by Gary C. King
Like many parts of Mexico, Ajijic and the Lake Chapala area is home to an artist colony, which is culturally diverse in that it is comprised of Mexicans as well as non-Mexicans, and the fact that it is made up of artists who make souvenirs for tourists as well as artists who are painters and sculptors. There are several galleries located throughout the community, where the artists can exhibit their work. D. H. Lawrence lived there for a short time, and ended up writing about one of the local churches in his novel The Plumed Serpent. An oasis for tourists, Ajijic has something for every budget. There are plenty of hotels, restaurants, open-air cafés, ice-cream parlors, outdoor markets, cantinas, and sports activities for those who are sports-minded. One of the greatest pastimes is sitting at a lakeside bar, sipping a margarita while watching the ever-changing light as it glistens across the lake. To top it all off, the nicest homes in the area were those located inside gated communities. Perry March lived in a large spacious home in such a community. He and his father, according to those who knew them, preferred the cantinas, the nightlife, and cavorting with women when the urge struck.
Arthur was well-known around town. He had, after all, lived there long enough for the residents, barkeeps, and market owners to easily recognize the gruff-talking, sometimes crude man with the craggy face who was known to chase his tequila with beer. Rough-talking Arthur had managed to learn the language sufficiently to where it was not a barrier, and Perry, as he had done with Chinese, had soon claimed complete proficiency in the Spanish language.
Shortly after arriving in Ajijic, Perry met Carmen Rojas Solorio, a twenty-seven-year-old Mexican citizen with three children of her own from a previous marriage. Before much time elapsed, much less a courtship, Perry and his children had moved in with Carmen and they began a new life together. Perry enrolled the children in a nearby private bilingual school, and on the surface they seemed like one big happy family without a problem in the world.
Within a couple of weeks of his arrival in Mexico, Perry formed an alliance with a man named S. Samuel Chavez, a Mexican American who had received his education in the United States. Chavez claimed in promotional materials that he was a graduate of Purdue and the Indiana University School of Law. He also advertised that his specialty was dealing with immigration issues in a business relationship he had formed with a law firm in Guadalajara.
Perry March, soon after forming his association with Chavez, began claiming that their company was well connected to Mexican authorities, loosely translated as meaning that he had the ability to bribe government officials if needed. But in Mexico, who didn’t? All it really took was the right amount of money for any given situation and—presto, like magic—the legal barriers or governmental red tape magically disappeared. As long as one greased the hands of the officials with money when they wanted it and didn’t become high-maintenance for the government, a person like Perry March could do well for himself in Mexico.
Closer scrutiny later on revealed information that Chavez’s license to practice law in the state of Indiana had been revoked because of felony convictions for providing false information on a credit application and on a bankruptcy filing. Further scrutiny showed that he had purportedly maintained an address in Nashville in the mid-1990s, giving some people reason to believe, but without concrete evidence to prove, that Perry and Chavez had known each other prior to Perry going to Mexico. Nonetheless Perry, shortly after his arrival in Ajijic, had been quick to form a partnership of sorts with Chavez, who at the time was operating a business as a bilingual legal consultant. Given Mexico’s nearly unfathomable legal structure, which is considered an abomination by most outsiders, Perry had very quickly realized the need for bilingual legal experts to help the many expatriates deal with visa and real estate issues which required them to become involved in Mexico’s tangled and often unethical legal system. Such an opportunity seemed a natural fit for Perry, and Chavez already had the office space, where he had been running his own ventures at Plaza Bugambilias, part of a new business and shopping complex located in the town. Admittedly, it wasn’t much—but it was a start for what Perry had in mind.
A short time after partnering with Chavez, Perry took out a full-page ad in the Guadalajara Reporter, a weekly English-language newspaper for that area, and announced his business venture with Chavez, according to an article that appeared in the Nashville Scene.
“Chavez & March,” the ad read, “a private development and investment firm, wishes to announce a proposed significant investment in a state of the art clinc [sic] and emergency treatment facility.” The two men reasoned that any kind of proposed modern local health-care facility would likely attract interest and, hopefully, investors who could see the advantage of how such a facility would enable many of the area’s seniors to no longer have to make the hour-long drive into Guadalajara to obtain top-quality health care. According to the ad, the project would be called “PriMedical TM Medical Clinic Project,” and it invited the public to “Meet the administrators & developers: S. Samuel Chavez, Esq. & Perry A. March, Esq., doctorates of law,” on May 22, 1999.
The ad spelled out a project that would be financed by medical investors, mostly doctors; it was an international business venture that was set up as a Belize corporation. Chavez and March were seeking investors who could fork over a minimum of $1,250,000. What seemed amazing, in retrospect, to anyone looking at the details of this case was not so much the level of ambition their project had as much as the speed in which Perry March had relocated to Mexico with his children, met a young woman and formed a romantic relationship with her, moved in with the woman, met up and formed a business alliance with someone he had either just met or had known in the past, thought up the business plan for the aforementioned ventures while opening up shop, and began holding public meetings—all in a period of less than a month!
Later that same month, on May 28, 1999, the Tennessee Supreme Court suspended Perry March’s license to practice law while it looked into the allegations of fraud and embezzlement that were being made by his former employer. According to the charges being leveled at Perry by his father-in-law’s law firm, it was also alleged that he had not provided records to a client despite the client’s requests for them, and he had lied to prop up what was being described as an otherwise frivolous lawsuit. A year later, Perry March would be officially disbarred. Even before the disbarment occurred, he was unable to provide legal advice and services, at least legally, and he realized that he would have to find something else to do to make money. Being in Mexico, and with the large number of Americans living in Ajijic, Perry didn’t think that he would have much difficulty finding a way to make a living down there.
His status as a lawyer hadn’t seemed to matter much to him at the time. A short time after his license suspension, Perry and his partner placed another ad in the local newspaper under the helm of Chavez and March, Ltd., that read: “U.S. Doctorates of Law; Asset Protection Counseling; Protect Yourself from Judgements [sic], Creditors, Government Impositions, Divorce, Disaster, Swindles and the Unforseen [sic]. Principals are Members of the American Bar Association Asset Protection Planning Subcommittee.”
Chavez and March, Ltd., began to blossom. Although financial records showing just how much money their ventures had made, and who they had made it from, were held close to the vest, so to speak, no one, except for those who were involved in the day-to-day activities of their business dealings, namely Chavez and March, would know the company’s bottom line, and they weren’t talking. They were getting funding from somewhere, however, because by autumn of that year, 1999, the two men had added several new businesses to their “portfolio”: C&M Development, C&M Insurance, Premier Properties (a real estate service), and Guardian Security Services, all of which were in addition to their PriMedical TM Medical Clinic and their Chavez and March, Ltd., Legal and Financial Services ventures. As their businesses grew, so did their need for additional office space. It wasn’t long before their businesses had taken up most of the prime locations in th
e small business plaza, and they were able to purchase larger and classier advertisements in the local newspaper.
By the time the new year rolled around, Perry and his partner had come up with the idea of building a gated community for senior citizens. Plans for the development called for it to be a “full-service” community so that most of the residents’ needs could be provided for within that community. They were planning to call it Misty Mountain Extended Care Community, and it was to be built within an already troubled subdivision called Chula Vista Norte, whose residents were dealing with a number of legal issues that were related to the subdivision.
Meanwhile, as Chavez and March, Ltd., counted its money and made plans to continue expansion into the new year, displeased and unhappy clients began making themselves heard throughout the community. Complaints ranged from fees that were too high, to poor service, to services that were paid for but never delivered. Some of the more aggressive complainers began looking into Chavez’s and Perry March’s backgrounds, and disseminated details of their seedy pasts by telling their friends, posting the information on the Internet, and by placing posters throughout the community in public places, all anonymously, of course. Perry and his father publicly dismissed the flying accusations as “bullshit,” but business, nonetheless, began to dwindle. Before it was over, accusations toward Perry March and Chavez would include asset rip-offs that were tied to off-shore accounts and dummy corporations, which had been set up to dupe some of their unwitting older clients. It was not pretty even during the early stages of finding out what C&M was really all about, and it would get much uglier as more and more people learned that they had been swindled.
Things went even farther south for Perry when, on January 14, 2000, the judge in the wrongful-death lawsuit, which had been filed by the Levines, ruled that Janet March was dead and that Perry March was responsible for her death. The judge, Perry soon learned, had based his ruling on allegations that centered on Perry and Janet’s troubled marriage, the details of which were touched on during Perry’s November 1996 deposition, and on the fact that Perry had repeatedly refused to return to the United States to respond to questioning related to the lawsuit. If he had hated his in-laws before, he certainly held more hatred and animosity toward them now, after the judge’s ruling.
Two months later, a probate court jury awarded the Levines $113.5 million in damages in their wrongful-death lawsuit and ordered Perry to pay the judgment.
After winning the wrongful-death lawsuit against Perry, Janet’s mother and father were ready to step-up their efforts to gain grandparent visitation rights and, ultimately, they hoped, gain full custody of their daughter’s children. Now that the momentum seemed to be in their favor, the Levines would use every legal means available to them to accomplish their goal of bringing Perry March to justice.
In March 2000, with Janet now formally declared dead by a court of law for the first time (she would be declared “legally” dead again two years later), Perry married Carmen Rojas Solorio and had a child with her.
“We’re now the Brady Bunch,” Perry later told CBS News. “We have three and three, exactly three boys and three girls. I love it here. I have a wonderful life, I have a wonderful house, I have a wonderful community around here, and this is where I want to live. . . . I’ve probably never seen them (the children) happier in their whole life than here.”
“He’s a great husband,” Carmen said. “He’s sweet. He’s perfect. He’s perfect for me.”
But what had he told the children regarding the whereabouts of their mother?
“I’ve told the children the truth,” Perry said, “that Mommy left home, we don’t know what happened to her. It’s very sad, but that’s the truth.”
Chapter 15
Perry March first realized, at least with a degree of certainty, that Larry and Carolyn Levine were serious about using the grandparent visitation order issued to them by an Illinois court when they suddenly showed up unannounced at the door of his palatial home in Ajijic one sunny day in May 2000. There had been changes to the Tennessee State Legal Code that gave grandparents who were residents of that state the right to pursue custody of grandchildren whose custodial parent(s) had been adjudged responsible in a wrongful-death lawsuit. There were people on both sides of the fence who believed that the Levines may have had some influence into the language of the new legislation. However, a big question on everyone’s mind was how a Tennessee law could be applied in Illinois toward a person now residing in Mexico. Perry refused to allow his in-laws to see Sammy and Tzipi and, in the words of Perry’s father, he “sent them on their way.”
Perry later said that he had only heard of the visitation order when he was informed by a clerk in Cook County, Illinois, who confirmed that a copy of the court order was being sent to the U.S. State Department. He said that after he had verified the docket number, he went to federal court in Guadalajara, where he obtained an amparo, a legal device that is used for constitutional protection. In Perry’s case the amparo was used to prevent the judge who had initially been approached by the Levines from implementing the visitation order.
The Levines, however, weren’t about to give up that easily. Although Perry had turned them away, they would be back. And Perry would soon learn that when the Levines refiled the same Illinois-issued visitation order with a different judge and a new docket number was issued, the amparo that Perry had obtained was no longer valid.
A month later, on Wednesday, June 21, 2000, Perry March was going about his day-to-day business at his office in Ajijic when six Mexican immigration officials showed up at 9:00 A.M. and told him that there were problems with his immigration status. Although the men were unarmed, Perry recalled, only one of them had a badge and was wearing a uniform. In no uncertain terms, they informed him that he would have to accompany them to Guadalajara to straighten out his paperwork.
“They grabbed me under the arms and put me in a headlock,” Perry later recalled. “They lifted me by my ears, lifted me off my feet, and shoved me through my conference room doors.”
After getting him outside, he said, they threw him into the back of an unmarked white van and sped away. The scene resembled something out of a thriller, with Perry bouncing around the back of a speeding van with several not-too-friendly-looking Mexicans at his side.
As Perry, dumbfounded and bewildered, was being whisked off toward Guadalajara, Larry and Carolyn Levine, unbeknownst to Perry, were in Ajijic. They were accompanied by a local attorney, a Mexican judge, and several Mexican police officers, and they were heading for the school that Sammy and Tzipi attended. Perry would later learn that the Levines had somehow gained the assistance of the Mexican authorities to execute their legally questionable court-ordered grandparent visitation demand.
The judge, lawyer, cops, and the Levines were at the school for nearly an hour, arguing with school administrators about turning Sammy and Tzipi over to them for their court-sanctioned “visit.” Finally, the Mexican officials were able to convince the school administrators to hand the children over to the Levines.
Meanwhile, Arthur March had heard what was going down with regard to the children and with Perry—Ajijic was, after all, a very small town and word often traveled very fast. Arthur acted quickly, jumped into his SUV, and arrived at the school only moments behind the Levines. In hot pursuit he chased them as they raced toward an airport, and at one point everyone stopped and had a face-to-face confrontation. Arthur allegedly pulled a gun on them, and told them that they would not get out of Mexico alive.
“I wasn’t thinking rationally,” Arthur later told a reporter. “But those are my grandkids!”
Following the heated exchange, the pursuit continued as the Levines continued toward the airport. They finally managed to elude Arthur, were able to get on a plane, and flew with the children to Nashville.
Perry, in the meantime, realized that the immigration officials were taking him toward the airport, but he wasn’t sure why. Was he being deported? Thinki
ng quickly, he finally mentioned the name of an immigration official that he suspected was behind his abduction. Upon hearing the official’s name, the driver of the van pulled to the side of the road, stopped, got out, and began talking on his cellular telephone.
“Three minutes of conversation,” Perry recalled, “he gets back into the van, turns around to me, and says, ‘It’s a terrible mistake. I’m sorry. Your paperwork is in order.’ ”
As soon as Perry was released by the immigration off i-cials, he sped off toward the school. By the time he arrived there, his in-laws, along with his children, were already gone and flying toward Nashville.
“They are kidnappers,” Perry said of the Levines. “It was all a big orchestration.”
According to Perry, along with a CBS News report that ran later, the Levines purportedly had been forewarned by the FBI that Mexican immigration officials had planned to bring Perry March in for questioning and possible deportation that same morning.
The FBI, it was learned, apparently had Perry under surveillance in Mexico since his arrival. He was under a sealed indictment at the time for fraud at his father-in-law’s law firm, and he was a murder suspect. The FBI can apparently watch anybody, since they have agents attached to embassies and consulates in countries all over the world, and they were monitoring Perry in case he had plans to leave Mexico and go to another country. The FBI agents that were watching Perry March were based at the American Consulate in Guadalajara, and the information that they were obviously reporting was somehow getting to someone in the Levines’ camp. Ironically, Perry and his father knew about the sealed indictment from their own Mexican attorneys.