Antoinette Renee Frank (born April 30, 1971) is an American murderer and former police officer who committed the 1995 Kim Anh murders, in which she and her probable lover, drug dealer Rogers LaCaze, shot and killed three people, two staff members and a fellow NOPD officer. After the murders, Frank fled, but returned to the scene of the crime shortly after the survivors called the police, arriving in a police patrol car. She then pretended to have had nothing to do with the crime, even asking a survivor, who had hidden in a freezer, what had happened."You saw what happened. You killed my brother and sister."Frank was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death. She has been incarcerated since 1995 at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, the only woman on the state's death row. Frank is also believed to have killed her father, Adam Frank, who had physically and possibly sexually abused her during childhood. A month after she was sentenced to death, police found a human skull with a bullet hole buried under Frank's house. He had stayed at his daughter's home shortly before she reported him missing in 1993.

Early life Frank was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, as one of four children to Adam and Mary Ann Frank. Adam Frank, a telephone company worker and Vietnam veteran, was often absent from home. Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs records showed that Adam was physically and emotionally abusive towards his children and once strangled his then-two-year-old daughter Antoinette. During her childhood, Frank was described as a loner and unusually shy. In high school, she served as a junior police officer for the Opelousas Police Department and when the family relocated to the eastern part of New Orleans, Frank joined the New Orleans Police Explorers, which she left shortly after when the Frank family returned to Opelousas.

Frank later claimed that her father's abuse included filling the house with gas and threatening to have the entire family killed in a train collision. After her imprisonment, Frank stated that her father began raping her when she started puberty and that he forced her to have three abortions between the ages of 16 and 20. A fellow police recruit stated that Frank and her father would interact "as if they were lovers" and that Frank sat in her father's lap at social events. A psychologist who treated Frank during her incarceration determined that Frank most likely had post-traumatic stress disorder and dependent personality disorder. Frank's mother and siblings had moved out due to Adam Frank's domestic violence by the time the sexual abuse began and doctors who conducted the abortions were deceased by the time of the report in 2009.

In June 1988, Frank found work at a Walmart in Opelousas, where she was noted for being unable to get along with colleagues, and was fired after six months for giving false information on her application. After graduating high school in May 1989, Frank moved to New Orleans by herself and was rehired by another Walmart, with plans to join the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) as soon as she turned 20, the minimum age to apply.

Police career On April 30, 1991, Frank applied with the New Orleans Police Department for the first time, but failed a psychological examination, which concluded that Frank had a tendency to lie and overexaggerate her skills and background. However, she was granted entry into the police academy after a psychiatrist hired by Frank gave a more favorable evaluation. In June 1992, she moved into a house in New Orleans with her father Adam. While at the academy, Frank's father reported his daughter missing after he found a note in which Frank voiced self-hatred and described herself as "doomed since the day I was born". She returned shortly after and was hired by the NOPD in February 1993. She presented two letters of recommendation, one supposedly by then-mayor Sidney Barthelemy, who denied signing the letter. Frank's father disappeared in June or August 1993.

According to author Chuck Hustmyre, Frank was caught lying on several sections of her employment application and failed two standard psychiatric evaluations, with psychiatrist Philip Scurria advising against her hiring. Despite this, Frank got a second chance to apply. The NOPD was chronically short-handed; at the time, its officers were paid less than in similarly sized cities, it was losing officers faster than they could be replaced, and the ranks had been decimated by several arrests for murder and drug activity. Many potential applicants were shut out due to a requirement that all officers be residents of New Orleans – a requirement that was only changed in 2014. NOPD officials also thought having more African-Americans like Frank on the force would ease longstanding racial tensions in the majority-black city. She was hired on February 7, 1993, and graduated from the police academy on February 28.

Although Frank graduated near the top of her academy class, her tenure with the NOPD left much to be desired. Her fellow officers thought she was rather shy, had no idea what police work really entailed and lacked the decisiveness to be a good officer. At times, they thought Frank veered into irrational behavior. As early as August 1993, Frank's superiors wanted to send her back to the academy for further training. She frequently had to go through supervisory review. On occasion, though, she did distinguish herself, winning "Officer of the Month" awards from the local Kiwanis Club for her work in the community.

Relationship with Rogers LaCaze On November 25, 1994, Frank handled an incident in which Rogers Joseph LaCaze (born August 13, 1976), a known drug dealer, had been shot. An investigator with the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DOC) believed this was the first contact between the two, although in her statement, Frank claims that they met some eight months before the murders. Frank had taken a statement from LaCaze after he was shot on the street, and initially got closer to him in hopes of turning his life around. However, she was smitten by LaCaze's "bad boy" persona, and their relationship soon turned sexual. She kept up her relationship even though she was well aware she was jeopardizing her career. Frank later maintained that their relationship was platonic and that she had only mentored him.

The association between Frank and LaCaze became noticeable after other police officers witnessed LaCaze driving her car, and even observed him moving her police unit at the scene of an accident she was investigating. On one occasion, LaCaze accompanied her on a complaint call where she introduced him as a "trainee"; on other occasions, she introduced LaCaze as her nephew. Prior to the murders, others testified that Frank and LaCaze would pull over and rob motorists while in a squad car.

Frank refused to discuss her relationship with LaCaze during the DOC investigation, except to say that she was trying to help him. It was later revealed that the two had a sexual relationship. When asked why she would continue the relationship, knowing that LaCaze had been involved in dealing drugs and a shooting, she responded that she would not disassociate herself from him just because of his past. The investigator also questioned Frank about trying to buy 9mm ammunition for LaCaze at Walmart on the day before the Kim Anh murders, but stated that she was a police officer and that there was nothing wrong with her buying ammunition. In her statement, she claimed that she and LaCaze were not dating and had never been intimate. Frank refused to discuss anything regarding the ‌every time the investigator asked her a question, she told him to "look it up in the record" or asserted her innocence. However, during her interview with the DOC investigator, Frank claimed to have had a male suitor but refused to go into specifics because he worked for the police department.

Two men who claimed they met LaCaze at a party on February 4, 1995, John Stevens and Anthony Wallace, testified in court. As the two were leaving the party, a verbal altercation between Stevens and LaCaze ensued, but Wallace suggested they leave. The two men got in a car and drove several blocks until a police vehicle pulled the car over. In police uniform, Frank exited the squad car and told Wallace and Stevens to get out and go to the back of the car. At that point, Wallace saw LaCaze and noticed he was holding a gun. According to Stevens, Wallace rushed LaCaze, and the two men began fighting. Then both Stevens and Frank also jumped into the fray, and the weapon discharged. Stevens began running, but a man named Irvin Bryant appeared and grabbed both LaCaze and Wallace. Frank then told the man that "LaCaze was the good guy" and that Wallace was the one causing the problems. Wallace was restrained until a backup unit arrived on the scene when he was subsequently arrested and charged with attempted murder and armed robbery.

Irvin Bryant, a civil sheriff in 1995, testified that on the evening of February 4, he observed a stopped police vehicle with its lights flashing. Bryant thought the officer was making a traffic stop, but as he got closer, he saw the officer and two black men fighting on the side of the road. At that time, Wallace broke away, ran, and picked up a TEC-9 semi-automatic weapon off the grass. Bryant ordered Wallace to drop the gun, which he did immediately and was restrained; LaCaze then lunged toward Wallace, but Bryant grabbed him. Frank informed him that LaCaze was with her and ordered him released. Despite his involvement in the altercation, Bryant was never questioned by police, and he never gave a formal statement.

Kim Anh murders

On the night of March 3–4, 1995, Frank and LaCaze visited the Kim Anh restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant run by the Vu family, where Frank worked part-time as a security guard, two times to order food and drinks, with Frank stealing a front door key during this time.

Frank and LaCaze returned for a third at around 2 a.m. The staff had become wary of Frank and her new companion, so one of the employees, Chau Vu, hid the money meant for business expenses away in the kitchen. Frank opened the front door with the stolen key and corralled Chau and her brother Quoc into the staff-only area. LaCaze snuck up on the present security guard, 25-year-old Ronnie Williams, a fellow NOPD officer and colleague of Frank, and fatally wounded him with three gunshots. Frank was distracted by this and lost sight of the two siblings, who hid in a walk-in cooler with a third employee. Frank and LaCaze subsequently questioned the two remaining employees, Chau and Quoc's 24-year-old sister Ha and 17-year-old brother Cuong, for the location of the restaurant's money. After recovering the cash, Frank killed the siblings with multiple gunshots and left with LaCaze after failing to locate the survivors.

Quoc fled the building to call help while Chau stayed behind to wait for police. Frank returned shortly after, donning her police uniform and driving a police cruiser from her precinct, in an attempt to lure the survivors out and kill them before police backup showed up. Chau remained hidden until other officers arrived, to whom she identified Frank as one of the perpetrators.