Love, Lies, and Murder (16 page)

As Perry March continued his involvement in the Chula Vista Norte subdivision, things began to look up for him again when, on March 17, 2003, with John Herbison as March’s attorney, the Tennessee Court of Appeals overturned the $113.5 million wrongful-death verdict against him. The court of appeals ruling allowed Perry to thumb his nose at the Levines—for the time being.

Perry had other problems, however, with which he had to contend. Mexican immigration authorities refused his request to change his immigration status to that of permanent resident. He had been holding a visa that allowed him to work in Mexico as a financial consultant, but this, too, was canceled after numerous complaints had been filed against him regarding his business practices. Mexican officials also cited irregularities in his marriage to Carmen, and revealed that Perry’s Mexican marriage certificate falsely claimed that his parents were Mexican citizens.

Perry followed up by going to the Civil Registry Office to have a correction statement to replace the false statement on his marriage certificate. The correction consisted of a handwritten attachment that read: “Licenciado Jose Enrique Banuelos Perez orders the clarification of this act in the sense that because of an error, the nationality of the mother and father of the spouse was given as Mexican when it should have been American.”

“It was an administrative error,” Perry said. “I didn’t lie. Why would I say my parents are Mexican and then apply for a visa?”

Perry also filed an appeal pertaining to the revocation of his work visa.

“This suspends and nullifies the order until a final resolution is made,” Perry said.

The matter then went to the immigration authorities in Mexico City, where a decision would be made, a decision that could take six months or more. Perry, however, took another opportunity to blame his problems on the Levines, who, he claimed, had worked their influence through Mexican attorney Rene Guzman—the source of some of the complaints about Perry’s work ethics. Immigration official Jose Luis Gutierrez, however, refuted Perry’s claims that influence from outside sources was to blame for his problems.

“I made the resolution (to cancel Perry’s visa) without any pressure or fear, just based on what was in March’s f ile,” Gutierrez said. “There was no pressure put on me either for or against this man. I took the decision strictly by the book.”

“I’ve won this case already,” Perry said in cocky arrogance. “It’s a stupid case.”

However, it did not turn out that way. The immigration authorities turned down his appeal and ordered that he leave Mexico—he had ten days in which to do so. Perry, through an attorney, quickly filed an
amparo,
which is like an injunction. The
amparo
allowed Perry to remain in Mexico for at least an additional four months. If the
amparo
is lifted or removed, Perry would have no further legal recourse to pursue regarding his immigration status. As long as he was not deported, a separate legal maneuver altogether, Perry could travel to another country and immediately return to Mexico on a tourist visa. However, under those circumstances he would no longer have the right to work in Mexico.

How could someone without a right to work earn a living in a foreign country, residing there, temporarily, as a tourist, even though married to a Mexican national? Maybe open a restaurant that a spouse, who did have the right to work because of being a Mexican national, could own and operate? It was entirely possible that that had been the line of reasoning behind Perry and Carmen’s decision to open the Media Luna (Half-Moon) Bistro & Café, a family-operated establishment, that could act as a fallback source for money—should Perry lose his right to work in the event the
amparo
was lifted.

Perry and Carmen’s café, however, by its mere existence, had created problems for its owners in part because of its location. The homeowners of the adjacent subdivision, La Floresta, where Perry and Carmen had moved their family into a rental owned by Jesus Madrigal, were not at all happy about a restaurant being located so near to their residences. Many in the community, such as Luis Ramirez, the La Floresta association’s president, said that its presence there violated zoning regulations and should not be allowed inside the subdivision.

“We don’t want businesses around here, because that’s our rules,” Ramirez said. “And it’s a problem.”

Ramirez claimed that the association had taken steps to close down the Media Luna. Because correspondence that the association and the government agency, in which it had filed its claim against the Media Luna and its owners, had not been responded to, Ramirez said, the association had no choice but to begin utilizing the court system to resolve their concerns about the restaurant. Ramirez claimed that it would take forty-five days to get a response from the court.

Carmen March argued that the government, if they closed the Media Luna, would have to close down other businesses within the subdivision as well. While she seemed to have a valid point, her argument gave one pause to consider that perhaps it really wasn’t the restaurant’s presence inside their community that bothered them so much, but was instead the fact that Perry March was attached to the running of the business. By this time he was being referred to by the locals as “El Perrito,” or “the small dog.” Nonetheless, despite the efforts of the locals to shut it down, the Media Luna would remain in business for at least another couple of years.

 

 

At one point, CBS News’
48 Hours
learned of the Perry March case and decided to cover it and devote the show’s full hour to it. Correspondent Bill Lagattuta had taken a crew and gone to Mexico and filmed an hour-long story called “Where Is Mrs. March?” During the course of the story, which has by now aired a few times on television, Lagattuta takes the viewer through the events much as they had unfolded, inserting interview segments with Perry, Carmen, Arthur, Sammy, Tzipi, the Levines, Detective Mickey Miller, and others, including friends of Janet’s, to respond to his questions between the narrative sequences and reenactments. It was during one such segment that Lagattuta asked Perry about why he had changed the tires on his Jeep, and Perry, eager as always to bullshit his way through a tough spot, told a lie. He had, of course, told lots of lies about the disappearance of his wife by this time, but this particular lie had been aired on national television for all to see. In order to understand his statement as a lie, one had to be familiar with the supposed “to do” list, which he claimed Janet had left him.

“It was on my list!” Perry said to Lagattuta. “The tires on the Jeep were bald. And she was worried the Jeep was going to be slipping in the rain, and all this other kind of stuff, and I was just knocking off the stuff on my list.”

The fact of the matter was that changing the tires on his Jeep was not on the list, irrespective of who actually wrote the list. The lie was, of course, in two parts, the second of which was his statement that the tires were bald. It should be recalled that the manager of the tire store where Perry had taken his Jeep had told detectives that the tire tread was still very good, at least 50 percent, and that the tires had not needed changing at that time.

Another interesting response that Perry had made to one of Lagattuta’s questions had to do with why he left the United States.

“I moved to Mexico because I needed to get the hell out of Dodge and start a new life, and get out of their (the Levines’) clutches,” Perry said.

It was an interesting use of the phrase, and was left up to the viewer how to interpret it. However, according to
Urban Dictionary,
to “get the hell out of Dodge” means to leave somewhere immediately, or to scram, and is a reference to Dodge City, Kansas, a location that was popularized in Western movies and particularly the television series
Gunsmoke,
in which the bad guy was often told to “get out of Dodge.”

“He took our whole family from us,” Carolyn Levine, crying, said to Lagattuta. “He took our daughter, he took our grandchildren, and he took himself, and he meant a great deal to us. But I didn’t know him. I wouldn’t trust him with anything today.”

At one point Lagattuta asked Perry point-blank if he had killed his wife.

“The question is highly offensive to me,” Perry responded. “The answer is no.”

 

 

On Saturday, March 29, 2003, after having conversations with the Metro detectives in Nashville, Perry March’s ex-partner, Samuel Chavez, handed over a computer hard drive that Perry had used in a laptop while working the various businesses with Chavez. While it was never mentioned again by the authorities, nor was it ever used in courtroom proceedings, the only people who know what was on that hard drive would be Perry March, Samuel Chavez, prosecutors in Nashville, and the Metro detectives. As a result, it can be said with certainty that the hard drive handed over by Chavez was not the one that had gone missing from Perry and Janet’s home in Nashville.
That
hard drive was, after all, the only one that mattered to the case surrounding Janet’s disappearance, as it would be able to establish whether Janet’s “to do” list was written before or after the time that Perry told police that Janet had left the house.

The remaining months of 2003 were fairly uneventful in the grander scheme of things surrounding the Perry March soap opera that had been playing nearly every day south of the border since his arrival there, but the U.S. wheels of justice continued to turn, albeit slowly. The Levines naturally wanted justice, and they would not settle for less—no matter the cost. Despite the warnings from the court that the money in Janet’s estate was being depleted quickly because of all the legal actions being filed by both sides, the Levines nonetheless began preparing another wrongful-death civil lawsuit against Perry March to replace the judgment that had been overturned in 2003 by a state appeals court.

As they had planned, the Levines went to court again, and on May 7, 2004, they managed to get their daughter declared legally dead for a second time. Then on October 20, 2004, Perry March was once again found responsible for Janet’s death when he lost the Levines’ wrongful-death suit in absentia, and the presiding judge ordered Perry to pay the Levines more than $6 million. Perry, of course, appealed the judgment.

Although Perry March didn’t know it, Metro detectives Bill Pridemore and Pat Postiglione continued working behind the scenes to build their case against Perry. Because of the absence of Janet’s body, they knew that they would have a tough time getting a jury to convict on charges of first-degree murder. As a result, after conferring with the district attorney’s office, they felt that they had enough to make second-degree murder stick. There was also the concern that Mexico might not be willing to extradite Perry to the United States on a charge of first-degree murder, a charge that potentially carries a death penalty. That concern didn’t exist on a second-degree murder charge, which has a potential penalty of fifteen to twenty-five years in prison.

On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, a Davidson County grand jury apparently agreed when they handed down a secret indictment against Perry March on charges of second-degree murder, abusing a corpse, and theft.

As 2005 rolled around, life hadn’t gotten any better for Perry March in Mexico. He was still hated by the locals, and his life had been made all the more difficult because of his notoriety—it had become more difficult to find an unsuspecting sucker because so many people knew who he was, what he had been accused of in the States, and what many people had charged that he was doing in Mexico.

Later in the year, Perry and his family moved out of the lavish two-story, five-bedroom Spanish-style hacienda that he had been renting from Jesus Madrigal for the past four years. When they vacated the property, according to Madrigal, Perry owed seven months’ rent and unpaid utility bills.

When Perry first moved into the hacienda with his family, Madrigal said, he paid the first year’s rent in advance. The second year he paid slowly, in increments, but managed to keep the rent paid. By the third year it appeared that he could no longer afford the home, because he was frequently late with the payments.

“He would owe two months’ rent, then pay the two months and then one month,” Madrigal said. “Then it started to get more complicated. He would promise to pay, saying, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ or that he had to go to Guadalajara to get money.”

Madrigal said that when Perry vacated the house, he owed roughly $10,000 in unpaid rent on the $1,100-a-month property. Madrigal said it appeared that Perry and his family had moved out quickly, because they had left some of their personal belongings behind. He wasn’t sure where they had gone, but word got around the community quickly that Perry had stiffed his landlord. His father, Arthur, however, didn’t believe it.

“They moved, but they left the house owing money? I doubt that,” Arthur said. “I never heard anything about that. To my knowledge, he doesn’t owe any money. I didn’t hear that. You know, these people have stories.”