Ronald A. “Ronnie” Williams II, 25, a male New Orleans Police Department officer, was working an off-duty security detail at the Kim Anh Vietnamese restaurant on Bullard Avenue in New Orleans in the early hours of March 4, 1995. The night had the ordinary rhythm of a late shift—quiet moments, small routines—until the door opened and the calm snapped into something predatory. What followed was not a random burst of violence, but a robbery carried out by people who knew the place, knew the timing, and knew exactly who was standing guard.
Investigators and later court proceedings described the attack as a coordinated holdup in which Williams was confronted and shot multiple times during the robbery. Two members of the Vu family who worked at the restaurant were also shot and killed in the same incident, turning a single act of theft into a triple homicide that shook the city and stunned the police department. The brutality of the scene, and the fact that the slain officer was in uniformed service to the community, intensified the pressure to identify who had done it—and why.
The case took a shocking turn when suspicion centered on someone from within the department. Antoinette Frank, a fellow NOPD officer who had also worked at the restaurant, was identified as a key suspect, and attention soon focused on her associate, Rogers LaCaze. Authorities alleged that Frank and LaCaze planned the robbery, entered the restaurant after hours, and participated in the killings during the search for cash. Frank was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, and LaCaze was later arrested and charged as well, with prosecutors treating the case as a capital prosecution from the outset.
Both defendants were indicted and tried separately. LaCaze was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Frank was also convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, a verdict that carried an especially chilling symbolism for New Orleans: a police officer convicted of murdering another officer, alongside civilians, in a robbery that prosecutors argued was deliberate and coldly executed. Over the years, the case continued to generate legal motions and appeals, and at least one later ruling ordered a new trial for LaCaze at one point in post-conviction proceedings, reflecting the long afterlife that capital cases often have in the courts.
But the central narrative never changed: a late-night security shift ended in betrayal and bloodshed, and the investigation led back not to an unknown figure in the dark, but to a colleague and her accomplice—people prosecutors said used familiarity and access as weapons. Ronnie Williams’ death became not only a homicide investigation, but a grim landmark in the city’s memory, a reminder of how violence can arrive wearing a face you recognize.
