Love, Lies, and Murder (2 page)

The road to Nashville wealth, affluence, and fame is not an easy road to traverse, and is one that is often filled with broken deals, hardship, disappointment, and outright failure. Those who are able to scratch and claw their way out of the ranks of the masses to realize their dreams are few. To the average tourist, the social class divisions in Nashville are not readily apparent; quite the contrary, however, to those who reside there and are trying to make it to the top of the ranks by attempting to break out of the mold of the common folk. It is one thing to make it in Nashville—quite another to make it only to be literally chased out of town—like the Native Americans of the Mississippian culture, there one day and gone the next. But that is precisely what happened to financial attorney and self-proclaimed genius Perry Avram March.

Nashville, by and large, is a charming, friendly city, where people smile at each other and occasionally greet each other on the street, as is somewhat common among Southerners. Most of the lifelong residents have more than a bit of a Southern twang in their voices, and it is relatively easy to spot the more recent transplants because, unless they are from the South, they lack the telltale accent. In the past decade Nashville has attracted a lot of “Northerners.” Nashville’s former mayor and the state’s current governor, Phil Bredesen, moved to Tennessee from Massachusetts in 1975. Homes are still moderately priced, and the cost of living is considered reasonable. Although it can be hot and humid, the weather, overall, is typically mild. Nashville is home to several major colleges and universities, including Vanderbilt, Meharry Medical School, Fisk, and Tennessee State. Although Nashville has become very cosmopolitan over the years and boasts a relatively low crime rate, compared to other cities of its population, it is, nonetheless, a metropolis that is not unlike many other cities of its size—busy with traffic and tourists, the usual hustle and bustle of the rush hours, gang activity, graffiti and tagging, drive-by shootings, disappearances, and murders. In short, the unfriendly side of Nashville can easily chew you up and spit you out, and often does.

As with most tourist-intensive cities, the darker side of Nashville is glossed over and nearly hidden by the neon lights of the many nightclubs, performance stages, bars, and restaurants. In The District, located in the downtown area along Second Avenue and the historic Broadway area, disco à la the 1970s and 1980s can be found at Graham Central Station; additionally, numerous restaurants, chic boutiques, and microbreweries are located there. The District is known as the liveliest entertainment area of the city. Music Row is a colorful area with its aspiring musicians, singers, songwriters, twenty-nine major record labels, 150 recording studios, and other diversions, and many who live there contend that it is the music industry that really drives the city and makes it interesting. Most people can be easily taken in by Nashville’s Southern charm, scenic beauty, great food, and the warmth of many of its people.

As residents of Nashville awoke on Thursday, August 15, 1996, the mercury was in the low 60s, and the humidity a comfortable 50 percent as its inhabitants sat down for their morning coffees and breakfasts. Although a light breeze stirred the sometimes stagnant air quality, the local weather reporters were predicting a high temperature of around 90 for later in the afternoon, with humidity levels reaching near 100 percent—it would be sticky and miserable as the day wore on.

On that same day, Perry March, thirty-five, was still a successful Nashville lawyer employed at his father-in-law’s firm, Levine, Mattson, Orr & Geracioti, and his beautiful, dark-haired wife, Janet Gail Levine March, thirty-three, an accomplished artist and children’s book illustrator, was still alive. They lived together in their mansion dream home, which Janet herself designed, situated on four acres on Blackberry Road, in the posh, upscale community of Forest Hills, located a few miles southwest of Nashville, sandwiched midway between Interstate 40 and Interstate 65. They resided there with their two beautiful children, five-year-old Samson, affectionately known as “Sammy,” and two-year-old Tzipora, named after her paternal grandmother, Zipora, and known as “Tzipi.” By all appearances, the children seemed happy, healthy, and contented, and enjoyed the companionship provided by their part-time Russian nanny, Ella Goldshmid, who adored them. When they weren’t with Ella, Sammy and Tzipi were often with their maternal grandparents, Lawrence “Larry” and Carolyn Levine, which allowed Perry and Janet the freedom they desired to get out and socialize with a circle of friends and acquaintances that included some of West Nashville’s most high-flying young Jewish couples. To those looking in from the outside, the Marches appeared to be a near-perfect family that had everything going for them and, materially at least, everything they could possibly want. That all changed, however, on that fateful day when Janet disappeared without a trace.

 

 

Whenever Perry and Janet March had a beef with each other, which had become more and more frequent as they neared the end of their nine years of marriage, it was their custom to always take their arguments outside onto the deck of their French-style house so that Sammy and Tzipi would not have to be subjected to their parents’ shouting matches. Perry was described by associates as a bright, aggressive, and tenacious financial attorney who sometimes had a short fuse. Financial attorneys are typically involved in commercial litigation, real estate, and business organizations, transactions and contracts, and their area of the legal world is often a stressful one. While it was not certain that Perry’s stress at work had been unleashed and transmuted into yet another fight with Janet on Thursday evening, August 15, 1996, at home, it remained a distinct possibility. Janet, too, could be hot-tempered and easy to set off, and was known to be able to escalate a mere squabble into a heated argument as quickly as Perry. Whatever they fought about that evening was known only to Perry and Janet, and it would be some time yet before the pieces to their jigsaw puzzle could be sorted out and put together.

What was known about that fateful day was that Janet spent much of it at home overseeing the work of two cabinetmakers, John McAlister and John Richie. Perry, who had come home from work a little early that afternoon, had announced himself by greeting Janet and the cabinetmakers, and then entertained himself and the children outside. The two cabinetmakers were employed by Classic Interior and Design, and had been summoned to the Marches’ $650,000 home on Blackberry Road to complete warranty work on wooden countertops that they had installed on an earlier date.

Janet’s demands were sometimes considered unreasonable, and they were perceived as such by the two tradesmen that afternoon as she supervised the countertop repairs, according to McAlister’s and Richie’s recollections. She had become so vocal, it was later recalled, that Perry had to come inside to calm her down. McAlister and Richie, unsettled by her behavior, finished their work as quickly as possible and packed up their tools and left the March residence at approximately 5:00
P.M.
Besides Perry and the children, McAlister and Richie were the last people to see Janet March alive.

After the cabinetmakers left, according to what Perry later told the police and others, he and Janet sat down to a “nice, quiet dinner” with the kids. Afterward, Janet went into her studio to work on an art project. Sometime between 7:00 and 7:30
P.M.
, Perry put the children to bed in their rooms upstairs—first Sammy and then Tzipi. When he returned to the downstairs area of the house, Perry noticed that Janet had packed three bags, and had placed them and other items in the deck area. It was then, according to Perry, that he and Janet had become embroiled in an argument. Sometime around 8:30
P.M.
, Janet said “see ya” to Perry, placed her things in her gray 1996 Volvo 850, and left. He said that she also took between $4,000 and $5,000 in cash with her, along with her passport and a plastic bag of marijuana. Perry would later tell his in-laws, family friends, and the news media that he had asked Janet where she was going, and she had responded that it was none of his business. She purportedly told him that she would return in a few days. That, Perry said, was the last time he had seen Janet. Unfortunately, there was no one to corroborate Perry’s account of what had occurred inside their house that evening—not even the children. They had spent the evening asleep.

Perry, by his own account and as reported by the
Nashville Scene,
called his brother, Ron, at 9:11
P.M.
, at his home in Illinois, to tell him that Janet had left him and the kids. Ron, also an attorney, and his wife, Amy, had been preparing for bed when Perry called. Perry only talked to Ron for three minutes at most, because he called his sister, Kathy, who was living in New Buffalo, Michigan, at 9:14
P.M.
The conversation with Kathy ended after only four minutes.

The next call that Perry made was around midnight when he called Janet’s parents, Larry and Carolyn Levine, to inform them of their fight and Janet’s departure. Perry would later say that he did not call his in-laws immediately because he and Janet had promised each other that they would not involve them in their marital issues. He had also waited to call the Levines because he first called several Nashville hotels to see if she had checked in somewhere. When he couldn’t locate her, he said, he decided to call her parents because he felt that she might have gone to their home to spend the night and cool off. Perry said that he had told the Levines that he should call the police and report Janet missing, but, he insisted, the Levines suggested that he wait and give her a chance to come home. Perry said that Janet’s parents didn’t want to get the police involved because it could prove embarrassing. Everyone reasoned, perhaps convinced by Perry, that Janet would return home soon.

Janet’s mother, Carolyn, later said that she had initially believed what Perry had told her and Larry about Janet’s sudden departure, but she was suspicious. Janet’s disappearance was so out of character, in part because her life revolved around her marriage, her home and family, and her art career, according to her mother and her friends. If she had left Perry, for whatever reason, she would never have left her children behind.

Janet apparently had not told Perry that she had invited one of her friends to drop off her son to play with Sammy the next day. She apparently had not told him of the plans for Sammy’s sixth birthday party, either, only a few days away. Both were critical factors that would weigh heavily on the credibility of Perry’s account of what had happened to Janet.

The following morning, Friday, August 16, one of Janet’s many acquaintances, Marissa Moody, arrived on Blackberry Road with her six-year-old son. Marissa never really liked going to visit Janet and Perry, but her son and Sammy were friends and she did not want to deny the children their friendship because of her own feelings. Marissa, a divorced mother with two children, wasn’t sure why she felt uncomfortable around the Marches, but she, at one point, told
Nashville Scene
writer Willy Stern that she had never felt accepted by Perry and Janet, which was one possible explanation. They had slighted her on prior occasions, for reasons that were not made clear. Nonetheless, she had made arrangements with Janet a day earlier to bring her son over to their home that Friday so that he and Sammy could play for part of the day. Whatever problems that existed between the adults, Marissa didn’t want them to come between the children. It was about 10:00
A.M.
when she turned off Blackberry Road, pulled into the driveway, and parked. When she got out of her car with her son in tow, she noticed that Tzipi was playing in the yard that ran along the side of the house with her nanny, Ella. She smiled and waved as she and her son walked up the stairs and through an outer archway and into the short vestibule that led to the front door.

From the outside, the appearance of the multilevel A-frame-designed house was awe-inspiring, intense, and somewhat foreboding, with its grayish stone and mortar facade, two elevated outside decks—one on each side of the front of the house—and an arched front window. Tall, mature trees surrounded the gargantuan dwelling in the rear and on each side, giving it an even more ominous effect. In the neighborhood of estatelike homes, the houses were set back a significant distance from the road and spaced acres away from each other, affording much privacy to the residents.

Sammy eagerly greeted Marissa and her son at the door and led them inside the house, with Ella following close behind. They walked down a short hallway toward the kitchen, across highly polished hardwood floors. The house’s interior seemed like it was made almost entirely of a light hardwood—wood was all that caught a visitor’s eye: wooden floors, wooden railings, wooden doors—wood everywhere. The interior was plain and austere, with no carpeting and few rugs, yet the wood provided the house a luxurious look and feel. The 5,300-square-foot house was so extremely clean and orderly that it appeared to shine. Deneane Beard, a housecleaner hired by the Marches, had already been there for two or more hours following her usual routine by the time that Marissa had arrived that morning. The only thing that seemed even remotely out of place was a large dark rug, rolled up, lying near Perry’s closed-door study and near where the children’s playroom opened into the hallway. From Marissa’s vantage point, it could have been an Oriental rug, but because it was rolled up, it was difficult to tell for certain. Ella told her that Janet was not at home.

While Marissa waited for Perry to come out of his study, she talked with Sammy, who, by this time, was sitting atop the rolled-up rug, occasionally bouncing up and down on it as any child his age would do. Sammy explained to Marissa that his mother was not at home, and said that he and his father were planning to visit Perry’s office later in the day. During the time that Marissa was there, however, Perry never did come out to greet her—he stayed inside his study and told Sammy to tell Marissa that it was okay for her to leave her son to play for a few hours. Perry had always treated her that way. Aside from feeling disrespected yet again, Marissa thought little of Perry’s behavior at the time. She told her son that she would be back to get him later, said good-bye to Sammy, went outside, and got into her car and left. She had no idea whether she would see Perry when she returned. Based on his previous behavior, it was doubtful.

When Marissa Moody returned a few hours later to pick up her son, she noticed that the rolled-up rug, which she had seen earlier, was gone. She wasn’t sure why at the time, but it was a small detail that she would not forget.

 

 

After Marissa left the March home with her son, Perry took Sammy and Tzipi to their grandparents’ house, located near Edwin Warner Park, a few miles southwest of Perry and Janet’s Forest Hills house. He met with his in-laws and discussed Janet’s sudden and out-of-character departure, explaining that he and Janet had been having marital problems. They also talked about plans that Janet purportedly had made to visit her brother, Mark, in Los Angeles. She had apparently told Mark that she was flying out for a visit, but she did not show up. At one point he may have alluded to a “to do” list that, he said, Janet had left him to complete while she was gone. As the discussion about what steps they should take continued, Perry suggested that they search for Janet’s car. After confirming that she had not shown up in Los Angeles to visit her brother, Lawrence Levine agreed, and he and Perry drove together to Nashville International Airport, located several miles northeast of the Levines’ home. They drove through parking garage after parking garage, looking for Janet’s gray Volvo, to no avail. It just wasn’t there. If it was there, they had missed it. Because Janet was fond of going to Chicago on extended shopping trips, they also considered the possibility that she may have gone off to the “Windy City” and would return home soon, or at least contact someone. But she had done neither.

Perry and the Levines also began calling many of Janet’s friends, but none of them had seen her. Even though Perry had said that he had already contacted several local hotels, where he thought Janet may have gone, her parents nonetheless systematically called many of the area’s hotels as well in their efforts to find their daughter. None of them, however, could confirm that Janet had checked in.

Despite the fact that Janet had not contacted anyone that she knew, no one—yet—would report her to the police as a missing person. Later, when confronted with the question of why, Janet’s parents would claim that it was Perry who did not want to contact the police. Perry, on the other hand, would continue to contend that it was Janet’s parents who did not want to call the authorities out of fear that it would cause trouble for their daughter.

Perry left the children with their grandparents for much of the weekend following Janet’s disappearance, and it was during that time frame that he began talking more about a list of twenty-three things that he was supposed to do while Janet was away for, what he claimed was, a twelve-day vacation. He told a number of people, including the Levines, that Janet planned to return home within twelve days so that she would not miss Sammy’s sixth birthday party on August 27. According to Perry, Janet had typed the list on their home computer prior to her leaving on the evening of August 15. He said that she had made him agree to do the things on the itemized list, and insisted that he sign it on a line above the date of August 15, moments before she walked out of the house that night. “Janet’s” list contained a centered heading that read: “Perry’s Turn For Janet’s 12 Day Vacation.” The list was numbered, and read as follows:

Perry signed it, and it would later be noted that the computer file was saved at 8:17
P.M.
on August 15, 1996.

When taken at face value, it could be argued that Perry and the Levines did not call the police right away to report Janet as missing because they had the expectation that she would return in a few days, if what Perry had been saying was true. On the other hand, why had Perry and the Levines taken steps so soon after Janet’s departure to look for Janet’s car at the airport, call her friends, and check with local hotels to see if she had checked in, if Perry had shared the existence of the “to do” list with her parents? If Janet had demanded that he sign it prior to her leaving the house that night, reason dictated that he could have initially deliberately withheld information about the list’s existence from them. Why? If Janet were truly taking a vacation from Perry and the kids and had promised to return in twelve days, what would have been Perry’s purpose in calling everyone the night she left, worrying everyone, particularly the Levines at midnight, needlessly? Was it possible that the list was Perry’s “ace in the hole,” a resource that he kept in reserve until it was needed to perhaps convince Janet’s parents, as they became anxious and more concerned over not hearing from their daughter, that it was not necessary to go to the police yet? If that is what he had thought, wouldn’t he have realized that it would quickly bring suspicion upon him for initially withholding the information about the list’s existence? Or was the list, if Perry had written it himself, merely for the benefit of the police when they did eventually begin investigating Janet’s disappearance? It seemed possible, from the manner that the chain of events unfolded, that Perry may not have told anyone about the list’s existence immediately. If he had, it was also possible that everyone moved to action and began looking for Janet because she had not shown up in Los Angeles. In any case, it would not be until the police began investigating Janet’s disappearance that an actual theory would be applied toward the list.

As that first weekend without Janet drew to a close, Perry called his father, Arthur March, at his home in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico, on Sunday evening, August 18, at 5:11
P.M.
They spoke to each other for about four minutes—Perry informed his father that Janet had left him and the kids. Perry called his father a second time that evening, at 10:18
P.M.
, during which the father and son discussed the possibility of Arthur driving to Nashville to help Perry take care of the kids while Janet was away—at least that was the account that the father and son would agree upon when discussing the situation with others. Lake Chapala, located near Guadalajara, was about fifteen hundred miles from Nashville and was about a four-day drive under normal driving conditions.

At the time that Janet March disappeared, Perry March, with a nearly full head of curly brown hair, looked very youthful in appearance at thirty-five, and was in great physical shape. At five feet eight inches, he was of small stature, was lean, and neither smoked, drank, nor used illicit drugs. He also claimed that he did not take any prescription medication, according to Perry’s father, Arthur. Perry has also claimed that he was trained in karate and holds a black belt, was very much into conditioning, and liked mountain biking. Except for the various-sized moles on his face and forehead, Perry was characterized as a handsome devil at that time of his life, and was known to be able to easily attract women.

That would all change over the next ten years, however, as the ordeal over his wife’s disappearance took its toll on him.