Rogers Lacaze
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Rogers Lacaze is a drug dealer from New Orleans who, alongside his police officer girlfriend Antoinette Frank, was responsible for the 1995 Kim Anh restaurant robbery during which two members of the family who owned the restaurant and one police officer were killed.
Biography edit
On 25 November 1994 Lacaze was shot non-fatally by a gang member. After this incident, officer Antoinette Frank took Lacaze's statement and got close to him, supposedly in order to try and turn his life around. However, she soon became smitten with his "bad boy" persona and they began a sexual relationship. According to eyewitnesses Frank and Lacaze would pull over motorists and rob them at gunpoint. Frank also used her authority as a police officer to protect Lacaze after he was involved in an altercation with two men who he pulled a gun on.
After midnight on 4 March 1995, Frank and Lacaze entered the Kim Anh Vietnamese restaurant run by the Vu family. Chau Vu, who had observed that Frank had stolen the front door key on a previous visit, sensed something was wrong and ran to the kitchen to hide the money. Frank used the key to open the front door and pushed Chau and her brother Quoc into the kitchen. Police officer Ronald A. Williams, who was present at the time, attempted to follow to see what was going on but was shot in the back of the neck by Lacaze, severing his spinal cord. Lacaze then continued to shoot Williams as he lay on the floor.
As Lacaze killed Williams Frank turned to see what was happening, giving Chau and Quoc the opportunity to flee into a walk-in freezer and hide. Unable to find them, Lacaze and Frank held up their siblings Ha and Cuong Vu, who were sweeping the Kim Anh. When Cuong was unable to tell them where the money was Frank brutally pistol whipped him. She then began searching the kitchen, finding the money stashed in the microwave, before shooting Cuong and Ha. Frank and Lacaze made their escape afterwards.
Frank dropped Lacaze off at a nearby apartment complex. Lacaze was arrested later that night after using Ronald Williams's credit card. Frank was also arrested when she returned to the scene of the crime and was identified by Chau in front of her fellow officers. Lacaze was further implicated by statements from Frank under interrogation, and made several incriminating statements himself. At trial he claimed that he had not been informed of his Miranda Rights and had been beaten into incriminating himself by police, and stressed that the murder weapon was never found and that Chau and Quoc had failed to identify him (they had only seen Frank due to Lacaze being in a different room when he shot Williams). Despite this defence he was convicted and sentenced to death.
On 23 July 2015, Lacaze was granted a new trial by Judge Michael Kirby because two of the jurors worked for the New Orleans Police Department, which barred them from serving on a jury under Louisiana law. However, this decision was overturned by a higher court. Lacaze would later appeal a second time on the grounds that his trial judge, Frank Marullo, had concealed the fact that he had signed a permit that lead to Frank receiving the guns she and Lacaze used in the shooting and had not recused himself. The Louisiana Supreme Court still did not grant Lacaze a new trial; however, they did overturn his death sentence, re-sentencing him to life without parole on 13 December 2019. Lacaze is serving his sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.