Murder of Janet March
On August 29, 1996, Janet Gail March, a children's book illustrator from the Nashville suburb of Forest Hills, Tennessee, United States, was reported missing to police by her family. Her husband, attorney Perry March, told police he had last seen his wife when she left the house on the night of August 15, two weeks earlier, following an argument. Perry claimed Janet had packed her bags for a twelve-day vacation at an unknown location and driven away. She was never seen alive by anyone else afterwards.
Janet's car was found at a nearby apartment complex a week after the police report, showing signs of having been there for some time. Other evidence suggested that Perry had fabricated some evidence of his wife's supposed motive for departure and attempted to tamper with or destroy other items that might have provided evidence. Police soon reclassified the case as a homicide, despite the absence of Janet's body, and named Perry as a suspect. Shortly afterwards, Perry moved back to his native Chicago area with the couple's two children. After his in-laws won visitation rights, he fled with the children to Mexico, where his father, Arthur, a former United States Army pharmacist, had retired. The case received attention in the national media, where it was the subject of two segments on the CBS News program 48 Hours.
For several years afterwards, Perry fought his former in-laws in state and federal court over the administration of Janet's property and the status of his children. Janet was declared legally dead in 2000. Police continued investigating the case and found further evidence suggesting Perry had in fact murdered Janet. In late 2004, a grand jury indicted Perry on murder and other charges in her death; it was kept secret by police until the following year, when they were able to arrange for him to be arrested in Mexico and extradited to Tennessee to face trial. While in jail, police learned that Perry was conspiring with his father and another inmate to have his in-laws killed; Arthur was then arrested and extradited himself. After telling prosecutors that he had helped Perry move Janet's body to Kentucky, he agreed to cooperate with them and testify against his son in exchange for a reduced sentence; however he was unable to recall exactly where he had disposed of the body, which has never been found. Arthur's plea bargain was rejected and he died in federal custody shortly after beginning his sentence.
Perry was convicted of all charges in 2006, despite the absence of Janet's body. He unsuccessfully appealed the conviction in state court, alleging some of the evidence had been gathered in violation of his constitutional rights. A federal appellate panel reviewing his later habeas petition agreed that the case presented some issues but did not feel it had the statutory authority to overturn the conviction on those grounds; and in any event it found the evidence against Perry had been so overwhelming as to make those issues harmless error. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court denied his certiorari petition, exhausting his appeals. He has maintained his innocence throughout the case, and is currently serving his fifty-six-year sentence at Tennessee's Morgan County Correctional Complex.
Background
Perry March and Janet Levine met as undergraduate students at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s. Both Perry and Janet had been educated at exclusive private schools in their respective communities.Perry and Arthur March
Perry Avram March was born in 1961 to Arthur and Tziporah March. His father, a pharmacist, changed his surname from Markovich in 1956 after the United States Army, which often called him to duty from the reserves while he worked in healthcare administration, kept misspelling it on checks. Both of Perry's parents were of Eastern European and Jewish ancestry, his paternal grandfather having been an immigrant from Romania and his maternal grandparents having emigrated to Israel from Minsk. The couple had two more children following Perry.In 1970, Perry's mother died under circumstances that are not entirely clear. Arthur later claimed her death was the result of anaphylactic shock brought on by the Darvon she had taken to relieve pain from a head injury. Her state and city death certificates, however, report the death was an accidental drug overdose. It was widely assumed to the family's acquaintances that Tziporah had taken her own life; doctors later consulted by a Nashville journalist reporting on the case said that anaphylactic shock was similar enough to the effects of suicide by Darvon as to be a credible cover story and that suicides at the decedent's residence were often officially described as accidents during that time period.
Following Tziporah's death, the March family moved to their vacation home at Michiana, Michigan. Arthur sent Perry to La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, where he excelled in academics and athletics. In his spare time, Perry took karate classes, eventually reaching the rank of first-degree black belt. Arthur retired from the Army in 1978, having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel; his pension was his chief income afterward.
After graduating with honors, Perry chose to attend the University of Michigan due to the lower tuition he paid as an in-state student, a strong consideration given his father's limited income. He was also attracted by the university's Asian studies program and made that his major. Those who knew Perry at Michigan recall him as having some "rough edges." At the time of the murder, a Michigan alumna came forward and claimed he had hit her in the face while the two were at the school, which Perry denied.
Janet Levine
Janet Gail Levine was born on February 20, 1963, to Lawrence Levine, a native of New York State who had earned undergraduate and law degrees from Michigan, and his wife Carolyn. At the time he was building an insurance defense practice that grew into the firm of Levine, Orr and Geracioti, led him to become one of the most prominent lawyers in Nashville and made him socially prominent within the city's Jewish community. Janet was the first of their two children. Aspiring to become an artist, Janet had already exhibited her work in Nashville's Jewish Community Center and several local restaurants by the time she graduated high school. After attending the prestigious University School of Nashville, where she had been vice president of her class, she was accepted at her father's alma mater as well.Janet's friends recalled her passionate interest in art, to the point of embodying common stereotypes of artists. She was known to go to Chicago on shopping trips without much notice. A friend noted that Janet had not only designed a prototype for a collapsible baby chair, but patented it; however, she never attempted to explore its commercial prospects. She was often "forgetful and late," but friends tolerated her lapses due to her better qualities. However, they also said that she could be difficult to deal with when angered.
The March marriage
Shortly after she had begun her sophomore year at Michigan, Janet's roommate introduced her to Perry. After his graduation from Michigan, the couple moved to Chicago; Perry found work as a futures broker for Oppenheimer & Co. while Janet took art classes at the Art Institute. Growing homesick, Janet persuaded her parents to pay Perry's tuition at Vanderbilt University Law School, where he excelled academically and became a member of the law review. Classmates later recalled him as a driven competitor and tough negotiator who was focused on being financially successful.Following Perry and Janet's wedding in 1987, her parents put up the money for the newlyweds to buy a house in a desirable area of Nashville. Perry graduated a year later and, despite offers from prominent New York City firms, took a job at Bass, Berry & Sims, a Nashville firm specializing in financial law, where he was one of the first Jews the predominantly WASPy firm had hired full-time. Meanwhile, Janet began illustrating children's books. Their first child, a son named Samson, was born in 1990; daughter Tziporah followed in 1994.
Arthur also moved to Nashville around this time. After his Michigan house had been foreclosed, Lawrence had bought the property from the bank and leased it back to his son-in-law's father. Arthur later claimed that Lawrence initially let him live in the house without paying rent before encouraging him to move to Nashville to be closer to his son and grandson. However, records in Berrien County showed that Lawrence ended the lease for nonpayment of rent early in 1987 and sold the house a year later. When Arthur did come to Nashville, the Levines let him live in their house and loaned him money to allow him to establish himself there. Nevertheless, he declared bankruptcy in 1991.
During his time in Nashville, Arthur often told people he had retired from the Army as a full colonel, had served with the Green Berets and had been sent on missions to Israel, a claim contradicted by his service records.
1990s marital difficulties
While his father was dealing with bankruptcy, Perry was facing his own career setback. A paralegal at Bass Berry found the first of a series of anonymous typewritten letters on her desk, containing lewd messages from a secret admirer. Upon being informed of the letters, management at Bass Berry, with the help of an outside investigator, set up a hidden camera monitoring an obscure volume on tax law in the firm's library where the writer asked the paralegal to leave a note if she was interested in initiating an affair. The writer turned out to be Perry.Perry was subsequently confronted with the choice of resigning or being fired, with the former option available only if he sought some sort of professional help. The paralegal, angry that Bass Berry seemed to be taking its time letting March make up his mind, quit after returning from a vacation; shortly afterwards Perry himself was let go. He agreed to pay the paralegal US$25,000 over the next four years, with the first US$12,500 half in monthly installments and the last half as a lump sum at the end of that time, to avoid a sexual harassment suit. Perry kept the payments secret from Janet. Shortly afterwards, the couple began seeing a marriage counselor.
By 1993, Perry had admitted to Carolyn Levine, his mother-in-law, that the couple were having problems in their marriage. His career continued at Levine Orr, his father-in-law's firm, where he represented some locally high-profile clients and sometimes performed pro bono work for the Jewish Community Center, where he was also a member of the board. Janet continued her artistic career, often taking her lunch alone in local restaurants where she worked with her sketch pad. She remained aloof from her friends and did not discuss her marriage in detail with them, although some said she sometimes seemed depressed.
The next year Janet gave birth to a daughter, Tziporah, named after Perry's late mother. It was time to move their growing family to a larger house, and they bought a lot in the affluent suburb of Forest Hills on Nashville's south side, where they spent 1995 building a US$650,000 stone house in a "country-French" style to Janet's specifications. Contractors who worked on the home recalled Janet, who was heavily involved in the project, as particularly difficult. They said she always threatened to go to her husband or her father, who held the note on the house along with his own wife, when there was even a small dispute. When Perry did respond to her calls, they said, he was often more reasonable.