Love, Lies, and Murder

by Gary C. King

  “Okay. And you said at that point you didn’t . . . recall any kind of putrid smell or bad smell?”

  “No.”

  As the deposition continued, Massey eventually turned his line of questioning toward whether or not Arthur felt that his family had been persecuted.

  “Mr. March, did you ever feel that your family . . . unit were being persecuted?”

  “By the Levines? Yes.”

  “What about by the police? Did you feel that the police were acting on behalf of the Levines?”

  “They were just doing what the Levines wanted them to do, ’cause, as you know, Carolyn Levine is the queen of the Jewish Mafia in Tennessee and Nashville. And, she could . . . do whatever she wanted.”

  “What is the Jewish Mafia?”

  “If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it to you.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand it.”

  “You know what a ‘Mafia’ is, the word means?” Arthur asked. “And you know what ‘Jewish’ means. And you don’t understand those two words together?”

  At one point Massey took Arthur through a lengthy question-and-answer session regarding Nathaniel Farris, aka Bobby Givings, and the plans to kill the Levines that Perry and Farris had masterminded. Arthur testified that the plan to harm the Levines had been his—not Perry’s.

  “Perry never mentioned harming the Levines,” Arthur said.

  “Why did . . . you say this is ‘my idea’?” Massey asked.

  “Because it was.”

  “What was your idea?”

  “That the easy way to get this was to take out the queen and no balls at all—her husband. . . . You said you didn’t know what Jewish Mafia was, well, Carolyn was the queen. . . . And, uh—the reason she had so much power was she was the lady that distributed the money to—you have a hole in your judicial system, I’m sorry to say. The hole in your judicial system is that the judges at the lower level have to run for election. To get money to run for an election, they need money. They can’t run for the office without getting money. And the Jewish Mafia was a big contributor, and the one who doled out the money was Carolyn. And that’s where she got her power, and that’s what Larry was building his on.”

  “I see.”

  “Now, do you understand what the Jewish Mafia is?”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Massey replied.

  “Okay.”

  “Uh—Colonel, you said this was your idea to take them out?”

  “Long before this happened.”

  “Had you ever followed up on that?”

  “They were alive, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah. So, I take it you have not followed up on it?”

  “No.”

  “But you had—let’s just say ill feelings toward them?”

  “Uh—I didn’t like them.”

  “You didn’t like them.”

  “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 when they needed it,” Arthur said. “Otherwise, how did you control two judges who had no business even being in this case?”

  Toward the end of the two-day deposition, Thurman, during redirect examination, asked Arthur the following question:

  “There is no question that you intended for the Levines to be killed and hoped they’d be killed; is that correct?”

  “Sure, several times,” Arthur responded.

  One of the major problems with Arthur’s deposition was that of credibility. Arthur was known by a good number of people as a bullshit artist, a trait that was almost certainly passed along to his son Perry at birth. Even after the “bullshit artist” factor had been removed, Arthur’s deposition still raised a few questions. One of the biggest questions, or problems, centered around his descriptions about the relocation and disposal of Janet’s body, in which he had claimed that her body had been transported in “the Volvo.”

  Whether Perry and Janet had owned either one or two Volvos became important to the Perry March saga in that it could only be ascertained by this writer that they had owned only one, the vehicle in which Janet purportedly left home on the evening of August 15, 1996. If they had owned two such brand name vehicles, there would be no problem with Arthur’s testimony regarding the name of the vehicle used in transporting Janet’s body.

  However, research indicated that they had owned only one Volvo, Janet’s, and their other vehicle had been a Jeep Cherokee that Perry drove. So, here is the problem: It would have been impossible for Janet’s body to have been transported in her own vehicle to the state of Kentucky during the time frame of mid-to-late September, which Arthur had laid out during his deposition. Her car, after all, had been found on September 7 at the Brixworth Apartments, and was impounded by the police and retained as evidence. In fact, if Janet’s body had been transported to Kentucky in her own Volvo, it would have to have occurred prior to when it was found on September 7, in which case Arthur’s testimony with regard to the time frame would be flawed.

  It also seemed odd that Arthur would testify that there was no noticeable odor—despite Janet’s body being in a plastic bag, placed in the outdoors in a shallow grave and exposed to the elements for several weeks after she was killed. The degree of decomposition would have been advanced, and the smell, or odor, of what was left of her putrid flesh and bodily fluids would likely have been gross. Had Arthur deliberately provided untruthful statements in his testimony? And if so, what had he hoped to accomplish?

  At one point Dr. William Bass, who founded the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee where decomposition rates in human corpses are studied by researchers, was consulted by Davidson County authorities. Dr. Bass, who would also eventually provide sworn testimony, agreed that the condition of Janet’s body would be much like that which Arthur had described. Bass stated that Janet’s remains would have mostly decomposed and would likely be skeletonized after three weeks of exposure in temperatures consistent with the month of August. No mention of the putrid odors of a decomposing body wrapped inside a plastic bag, that likely would have been present, was made.

  It was said by some who knew him personally after he was arrested and returned to Nashville, Arthur March no longer possessed all his mental faculties. If this characterization proved accurate, it could serve to further call into question the validity and importance of his deposition and the descriptions that he had provided of Janet’s decomposing corpse. Arthur March was an enigma of sorts, and would remain that way until the day he died.

  Chapter 34

  Arthur March lived long enough to see his son Perry convicted three times in three separate trials over the next five months. He also granted 48 Hours another interview, and was around to learn of a prestigious award that had been bestowed upon the two cops who had dogged him and his son for nearly a decade. Arthur’s days were numbered, and at times it seemed like he knew it. During his last few months alive, Arthur frequently looked like death warmed over.

  Prior to Perry’s first case going to trial, Pat Postiglione and Bill Pridemore were named as the Metropolitan Police Department Investigators of the Year in an award ceremony presided over by Police Chief Ronal Serpas. The award was proudly provided to them for their relentless work over the past several years to bring closure to the Janet March case.

  “The outstanding work on this case by Sergeant Postiglione and Detective Pridemore brought relief to Janet March’s parents and hope to the families of other cold-case murder victims,” Serpas said. “I am extremely proud of their efforts.”

  The first of Perry March’s three criminal trials, each of which would be presided over by Davidson County Criminal Court judge Steve Dozier, was for his theft case for allegedly stealing money from his father-in-law’s law firm, where he had worked. Prosecutor Tom Thurman wanted to try the theft case first, because if he could obtain a conviction in that case, he would be able to use that fact in an attempt to diminish Perry’s credibility
in the other two cases—particularly if Perry chose to testify in those cases.

  The theft trial didn’t take long. A jury was selected and sequestered on Monday, April 17, 2006, and by Wednesday, April 19, 2006, following only one hour of deliberations, it had convicted Perry March of stealing $23,000 from the law firm where he had worked.

  “The theme of the case,” said Ben Winters, one of the prosecutors, following the verdict, “was about betrayal. I mean, there wasn’t a person that Mr. March dealt with that he didn’t betray—from clients, to friends, to partners, to associates, and to in-laws.”

  The prosecution had played portions of Perry’s 1996 videotaped deposition in which he could be seen and heard saying that he could not remember important details or simply refusing to answer the questions being asked.

  “The most damaging thing in my mind was the deposition of Mr. March,” said Ed Fowlkes, one of the attorneys representing Perry. “And it was damaging.”

  Jury selection for Perry’s second trial, the murder-for-hire case, in which he faced charges of conspiracy to commit murder, got under way on Thursday, June 1, 2006. Many local attorneys predicted at the outset that the recorded conversations between Perry and Nathaniel Farris, if played to the jury, could do him in at trial. Perry’s defense attorneys were also looking to obtain records that would help discern the movements of Perry’s former jailhouse neighbor, alleged sex-offender Jeremy Duffer, who was still at large at the time of the trial after cutting off his ankle bracelet and skipping town. It wasn’t likely that Duffer would be found in time to call as a witness, and it was uncertain what details, if any, might unfold if they learned his movements in the jail prior to his escape from house arrest later. Duffer’s departure from the secure area of the jail, where he was held with Perry and Farris, had facilitated the conversations between the two that needed to occur if they were to plan the murders of the Levines.

  Although Perry’s attorneys had filed a notice of their possible intent to put on a defense of entrapment, local attorneys who were taking part in the soap opera, which was being trumpeted through a media circus, began publicly analyzing whether such a defense could be successful or not.

  “Entrapment means that a law enforcement official, either directly or through another, induced or persuaded an otherwise unwilling person to commit a crime,” said one of the local lawyers, a former prosecutor. “The key word(s) in entrapment is ‘unwilling person.’”

  Although Lawrence Levine had taken the stand to testify against Perry March, the chief witness against him was Nathaniel Farris, and the damning recordings of Perry’s own voice plotting with Farris to murder the Levines. It took the jury of nine women and three men barely a week—and only six hours of deliberations over two days—to find Perry guilty on all counts. Their verdict was reached on Thursday, June 8, 2006.

  On Thursday, June 22, 2006, Judge Steve Dozier ruled that a jury would be selected from outside of Nashville to hear the evidence and testimony of Perry March’s second-degree murder trial. Dozier’s decision was a response to a defense motion that had asked for a change of venue for the trial.

  A month later, on July 24, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled to uphold the earlier temporary custody ruling in which the Levines had been granted custody of their grandchildren.

  Three days later, Judge Dozier ruled that jurors at Perry March’s murder trial would be allowed to hear that he had plotted to kill the Levines. Perry’s lawyers had also argued that the statute of limitations had expired on the charges of tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse and had asked that Judge Dozier throw out those charges. According to Tennessee statutes, prosecution must begin within two years after a person has been charged with abuse of a corpse and within four years for a charge of tampering with evidence. Prosecutors, however, had argued that the statute of limitations should be extended because of the fact that Perry had left the country. Judge Dozier agreed and allowed the disputed charges to stand.

  Somewhere in between all of Dozier’s rulings, Deputy DA Tom Thurman had told the judge that Arthur March was too ill to travel to Nashville from the federal facility where he was being housed at that time in Kentucky. Thurman also said that Arthur was too ill to testify against Perry, and asked that he be declared unavailable for the upcoming trial. Dozier granted Thurman’s request, and it was decided that the jury would still be allowed to hear and view Arthur March’s videotaped deposition. Dozier also ruled that the jury at Perry’s murder trial would be allowed to know details of Perry’s offer to Postiglione and Pridemore to plead guilty, and that they would also hear information in which he had told the cops that he was not really guilty and would only take a deal to avoid a long sentence.

  Jury selection began on Monday, August 7, 2006, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Perry March’s—third and final—trial. This one was for allegedly killing his wife, evidence tampering, and abuse of a corpse, as yet another media circus descended upon Nashville by news outlets from around the nation. Following an intense seven-hour process, six women and six men were selected after focusing on the question of whether they could convict someone of murder without a body. The jury consisted of nine white people and three African Americans. Four alternates were also selected. Afterward, they were transported by bus to Nashville, where they were sequestered at a location that was not made public.

  As opening statements were under way on Wednesday, August 9, the drama of the Perry March saga intensified for a short while when members of Perry’s defense team presented Tom Thurman a letter that had been received the prior afternoon from a person who claimed to have been a former lover of Janet March’s who had purportedly carried on a relationship with her after she disappeared. The letter, which the defense claimed had been written by a convicted felon by the name of Barry Armstead, purportedly contained information that claimed Janet had taken sleeping pills and drank alcohol while depressed and had died. The letter writer had also claimed that he had disposed of Janet’s body. The defense team asked for a delay in Perry’s trial due to the appearance of the mysterious letter. Judge Dozier promptly denied the defense request for a continuance.

  “A wacko could send an anonymous letter and delay every pending case in Nashville, if that were the criteria for a continuance,” Dozier said.

  Judge Dozier immediately sent for Armstead, who was incarcerated at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, for questioning. Riverbend is the prison that once held James Earl Ray and serial killer Paul Reid. The prosecution and defense teams later questioned Armstead about the letter. He denied that he had written it, and he refused to testify.

  “We don’t know where she went. We don’t know if she’s dead, and you know what? Neither do they,” defense attorney Bill Massey said in his opening statement as he pointed toward the prosecution team. “Psychics, cadaver dogs, and inmates: that’s what this case is about. How can you accuse murder when you don’t know she’s dead? How can you tamper with a corpse when you don’t have a body? How do you tamper with evidence when there is none?”

  The prosecution’s opening statements outlined Perry and Janet’s troubled marriage, and took the jury through a history that spanned ten years and culminated inside the Metro Jail, where Perry had masterminded a plan to kill Janet’s parents. Tom Thurman said that Janet had planned to have a consultation with a divorce attorney, and had scheduled an appointment for August 16, 1996.

  “That was an appointment that cost her, her life,” Thurman said.

  Prosecutors, as expected, put on a case of purely circumstantial evidence based on the facts of the case as they were known at the time. The jury heard testimony from Janet’s mother, as well as from several of Janet’s friends, in which they claimed that Perry had been both emotionally and psychologically abusive toward Janet. There was also testimony of marital problems, impending divorce, and Perry’s sexually explicit letters to the paralegal.

  As in his first two trials, it did not take long for the jury to decide Perry’s fate. Perry
had taken the witness stand long enough to say: “I choose not to testify.” When all the evidence, circumstantial as it may have been, was laid out in a linear fashion for the jury to see, and when combined with testimony from a long list of witnesses from as far away as Mexico, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts after barely two days of deliberations. As in his previous two trials, Perry showed little or no emotion when the verdict was returned on Thursday, August 17, 2006. Ten years and two days after Janet March disappeared without a trace, justice had finally found its way into Perry’s life.

  Afterward, Perry’s attorneys vowed to appeal the verdict and indicated that they would ask for a new trial. As a matter of routine precaution, Perry was placed on a seventy-two-hour suicide watch in the special management unit of the Metro Jail.

  On Wednesday, September 6, 2006, Judge Steve Dozier sentenced Perry March to fifty-six years in prison. One of Perry’s attorneys, William Massey, said that he had expected a heavy sentence, and stressed that he looked forward to the next phase—appeals—and expressed confidence that the “system would vindicate him.”

  Arthur March’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for May 1, had been postponed until after Perry’s trials had occurred. His plea agreement had called for him to serve eighteen months in prison with a term of three years’ probation. However, much to the surprise of Arthur and his attorney, Fletcher Long, the sentencing judge ignored the plea agreement and sentenced Arthur to five years in prison.

  “I did not foresee this happening, and to say that we’re devastated is probably a gross understatement,” Long said of the sentencing judge’s decision. Long said that had Arthur known that he would have been sentenced to five years instead of eighteen months, he would never have agreed to plead guilty. Long said that Arthur’s sentence was equivalent to a death sentence, because he would never live long enough to gain his release.