Antoinette Frank Interview: Interrogation, Trial, and Clemency Fight

The Antoinette Frank case is the 1995 New Orleans triple murder in which a rookie NOPD officer helped rob a Vietnamese restaurant where she worked security, killed a fellow officer and two of the owners’ children, was sentenced to death, and today remains the only woman on Louisiana’s death row while her lawyers fight to overturn that sentence with evidence of severe childhood abuse the trial jury never heard.

Frank is 54. Her co-defendant is off death row. A New Orleans judge is scheduled to rule on October 9, 2026, whether her post-conviction petition can proceed at all.

What Happened at the Kim Anh Restaurant

On the night of March 4, 1995, Frank and 18-year-old Rogers LaCaze entered the Kim Anh Noodle House at 4952 Bullard Avenue in New Orleans East. The restaurant belonged to the Vu family, who had employed Frank and Officer Ronald Williams II as off-duty security guards for months. Williams, 25, was there working his security detail after finishing his regular shift. His wife had given birth to their second son ten days earlier, and he had picked up the extra work for the pay.¹

Frank and Williams were not strangers. They worked the same platoon in the NOPD’s 7th District, the same shift, and had partnered together daily for more than a year. The Vus had grown close to both officers and treated Frank almost like family.¹

Williams, still in uniform, was shot twice in the head and once in the back. LaCaze took his gun and wallet. Ha Vu, 24, and her brother Cuong Vu, 17, were also shot dead. A third sibling, 23-year-old Chau Vu, survived by hiding in a walk-in cooler and later became the state’s key eyewitness.²

How the Interrogation Turned Her Into a Suspect

Frank drove away from the restaurant and reported to the 7th District station. Questioned at the scene by Sergeant Eddie Rantz and Detective Marco Demma, she said she had been in the kitchen getting a drink when she heard gunshots, then tried to get the Vu siblings out through the back door before leaving to report the incident.¹

Rantz pressed her. Why hadn’t she used her cell phone or police radio? Why had she left a wounded officer behind? Frank answered by volunteering the name Rogers LaCaze. Rantz later said that was the moment he realized she was not a witness.¹

In a recorded interview at police headquarters, Frank confessed to shooting Ha and Cuong Vu. She said the robbery was LaCaze’s idea and that she “just went along with it.” She refused to admit shooting Officer Williams and placed that killing on LaCaze.¹

How Frank Became a Police Officer

The NOPD hired Frank in February 1993, when the department was severely understaffed.³ Several warnings were raised and set aside:

She had been fired from Walmart and lied about it on her police application.
She scored poorly on two standardized psychological tests. A board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Scurria, rated her “unacceptable or below average” in most categories and concluded she was not suitable for the job, calling her “shallow and superficial.”
Before hiring, Frank vanished and left her father a suicide note. A missing-person report was filed. She returned the next day and was hired less than three weeks later.

After Frank failed the civil service psychiatric evaluation, she paid her own physician to declare her fit. Under department rules, a second civil service psychiatrist reviewed the conflicting results and cleared her.³ The hiring was attributed to the department’s need for officers and an unofficial push to meet demographic hiring targets.¹

Trial and Death Sentence

Frank went to trial about two months after LaCaze, with Judge Frank Marullo presiding and Glen Woods and Elizabeth Teel prosecuting. Chau Vu testified that Frank and LaCaze acted as accomplices.⁴ The jury deliberated less than half an hour before convicting her in September 1995.⁵ Judge Marullo sentenced her to death by lethal injection in October 1995.¹

Frank’s trial attorneys, Robert Jenkins and Frank Larre, did not retain a mitigation specialist and never investigated her personal history. Both attorneys have since died, and their trial notes are missing.⁶

The Abuse Evidence the Jury Never Heard

Post-conviction investigators uncovered evidence of severe, lifelong abuse inflicted on Frank by her father, Adam Frank Sr., a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. Veterans Affairs clinical notes from 1973 documented him striking his two-year-old daughter and beginning to choke her. Clinicians recommended removing the children from the home. No action was taken.⁷

According to medical records, psychological reports, and legal filings, Adam Frank Sr. began molesting his daughter at age nine and raping her by age eleven or twelve. The sexual abuse continued after she became a police officer at 22. Frank became pregnant three times as a result of these rapes, beginning at age 16, and her father forced her to have abortions each time. Hospital records confirmed the pregnancies resulted from sexual abuse.⁷ Her father also isolated her from the rest of the family, controlled her life, and presented her to others as his wife.⁸

Psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Deland of Tulane University concluded Frank suffered from PTSD and likely dependent personality disorder. She found Frank’s “beliefs, emotions, behaviors and judgment have all been negatively impacted in a complex and long lasting manner” and that the abuse left her “very susceptible to manipulation.” Deland described Frank during their sessions as “very meek” and “very eager to please.” Clinical psychologist Dr. Leslie Lebowitz reached similar conclusions in 2009, finding Frank had endured “multiple kinds of the most toxic traumatic stress imaginable.”⁷

At least two jurors who sentenced Frank to death have since signed sworn affidavits stating they would have voted for a life sentence had they known this history.⁸

Why Her Co-Defendant Is No Longer on Death Row

Rogers LaCaze was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1996. In October 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision upholding his conviction, citing a failure to properly review potential judicial bias. Judge Marullo, who had signed a disputed order releasing a gun from the police evidence room that figured in the case, had not recused himself.⁹

On December 13, 2019, Orleans Criminal District Judge Paul Bonin resentenced LaCaze to life in prison without parole.⁹ Frank’s advocates point to this outcome as a central inequity, arguing that the person they call the mastermind of the crime now serves life while Frank faces execution. Frank’s defense team maintains LaCaze killed Officer Williams and then held a gun to her head, ordering her to shoot the Vu siblings. Testimony from a state witness at LaCaze’s 2013 post-conviction proceedings allegedly supported the coercion claim.⁸ LaCaze’s defense argued at his own trial that Frank was the planner who manipulated the then-18-year-old into participating. Each has blamed the other.

Where the Case Stands Now

Frank’s conviction was finalized in 2008. She filed her first application for post-conviction relief that year and added an 18-claim supplement in July 2009. After a 15-year gap, she filed a second supplement with six additional claims in July 2024.¹⁰

Clemency Denied in 2023

In October 2023, Frank was among five death row inmates granted clemency hearings before the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole. In her four-hour hearing on October 13, 2023, board members Tony Marabella and Bonnie Jackson voted to grant clemency; Curtis Fremin and Alvin Roche Jr. voted against. The 2-2 split meant denial.¹¹ Roche said the question was not about compassion but about “creating an avenue, an interstate” for Frank to eventually be released on parole. Then-Attorney General and Governor-elect Jeff Landry had opposed the hearings and helped reduce the number of scheduled cases from 20 to five through a legal settlement. All five were denied.¹²

The Fight Over the Delay

On April 28, 2025, prosecutors objected to Frank’s 2024 supplemental filing, arguing the 15-year gap prejudiced the state. Criminal District Court Judge Kimya Holmes initially denied the objections. On March 31, 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously overturned that ruling and ordered Holmes to hold a hearing specifically on whether the delay materially prejudiced the state.¹⁰ The state’s argument relies on Louisiana’s Act 393, passed in 2025, which imposed stricter deadlines on stalled death penalty appeals and allows dismissal where prosecutors can show prejudicial delay.¹³

The June 2026 Hearing

On June 3, 2026, Judge Holmes held that hearing. Special investigator Kurt Vorhoff testified that the 9mm Beretta believed to be the murder weapon, along with crime scene sketches and photographs, went missing from an evidence room damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Assistant District Attorney Brad Scott told the court, “We’re not going to have the answer to any of these questions. So the state is materially prejudiced.”⁶

Frank’s current attorney, Matilde Carbia of the Mwalimu Center for Justice, argued the state should not be permitted to shift blame to the defendant for delays in the post-conviction process. The defense wants the court to hear the abuse evidence and Frank’s claim that LaCaze coerced her at gunpoint, arguing a properly informed jury would not have sentenced her to death.⁶

Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office wants more than dismissal of the petition. It is seeking a formal execution date. Murrill has stated publicly that “if we are going to have a death penalty, then we should be able to carry it out.”¹⁴ The push is part of a broader effort under Governor Landry’s administration to restart Louisiana’s execution chamber.

Judge Holmes ordered both sides to submit final briefings within 30 days and set October 9, 2026, as the date for her ruling on whether to dismiss the petition.¹⁴ As of mid-2026, no execution date has been set, and Frank remains the only woman on Louisiana’s death row.¹⁵

1
My New Orleans. Blue on Blue: Murder, Madness and Betrayal in the NOPD
2
NOLA.com. Survivor of 1995 Triple Murder at Kim Anh Upset by Order for New Trial
3
Human Rights Watch. Shielded From Justice: Police Brutality in the United States
4
The Advocate. Survivor of 1995 Restaurant Massacre Speaks After Judge Grants New Hearing
5
Louisiana Illuminator. Murrill Death Penalty
6
NOLA.com. State Cites Lost Evidence, Dead Witnesses as It Seeks to Dismiss Antoinette Frank’s Petition
7
The Guardian. Antoinette Frank: Louisiana’s Only Woman on Death Row
8
Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. Antoinette Frank: Facing Execution While the Crime’s Mastermind Serves Life
9
WDSU. Rogers LaCaze No Longer on Death Row After Resentencing
10
Fox 8 Live. Louisiana Supreme Court Says State Entitled to Hearing on Antoinette Frank’s Belated Relief Claims
11
Verite News. Pardon Board Denies Five Remaining Death Row Clemency Hearings
12
Death Penalty Information Center. Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Denies Clemency Hearings for Five Death-Sentenced Prisoners
13
KALB. Louisiana Supreme Court Reinstates AG’s Authority in Death Row Cases
14
WGNO. Convicted Former NOPD Officer Antoinette Frank Due in Court
15
WDSU. Former New Orleans Police Officer Seeking Post-Conviction Relief