Love, Lies, and Murder

by Gary C. King

  While in the reserves, according to records at the U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Center in St. Louis, Missouri, Arthur took several correspondence courses in guerilla warfare and would later brag to anyone who would listen that he had been in the Green Berets, served in the Special Forces, and had been sent on a number of missions to Israel. He was also fond of handing out business cards that identified him as a retired colonel in the Army Reserves, but much of the information that he had been disseminating about army status turned out to be either bogus or only partially accurate. In reality, according to army records, Arthur had retired from the reserves as a lieutenant colonel, the step of rank just below that of a full colonel.

  “If he thinks he’s a colonel,” said an army spokesperson, “he’s never complained about the fact that his pension payments reflect lieutenant colonel status.” The army spokesperson contended that Arthur March’s identification card was either a forgery or the result of an error by the clerk who issued it.

  Art, as he prefers to be called, changed his surname from Marcovich to March in 1956, according to an article in the Nashville Scene. He told the Nashville Scene that he changed his name so that it would be easier for others to pronounce and to spell, not because he wanted to mask the fact that he was Jewish.

  In the late 1950s, Art March, now using his new name, made an actual trip to Israel, apparently as a civilian. While there, he met Zipora Elyson, daughter of a working-class man employed by a Tel Aviv bus company and whose mother had immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine. The two fell in love almost immediately—it seemed like love at first sight. Art and Zipora married quickly, and together they returned to East Chicago. Within a couple of years Zipora was pregnant with Perry—and in what seemed like rapid succession she and Art gave Perry a brother, Ron, and then a sister, Kathy.

  Like Perry and Janet, Art and Zipora seemed like a happy younger couple raising a happy family of young children, aged closely to one another. While not well-off, they were financially secure, despite Art going from one job to another, purportedly due to his not-much-desired rough etiquette. Nonetheless, they were able to afford to purchase a vacation home in Michiana, Michigan, situated along the shore of Lake Michigan, approximately forty miles from East Chicago. It was a popular vacation destination, particularly for residents of Chicago and its suburbs. Arthur, Zipora, and the children spent a great deal of time there.

  In 1970, when Perry was nine years old, his world, and that of his immediate family, was met with tragedy when his mother died of an apparent overdose of barbiturates. According to Arthur’s version of the events leading up to her death, Zipora had apparently sustained a head injury, for which her doctor had prescribed Darvon, a much-prescribed painkiller. Arthur believes that Zipora succumbed to anaphylactic shock after experiencing an allergic reaction to Darvon. But her death certificate shows that she died of “barbiturate overdose,” and indicated that a “partially empty bottle” of Darvon capsules were recovered from her bedroom. It was generally believed that Arthur had latched onto the anaphylactic shock explanation of his wife’s death because he may have been attempting to shield the stigma of suicide from his children.

  Following Zipora’s death, Arthur decided to leave East Chicago. He sold their house, packed up the kids, and moved to the Michiana vacation house. Although he liked to spend a lot of time on the weekends with friends, some of whom dated to his army days, Arthur was very devoted to each of his kids and would literally do anything for them. Years later, his degree of involvement with Perry and his schemes would serve as a testament of sorts to how much he would do for one of his children. Perry became a lawyer specializing in taxation. His other son, Ron, became a lawyer who works in Chicago, and his daughter, Kathy, graduated from dental school and has a practice in Michigan. All of his kids did well for themselves. It would be Perry, however, who would take a wrong turn later in life.

  Even though he is Jewish, Perry March went to the Catholic college preparatory high school, La Lumiere School. La Lumiere is a coeducational lay Catholic boarding school situated on an estate in La Porte, Indiana, about sixty miles east of Chicago. Actor-comedian Chris Farley attended La Lumiere for a short time, and the school produced a chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. It was clear that Arthur wanted nothing but the best for his kids, and got it. Perry always achieved high marks at La Lumiere, and took part in many extracurricular activities, such as tennis, wrestling, soccer, and karate. He earned a first-degree black belt while still in high school. He graduated with several varsity letters in wrestling and in soccer, and could have had his pick of many universities to attend. He also liked to ski, and he enjoyed mountain biking. He also played guitar—at times it didn’t seem like there was much that he could not do.

  Of the many offers of acceptance that he received, Perry decided on the University of Michigan because, he said, the lower rate of tuition for being an in-state student would help out his father financially. He also chose the University of Michigan because of his interest in learning the Chinese language—that school, according to Perry, offered an excellent program in Chinese. Perry, majoring in Asian studies, went on to become fluent in the language. He also served on the University of Michigan’s Honors Student Council.

  It was at the University of Michigan that Perry met Janet. They were introduced by Janet’s roommate, and like his father had been attracted to his mother, Perry and Janet hit it off almost instantly. Although Janet missed their first date because she overslept, she and Perry were always together after they finally went out on a date. Janet was capricious and creative, and she was beautiful—all attributes that attracted Perry to her. She could be quirky at times, but she always had a sense of humor, which Perry liked. When Perry graduated in 1983, he had made plans to relocate to Chicago, where he had obtained work as a brokerage house manager trainee. Janet joined him in Chicago approximately six months later, toward the end of the year.

  They lived together in the Windy City for about two years, before deciding to move to Nashville, where Janet’s parents lived. Perry, at one point, decided that he wanted to be a lawyer. He subsequently applied to and was accepted at Vanderbilt University Law School, one of the top-twenty law schools in the United States. Janet’s father, himself a lawyer and fond of Perry, offered to pay Perry’s tuition and expenses while he was at Vanderbilt, even though he and Janet were not yet married. Perry was, of course, ecstatic at such an opportunity and he eagerly accepted the Levines’ generosity.

  It wouldn’t be until 1987, however, that Perry and Janet would wed. Janet had been hoping for years that Perry would propose to her, but when he never did, she took matters into her own hands and proposed to him. They had gone on an outing to Percy Warner Park, not far from the Levines’ home and near to the location of Janet’s future dream house on Blackberry Road. While at the park, Janet knelt on the ground and asked Perry to marry her. He, of course, accepted, and Janet became, in a manner of speaking, Perry’s “golden goose.” What more could he ask for? It was a dream come true, especially on the financial side of things.

  Now that Perry and Janet were finally married, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine wanted to do everything in their power to assist their only daughter as much as possible. According to family friends, Perry had developed a close relationship with Janet’s mother, Carolyn, because of his desire for a mother figure in his life, since his own mother had died when he was only nine. As a result, the Levines gave Janet and Perry money so that they could purchase a house that they both wanted. They wanted so much, they would later say, to help make their daughter happy. At that time they also wanted to help Perry so that he could make a good life with their daughter and provide for her in the manner to which she was accustomed. The house, located on a hill on Thirty-second Avenue, helped a great deal in that regard.

  Perry, by this time, had begun to worry about his father’s financial situation. Arthur’s finances had suddenly put him on a track with hard times ahead. The mortgage company had foreclose
d on his Michiana home a year earlier, due to his inability to keep up the payments, and Lawrence Levine, upon hearing of the foreclosure, purchased the property from the mortgage company for $115,000 and allowed Arthur to live in the house, presumably until he could get back on his feet. Records show that Levine terminated Arthur’s lease on the property in early 1987 when Arthur was unable to keep up with the rent payments. Levine sold the house the following year for $144,500, which was $29,500 more than what he paid for it.

  After vacating the Michiana house, where he had lived for years, Arthur moved to Nashville in order to be nearer Perry and Janet. When he first got into town, Arthur stayed with the Levines at their home and they loaned him money to help him get established in his new locale. However, despite his efforts, Arthur would file for bankruptcy in 1991, the same year that his grandson, Sammy, was born. Upon his discharge from bankruptcy court, he would begin making plans for his move to Mexico, where he would eventually reside in a caretaker’s cottage on a Lake Chapala estate. The Lake Chapala area is a beautiful setting where many American retirees relocate so that they can live for significantly less money than it would take to retire in the United States.

  Meanwhile, Perry excelled at Vanderbilt, just as everyone had expected he would. He made Vanderbilt’s prestigious Law Review and, upon graduation, claimed that he had received a number of lucrative offers from some of the country’s most prestigious law firms, including two in New York. However, Perry decided to accept an offer as an associate from the prominent Nashville firm of Bass, Berry & Sims at a starting salary of $42,500 annually. In 1988, Perry became the first Jew ever hired as an attorney for Bass, Berry & Sims, the same year the firm hired its first African American attorney.

  One of Perry’s former professors at Vanderbilt characterized him as being personable and extremely bright.

  “Perry wanted very much to be a good lawyer,” said Vanderbilt law professor Donald Langevoort. “He was quite committed and hardworking in pursuit of just about everything he did.”

  Several of his coworkers thought that Perry was on the fast track to becoming a partner at the firm. Little did anyone know at that time that Perry would be asked to leave the firm three years later in disgrace after an internal investigation indicated that he had written a series of sexually explicit letters to a young female paralegal. The incident would mark the first of many problems that would affect his personal, as well as his professional, life.

  After being forced to leave Bass, Berry & Sims, Perry landed a position practicing corporate law at the firm where his father-in-law was a senior partner. Levine, Mattson, Orr & Geracioti was a much smaller firm than Bass, Berry & Sims, and Perry justified his move there by telling people that he desired more freedom to pursue his own legal interests. Others would say that he landed there because he had nowhere else to go at that juncture in his life. Nonetheless, Perry proved that he could be successful at his father-in-law’s firm. While employed there, he represented several local businesses, including Music City Mix Factory, a strip club, and several prominent and wealthy individuals.

  Perry and Janet’s second child, Tzipi, was born in 1994, and it was during that time frame that they were making plans to build the 5,300-square-foot Forest Hills French-style dream house, which Janet had designed. Even though they had known that it had been several years since Janet had been truly happy in her marriage, Janet’s parents once again put up the money to finance the deal for the house. At the time of Janet’s disappearance they continued to hold the note for the approximately $650,000 home. Janet had purportedly confided to her parents that she no longer trusted Perry, and alleged that he had “badly mismanaged their money.” In part, because her father was an attorney, the Levines thought it prudent that Janet keep all of her assets in her own name, and so advised her as such, just in case she decided to file for divorce at some point in the future.

  Chapter 4

  Arthur March didn’t recall for certain the exact date that he arrived in Nashville, following Perry’s telephone call to him after Janet disappeared, but he believed he arrived on either August 21 or August 22. Since Perry had called him on the evening of August 18, a Sunday, the time frame of his recollection would fit. Even if he had left the very next day, it is an approximate four-day drive from the Lake Chapala area of Mexico to Nashville. At any rate, Perry and his father were seen driving around Nashville in Arthur’s Ford Escort station wagon during that time frame. Arthur had purportedly come to help Perry take care of the children, until Perry and his in-laws could decide what to do about reporting Janet’s disappearance to the police. Perry still insisted that he had recommended that the police should be informed, all the while claiming that the Levines did not wish to take that route just yet.

  Meanwhile, Perry had been telling everyone that Janet had planned to return home so that she would not miss her son’s sixth birthday party on August 27. What Perry may have overlooked before the RSVPs for the birthday party started coming back was the fact that Janet had planned Sammy’s birthday party for Sunday, August 25, not for Tuesday, August 27, as Perry had been telling everyone. If Janet had planned to come back from her “vacation” in time for Sammy’s birthday party, she should have told Perry that she would be back in ten days, not twelve.

  Nonetheless, Janet had planned Sammy’s birthday party for August 25, and Perry and the Levines were forced to deal with it. It was scheduled to be held at Fannie Mae Dees Park, located on Blakemore Avenue, and referred to by Vanderbilt area residents as the so-called “Dragon Park,” because of a sea serpent built there twenty years ago by Pedro Silva. The Sea Serpent is a structure that the children can climb on, and it depicts hundreds of various designs, such as birds, faces, aliens, flowers, and so forth, each made out of chipped tiles that were painted by area artists. Dolly Parton’s image can be found on one of the dragon’s tiles, as can local civic leader Fannie Mae Dees, the park’s namesake. Janet apparently chose that park because it was clean and suitable for children, and because it was not far from their Forest Hills home.

  Due to the fact that many of Sammy’s friends, as well as their parents, had been invited, and the fact that so many had responded that they would attend, Perry and Janet’s parents knew that it would be difficult to call it off on such short notice. Instead, they agreed to tell everyone that Janet had remained in California visiting her brother, Mark, due to an ear infection that could cause her problems on the flight home. It was better, they said, if Janet waited until the infection had completely cleared up before attempting the flight back to Nashville. The invented story to explain away Janet’s absence apparently was believed by everyone in attendance that day, and the party went off without a hitch.

  Finally, on Thursday, August 29, exactly two weeks to the day from when Janet disappeared, Perry and Janet’s parents went to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and reported that Janet Levine March was missing. Perry told the police officer who took the report basically the same account of the events of August 15 that he had been telling everyone else. He also provided details of Janet’s gray four-door 1996 Volvo 850, with Tennessee license plates numbered 844-CBD, which, he said, Janet had driven away on the night she left their home for her supposed twelve-day vacation.

  David Miller, Metro’s veteran homicide/missing person detective, caught the assignment. Miller investigated 1,244 missing-person cases in all of Davidson County in 1996, and he solved all of them, except for that of Janet March. He didn’t know it at the time, of course, but he would be only one of several investigators who would work the Janet March case. Detective Tim Mason, of homicide, and forensic specialist Sergeant Johnny Hunter would assist him at the outset.

  Among the first things that Miller did as he began his investigation of Janet March’s disappearance was to obtain her bank and credit card information. He needed it to determine whether Janet had withdrawn cash, written checks, or had made any charge card purchases during the two weeks that she had been missing. He learned wit
hin a short time that there had been no activity on any of Janet’s accounts—certainly not a good sign from a homicide investigator’s perspective.

  As Miller and his coinvestigators began talking to Janet and Perry’s friends, of whom there were several, a picture of two highly intelligent—but very different—people began to emerge. Perry was described as a practical man who brimmed with self-confidence and possessed strong common sense. He was also arrogant and, at times, seemed boastful of his intelligence. Janet, on the other hand, was regarded as somewhat flighty, often late for appointments because she had either forgotten about them or had overslept—her attitude seemed to be “oh, well,” but her friends seemed to accept her quirks. They both enjoyed their work—Janet, with her paintings and sketches, and the jobs she took on as illustrator for children’s books; and Perry, with his legal work and his active involvement as a board member of the Jewish Community Center, for which he sometimes did legal favors pro bono. Janet could be enjoying the pool at the Jewish Community Center with her kids one moment, then dashing off to Chicago for a spur-of-the-moment shopping trip the next.

  Janet had also been exhibiting traits that indicated to her friends that she might have been depressed in the weeks prior to her disappearance. Even though she had most everything that a person could want—a beautiful home that she designed, two beautiful children—Sammy had many of Perry’s features and Tzipi had Janet’s—her friends suggested that she may have felt that something was missing in her life. But no one really knew for sure what was bothering Janet. Even though she had a close circle of friends, she did not confide in them with many details about her personal life. Their friends suggested to the police that Perry had been spending more and more time away from home in recent months, and it seemed, at times, that he had become bored with Janet. Employees at the Jewish Community Center told Nashville Scene reporter Willy Stern that Perry had been showing up so often to take part in aerobic workouts and weight lifting that they thought he was single.