Antoinette Frank - Aftermath and Current Developments

Aftermath and Current Developments

In 1993, a year and a half before the murders at the Kim Anh, Frank's father had stayed at her home for a time—and then she reported him missing. In November 1995, a month after she received her first death sentence, a dog led police to find a human skull with a bullet hole buried under Frank's house. News reports dating back to 2002 state that a psychiatrist testified that Frank's father had repeatedly impregnated her via rape and had compelled her to have multiple abortions. In a 2005 retrospective, Chuck Hustmyre, who wrote a true crime book about the case, said, "As for those human bones unearthed beneath Frank’s house, so far, authorities have made no serious effort to identify them. The 10-year-old case, they say, remains under investigation." According to Hustmyre, shortly before 2005 and several years after her conviction, Frank began to make statements blaming her father for "years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at his hands," which accounted for her murder of the police officer and the restaurant workers.

On October 18, 2006, Frank's attorneys argued before the Louisiana Supreme Court that her death sentence should be overturned because she was denied state-funded experts to help prepare for the sentencing phase of the trial. On May 22, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the death penalty should be upheld.

On April 22, 2008, State Judge Frank Marullo signed the death warrant for Antoinette Frank. According to the warrant, Frank was scheduled for execution by lethal injection on July 15, 2008. In May, however, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a 90-day stay of execution effective June 10 pending ongoing appeals.

On September 11, 2008, the day that the state supreme court stay was to end, a new death warrant was signed by the same judge. According to this second warrant, Frank was scheduled for execution by lethal injection on December 8, 2008. In a new round of appeals, defense attorneys argued they had had too little time to review the voluminous record before the deadline for filing appeals. The Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled on the case again. Their decision, made public November 25, 2008, effectively canceled the death warrant signed by Judge Marullo in September.

In September 2009, Frank moved to have Judge Marullo removed from her ongoing post-conviction appeals on grounds of bias, given that he had already signed two death warrants for her. Louisiana state Judge Laurie White heard the motion in September 2009, and on January 3, 2010, ruled that Marullo should not be taken off the case. Her attorney stated she would appeal the ruling to the state supreme court, which had already overruled both of Marullo's death warrants. However, yet another lower court state judge, Lynda Van Davis, ruled in October 2010 that Marullo had to be recused from the Frank and LaCaze cases because it was unclear if he had been open with the defense teams about his own surprising connection to the gun used in the restaurant murders. If Frank were to be executed, she would be the first woman to be put to death in the state since 1942.

Frank's case was featured in an episode of Deadly Women titled "Born Bad." It was initially aired by the Investigation Discovery cable channel October 29, 2009. The crime was re-enacted, and several individuals connected with prosecuting the case were interviewed, with commentary by Candice DeLong and forensic pathologist Janis Amatuzio. Investigation Discovery revisited the case in an episode of Fatal Encounters, focusing on the interaction between Williams and Frank in the nine hours prior to the shootings.

Frank's case was also featured on an episode of the investigative documentary series Uncovered titled "900 Women," which dealt with the struggles of the inmates at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. The Uncovered episode aired in 2008 and was part of the series' last season. It is currently in rebroadcasting on the Crime & Investigation Network. The episode is narrated by actress Susan Sarandon. The Kim Ahn murders were dramatized on the police procedural "Homicide: Life on the Street" in the episode titled "Saigon Rose" (Season 6, Episode 6).

Initially, the Vu family's restaurant in New Orleans East remained open at the site of the tragedy. Hurricane Katrina damaged the restaurant in 2005, and post-storm looters stole jewelry which Ha and Cuong had been wearing when they were killed. After that, Cuoc Vu and his mother Nguyet sold the old location and re-opened in Harahan, Louisiana, moving their residence to Metairie, where they said they felt more safe.