Murder of Janet March

Neither the exhaustion of his criminal appeals nor his disbarment has deterred Perry's appetite for litigation. In 2017 he filed, pro se, a 200-page suit in Middle District federal court against the TDC and Aramark, its food provider, alleging religious discrimination. He claimed the kosher meals he receives are neither nutritious nor properly prepared, and are deliberately done so in an effort to get him to abandon a kosher diet due to past issues with other inmates falsely claiming to be Jewish and thus driving food costs up.

Perry had one more possible appeal left. Later that year, he told Nashville's WTVF that he was planning to file a certiorari petition with the Supreme Court. "I'm innocent and I'm hopeful that the system will work the way it's supposed to," he said. In June 2015, however, the Supreme Court denied the petition without comment, exhausting Perry's appeals.

After Perry had been convicted, Lawrence and Mark Levine drafted changes to Tennessee law to remedy what they saw as its shortcomings, based on their experience fighting Perry in family court. They expanded grandparent visitation rights, and allowed judges to terminate custody of parents found criminally or civilly liable for the death of the other parent. After they were introduced into the Tennessee legislature, they were passed quickly by both houses, with unanimous support. Mark would later point to the experience when he successfully ran for a seat in Virginia's House of Delegates in 2015.

Three circuit judges—Eric L. Clay, Damon Keith and David McKeague—were empaneled to hear the case. In June 2014, based on a review of the record and the previous decisions, they reached their own decision upholding the district court.

In June 2013, Sharp denied both petitions, setting down his reasoning in two lengthy memorandum opinions that extensively quoted the TCCA's summary of the trial. While March had indeed exhausted his state remedies, Sharp said, he was constrained by the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) in his review. Under its terms, he could only overturn a state court's findings if it had applied federal law in an unreasonable or clearly mistaken way.

Since the court had ruled against Perry on every issue he raised, it did not feel there had been any cumulative effect. In July 2011 it denied him permission to appeal the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

The TCCA heard the case in 2010. Early the next year it issued its opinion upholding the conviction. Judge Robert Woodall wrote for a unanimous panel of three.

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 56-year sentence at Tennessee's Morgan County Correctional Complex.

Perry was a convicted felon even before his murder trial began. In April 2006 he was found guilty of embezzling $23,000 from his father-in-law's firm over the two years before Janet disappeared. Two months later he was convicted of the murder-conspiracy charges.

In August 2005, Perry was arrested at his restaurant as he prepared to open for the day. He was taken to Guadalajara International Airport and put on a plane to Los Angeles. Once it landed, Mexican authorities turned him over to the FBI and he was arrested on the charges he had been indicted for. The Levines initiated another action for full custody of the grandchildren, which ultimately succeeded.

All of the civil court actions were eventually disposed. Before Perry's murder trial had even begun, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the 2005 juvenile court decision giving the Levines temporary custody of the children. The probate action ended with the court assessing a $220,000 judgement against Perry's brother and sister for dividing possessions of Janet's that Perry had taken with him to Chicago amongst themselves after he moved to Mexico; that was upheld on appeal the following year with permission to appeal further denied in 2008. Later in 2008, the TCCA upheld Perry's theft conviction, but reduced his sentence for the crime to three years since it agreed with him that his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated when the sentence was enhanced based on a fact not determined by the jury.

In late 2004 the two detectives and prosecutors began secretly presenting evidence against Perry to a grand jury. After hearing 59 witnesses, it returned an indictment on charges of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. The indictment, like the proceedings that produced it, remained secret while prosecutors worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mexican government to secure the paperwork for Perry's arrest and extradition.

Perry's determination to emerge triumphant, and his father-in-law's resolve to destroy him, reflected civil litigation between Perry and his in-laws that commenced shortly after his move to the Chicago area. In October, Perry filed a petition in Davidson County probate court to have himself appointed the administrator of Janet's assets in her absence. The Levines opposed this, and filed their own motion, first in Tennessee and then in Cook County, Illinois, family court for grandparent visitation rights, which Perry opposed with equal vigor. In 2003, a Tennessee Court of Appeals judge writing for the majority in the last decision in the case called it "[31] months of what can only be described as trench warfare"; a dissenting judge agreed that "the acrimonious relation of the parties is resplendent in these proceedings".

After the children were returned to him, Perry settled into his life in Mexico, working as a business and financial adviser and starting a cafe with his wife. In 2003, he won another legal victory against the Levines, when the Tennessee Court of Appeals overturned the wrongful-death judgment against him. The two-judge majority found that the Levines had offered no new evidence that Perry had killed Janet when they amended their claim to include wrongful death almost three years into the probate litigation, an undue delay, and that Perry's misbehavior did not warrant a default judgment against him in that case, especially since he had offered to be deposed either by telephone or in Mexico.

The jury was shown a videotape of a deposition given by Arthur March, who had been arrested in January and taken a plea deal on the murder-conspiracy charges of a reduced sentence in exchange for offering evidence against his son. He said he had thought about killing the Levines since at least 2002: "They were liars, they were political animals who used her position with the Jewish mafia and his position with the Democratic Party to get what they wanted," which led the Levines to laugh mildly as they watched. He did not have a high opinion of their daughter, either, calling her "a typical ... Jewish-American princess ... Anything she wanted, if she needed it, she went to her father. To my knowledge, Perry was there for show purposes."

Trauger stayed her decision so the parties could appeal it to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Levines argued that every aspect of the decision was in error; Perry argued in his cross-appeal that they had no standing to even offer a defense. A three-judge panel heard oral arguments in March 2001; Mark Levine argued for his parents.

The resolution of the civil cases in Perry's favor did not deter the MNPD. Despite the continuing absence of her body, two detectives on the department's cold case squad began looking into Janet's disappearance again. Perry's business activities in Mexico had made him some enemies there, where many expatriates who had done business with him accused him of fraud. The detectives learned that in 2001, Perry threatened a Mexican lawyer and his client that "he would do away with us the way he did with his wife."

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. Nashville police continued investigating the case and found further evidence suggesting Perry had in fact killed her. In late 2004 a grand jury indicted him 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 he was in jail, police learned that March was conspiring with his father and another inmate to have his in-laws killed; Arthur March 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 and it has never been found. Arthur's plea bargain was rejected and he died in federal custody shortly after beginning his sentence.

In May 2000, the Levines came to Ajijic to demand that Perry grant them their visitation rights. He and his father refused to let them see the children, and they returned to Nashville. A month later, the Levines returned. This time they had a Mexican court order as well, and they were able to have Perry arrested by Mexican authorities on charges that he had violated the terms of his visa. He was later able to get the charges dropped, but while he was occupied doing so, the Levines went to the children's school, outran a pursuing Arthur March to the airport and took them back to Nashville. The visitation order limited them to 39 days with the children, but they immediately began taking steps toward obtaining permanent custody of them.

Perry's defense case-in-chief consisted primarily of attacking King's credibility. Several of the Davidson County jail's correctional officers testified that he had complained about ghosts in his cell and water that ran continuously due to a plumbing problem, and had possibly threatened Perry with physical harm to get extra food from him. His last evidence was a videotape of an interview Samson March had given to a television station in 2000, in which he recalled that his mother had gone to his room and kissed him goodbye as she left, and then he had seen her waving to him as she drove away.

In March 1999 a court-appointed Chicago-area family lawyer visited Perry at his house to interview him in the visitation case. She testified later that there were no photographs or other mementoes of Janet in the house, which she found disturbing. After she filed a report recommending visitation be granted, she said Perry became angry with her and threatened to disappear with the children to Singapore.

The court awarded the Levines visitation late in 1999. When they arrived in Wilmette to pick up the children, however, Ron March, one of his brother's attorneys at that time, told them that Perry had moved with them to his father's residence in Mexico. "I brought Perry down here because he didn't have any other place to go", Arthur explained to CBS News later. Within a week of settling down, Perry met a local woman, Carmen Rojas, whom he soon married.

In early 1997, the Nashville Scene alternative weekly ran a two-part article about the case that disclosed some new information such as the content of the letters Perry had left for the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991 and the questions about his mother's death. It outlined the police theory of the case at that point: that Perry had killed Janet, in all likelihood unintentionally, perhaps through a hold he might have learned through his karate studies (which an instructor told the Scene he would have been capable of doing at the black belt level), fabricated the list and then taken Janet's Volvo to where it was found, packing his mountain bike in the car so he could return home. They believed he had hidden her body, perhaps initially in the rug Marissa Moody saw (but, at the time, no one else claimed to) and then later somewhere more permanent, possibly with his father's help.

Other evidence that would later be used against Perry came from activities associated with these lawsuits. Carolyn Levine was searching the Forest Hills house in early 1997, after Perry had moved and taken most of the family's possessions to Chicago with him. In the garage, she found two envelopes with the logo of a company only Janet used and her name handwritten on them, both containing typewritten letters. These turned out to be the originals of the ones Perry had sent copies of to the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991, and Carolyn called the police. They theorized that perhaps Janet had discovered these, confronted Perry with them and demanded a divorce that night, which led to his murderous reaction.

According to Farris, Perry offered to have his bond posted if he would, in return, kill the Levines. Perry hoped to finance the bond by selling property in Mexico or perhaps receiving a cash advance for a novel he had written in 1997, in which a detective investigates the murder of a small, dark-haired woman. After a month of these conversations, Farris told his attorney, and the two went to the police. They arranged for his conversations with Perry to be surreptitiously recorded. Perry gave Farris Arthur's number in Mexico and a list of code words to use so Arthur would know Perry had authorized the call.

On August 29, 1996, Janet Gail March, (née Levine February 20, 1963 – August 15, 1996), 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, Perry March, a lawyer, 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. He claimed she had packed her bags for a 12-day vacation at an unknown location and driven away. She was never seen alive by anyone else afterwards.

A neighbor recalled to The New York Times that Perry "had a really bad temper", getting into a shouting match with an elderly neighbor and yelling at others when they came up the cul-de-sac the new home was at the end of. In mid-August, when the final US$12,500 payment to the former Bass Berry paralegal would have been due, he wrote her a letter saying he was having trouble coming up with the money and asking if she could wait until October 1996.

Janet may have finally reached the point of ending the marriage. Deneane Beard, the Marches' cleaning lady, recalled seeing a book on divorce on Janet's night table earlier in 1996. On August 14, Ella Goldshmid, the children's nanny, who came two days a week, said that instead of chatting with her on her arrival as she normally did, Janet, more withdrawn than usual, said she would be working on the computer all day, and closed the office door behind her, something she said Janet had never done before. The next day, friends of Janet who saw or talked to her said she also seemed distracted and a little afraid of Perry. Janet and Carolyn made an appointment to see a divorce lawyer on August 16.

By the time Perry left the Nashville area the Levines had come to believe this scenario. Many of the Marches' friends came to agree, since Perry had never returned their calls offering support or reached out to them. After the police announced they were treating the case as a homicide, with Perry as their suspect, local media reported on the case. It preoccupied the Nashville area during Fall of 1996 as no local crime had since the Marcia Trimble rape and murder almost 20 years earlier.

Moving on to the non-constitutional arguments, the court was similarly unpersuaded. The letters to the Bass Berry paralegal, and her testimony, spoke directly to Perry's possible motive in committing the crime, especially since the defense had not objected to the introduction of his 1996 deposition where he had said the payments were not much of an issue between him and Janet. Other than two or three sentences, Woodall added, the letters were not that sexually explicit. As for the novel manuscript, the defense had not objected to its introduction at trial and therefore had waived its right to a consideration of the issue on appeal.

The next year Janet gave birth to a daughter, Tziporah, named after her own mother-in-law who had died long before she met her husband. It was time to move their growing family to a larger house, and they bought a 4 acres (1.6 ha) lot in the affluent suburb of Forest Hills on the city'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 5,300 sq ft (490 m) 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.

By 1993, Perry had admitted to Carolyn Levine, who had taken on the role of a surrogate mother to him since his own mother had died during his childhood, 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 such as nightclub owners, and sometimes did pro bono work for the city's 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 relationship in detail with them, although some said she sometimes seemed depressed.

The couple married in 1987 after Janet, tired of waiting for Perry to take that step, proposed to him on her knees in Percy Warner Park. Her parents put up the money for the newlyweds to buy a house in a desirable area of the city. Perry graduated a year later and, despite offers from prominent New York firms, took a job at Bass, Berry & Sims, a Nashville firm specializing in financial matters, where he was one of the first Jews the predominantly WASPy firm had hired full-time. Janet began illustrating children's books. Their first child, a son named Samson, was born in 1990; daughter Tziporah followed in 1994.

Arthur March had also come to live in Nashville around this time. After his Michigan house had been foreclosed, Lawrence Levine had bought the property from the bank and leased it back to his son-in-law's father. Arthur later said that Lawrence let him live in the house without paying rent for a while but then encouraged him to move to Nashville to be closer to his son and grandson. However, records in Berrien County showed that Levine 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 the city, he often told people he had retired from the Army as a full colonel and had served with the Green Berets and on special-forces missions to Israel, a claim contradicted by his service records.

The couple met as undergraduate students at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s. Both Janet and Perry had been educated at exclusive private schools in their respective communities.

The Marches 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 he took karate classes, eventually reaching the rank of first-degree black belt. Arthur March retired in 1978, having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel; his pension was his chief income after that.

In 1970, Tziporah died under circumstances that are not entirely clear. Her husband said 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, say the death was an accidental overdose. It was widely assumed in the community 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 in that era suicides at the decedent's residence were often officially described as accidents.

Janet Gail Levine was born in 1963, to Lawrence Levine, a native New Yorker 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. Her goal was to become an artist, perhaps a magazine illustrator. By the time she graduated, she had already exhibited her work in some of the city's restaurants and its Jewish Community Center. 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.

Perry Avram March was born in 1961 to Arthur March, the son of a Romanian Jewish immigrant named Paul Marcovich, who settled in East Chicago, Indiana, with his Chicago-born wife. Arthur became a pharmacist, changing his name to March in 1956 since the U.S. Army, which often called him to duty from the reserves while he worked in healthcare administration, kept misspelling it on checks. His wife, Tziporah, was also of Eastern European descent, having been born in Israel to emigrants from the Belarusian capital city of Minsk. The couple had two other children after Perry.