exploded.” Despite this, prosecutors never charged her for the murder of Adam Frank. When asked why one investigator said, “She’s already on death row. What more do you want? Another trial?” But others weren’t so sure.
To them, this was the first kill. And everything that followed, the lies, the manipulation, the murders, was built on top of that one terrible secret. It’s been 30 years since the bloodshed at Kim on restaurant shocked Louisiana. Today, Antwanette Frank is 54 years old. She’s still behind bars at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, still awaiting the state’s final word.
But in 2023, a political shift gave death row inmates across Louisiana new hope. Then Governor John Bell Edwards publicly opposed the death penalty, urging state officials to reconsider all active death row cases. In response, 56 of 57 inmates, including Frank, filed clemency petitions. They were all denied. But Frank wasn’t done yet.
In April 2025, her attorneys filed a motion to overturn her sentence, citing her history of childhood trauma, psychiatric instability, and ineffective legal defense during her original trial. And the court listened. On May 15th, 2025, a judge approved a new sentencing hearing for Antuinette Frank. It’s scheduled for December 2025.
That hearing will decide everything. Whether she’s granted clemency and her death sentence is lifted, or whether Louisiana finally carries out the execution that’s been delayed for three decades. Either way, the clock is ticking and the woman once trusted to serve and protect may finally face the justice she’s outrun for far too long.
If you think justice should be served, comment execution. If you believe trauma should offer redemption, comment clemency. And don’t forget to subscribe to True Crime Matter for more real life stories that dig deep beneath the surface just like this one. Until next time, stay aware, stay curious, and never forget evil can wear a batch,
