La Grenouille

Evil-doer
Full Name	René Benoit
Alias	La Grenouille The Frog (by Gibbs)
Origin	NCIS
Occupation	International weapons smuggler
Powers / Skills	High intelligence
Hobby	Smuggling
Goals	Smuggle illegal weapons into the U.S. (succeeded) Escape from Trent Kort (failed)
Crimes	Smuggling
Type of Villain	Honorable Anti-Villain

La Grenouille (real name: René Benoit) is a major antagonist that appears on NCIS as the main antagonist in season four, the overarching antagonist in season five and a posthumous antagonist in season 13. He is a French weapons dealer that NCIS Director Jenny Shepard is hunting because she believes that he killed her father, Colonel Jasper Shepard.

He was portrayed by Armand Assante, who also played Rico in Judge Dredd, Tzekel-Kan in The Road to El Dorado, and Carlo D'Allesandro in Hoffa.

Biography

Before Colonel Shepard's alleged suicide, La Grenouille bribed him; La Grenouille admits this to Jenny just before he was killed. La Grenouille was murdered on his yacht the night following his meeting with Director Shepard and Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the home of Director Shepard. He had met with Director Shepard to ask for protection because he no longer trusted Trent Kort, the CIA agent he was working with. However, Shepard was not about to protect the man she despised; she strongly refused. His body was found a few months later and his death was investigated by FBI agent Special Agent Tobias Fornell.

Jeanne told the FBI that she saw DiNozzo assassinate her father, making DiNozzo the subject of the investigation into La Grenouille's murder. Director Shepard was suspended during the investigation, and Vance temporarily assumed the directorship. Under interrogation by Director Shepard, Jeanne admitted she did not witness the killing.

CIA agent Trent Kort brought the investigation to a halt by claiming that the agency was responsible for La Grenouille's death in a "sanctioned" action. Gibbs was not convinced, continued investigating, and found forensic evidence suggesting that Director Shepard had been the one who had killed La Grenouille but he buried the evidence. It is proven that La Grenouille's assassin used Director Shepard's gun to kill him. Shepard, however, claimed that La Grenouille took the gun when he left her home. While Kort confesses to murdering La Grenouille, it is further suggested that Shepard herself killed La Grenouille when Gibbs remembers that he saw La Grenouille put her gun on the table before he left.

Trivia

• Ironic enough, La Grenouille's death did not result in closure Jasper Shepard's death or case, and Jennifer's longtime grudge for the one she held responsible for his death, instead ended as the second result of her bias. As in the past, she couldn't kill Svetlana Chernitskaya, the fiancee of a Russian Armsdealer, Anatoly Zhukov, causing the vengeful woman to target those who were responsible, William Decker, his girlfriend, Sasha Gordon, her death in a shootout (taking the assassins with her), then almost Leroy Jethro Gibbs.