Love, Lies, and Murder (17 page)

When eight armed Mexican officials surrounded the Luna Bistro & Café shortly after 7:30
A.M.
on Wednesday, August 3, 2005, Perry March had a look of shocked surprise as they announced that he was being detained on a deportation order issued by the Mexican government. They forcefully and quickly escorted Perry out of the restaurant and into a waiting vehicle, one of a caravan of four cars, each with tinted windows, as Carmen watched, horrified and in stunned disbelief. With no further explanation, the vehicle carrying her husband and the armed men sped away and headed out of town, toward the airport in Guadalajara. The entire procedure of taking Perry out of the restaurant and placing him inside one of the waiting cars had taken less than three minutes.

Although Perry had no way of knowing it, the events of that morning had been in the planning stages for several months. First there had been the secret indictment, sealed, with everyone involved sworn to silence. The fact that very few people had any knowledge of the indictment made it easier for the just-as-secret negotiations to be conducted between top-level U.S. officials and their Mexican counterparts. The secret operation had been carried out swiftly and meticulously, right down to the thirty-mile drive from Ajijic to the airport in Guadalajara.

Upon their arrival at the airport, Perry March was handed off to a team of stone-faced, black-suited FBI agents, who escorted him through the terminal and boarded him on a flight to Los Angeles, accompanying him on the one-hour twenty-minute flight. Upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Perry was taken to the Van Nuys Community Police Station, near Los Angeles, where he remained in federal custody while awaiting extradition from California to Tennessee. He was placed in a cell all to himself, and he would be allowed one visitor a day, with whom he could spend only fifteen minutes. He would also be allowed one telephone call per day.

Perry looked harried in his new surroundings as he awaited an unknown fate. Back in Ajijic, Carmen went to the local authorities and filed a kidnapping complaint over her husband’s “abduction.”

“Eight men grabbed him and covered his mouth,” Carmen later told a television reporter. “Put him in a truck and took him away. So, when you know it’s a policeman, you’re like, ‘Okay. I know where to go.’ But, when you have no clue who it was, then it’s bad, you know. I’m thinking the worst. We called the airport and I’m going to get a court order to see if they can give me that he was kidnapped. [I] filed and reported a kidnap.”

She told the local prosecutor that the eight armed people who had taken Perry had not identified themselves as agents of the government, and they had not provided any written documentation to show why they had taken Perry. As far as she was concerned, they could have been anyone—even armed thugs with no connection to the government.

However, according to Jose Luis Gutierrez, the head of the Guadalajara Immigration Office, Perry had been deported for three primary violations of immigration statutes. The violations, said Gutierrez, involved Perry misrepresenting his address or place of residence on his paperwork. He had claimed that he lived at an address in Colima State, when, in fact, he resided in Ajijic. He had also stated on his immigration papers that he worked as a real estate agent, when, in fact, he acted as a legal representative for a real estate company. The third reason that Perry had been deported was that the immigration department had received numerous complaints from citizens who had accused him of unlawful and fraudulent activities and that he had allegedly made threats to people to strong arm his way into getting what he wanted.

“He lied to immigration,” Gutierrez said.

As far as Sammy, fourteen, and Tzipi, eleven, were concerned, said Gutierrez, their authorization to remain in Mexico under their father’s visa was no longer legitimate and they would have to be turned over to U.S. officials—as soon as they could be located. Their whereabouts were not immediately known, and Carmen wasn’t talking except to say that they were safe.

Few people—with the exception of Carmen, the children, and Perry’s father—were sad to see him deported. Esther Solano, for one, who had worked so diligently to bring about Perry’s demise in Mexico, was pleased that he was gone. So were many others, people who had worked behind the scenes for years distributing Perry’s “Un-Wanted” poster and a compact disc that detailed at least a dozen scams that Perry had allegedly committed and had caused his victims to lose amounts that mounted into the millions. No one knew where the money had gone, but many people suspected that it had been transferred into offshore accounts.

“Better late than never,” said Solano. “Up to now, he has gotten everything he wanted, repeatedly thumbing his nose at the law.”

Gayle Cancienne, employed at a veterinary clinic in Ajijic, was among those happy to see Perry deported and arrested.

“He robbed me actually, and took my property that was in the United States,” Cancienne said. “I had homes that I owned in the United States that he talked me into putting into a corporation for tax purposes. He showed me papers [that] said I was president and sole owner of the corporation, when, in fact, it was his corporation. . . . I was delighted, yes. And I was surprised because it’s been a long time. They were trying to indict him and extradite him, and I’m very glad.”

Not everyone, however, held ill will toward Perry. Don Leach, who had business dealings with him, characterized Perry as a good father who had done a good job of raising his children.

“I knew them well,” Leach said. “If they walked by now, they would go, ‘Hi, Don, how are you?’ They’re great kids, and I’ve watched Perry parent. He’s excellent. I felt bad for Perry because my experience with him has been very, very, very positive.”

Perry’s former partner, Samuel Chavez, after wishing Perry good luck when they had parted ways years earlier, now sang a different tune. Chavez said that he was “glad to hear that Mr. March was finally deported and that my efforts were not futile,” and that his deportation should have occurred much sooner.

It would probably be an understatement to say that Carolyn and Larry Levine were pleased when they learned of Perry’s arrest.

“We’ve waited a long time for this,” Carolyn said. “We’re not sad, let’s put it that way. I’m sad for our grandchildren.”

They were also concerned about Sammy and Tzipi’s whereabouts and well-being. The Levines had produced a document indicating that the children were to have been turned over to the U.S. Consulate, which never occurred because the children could not be located. Although Carmen continued to say that the children were safe, the FBI confirmed that Mexican law enforcement and immigration officials were looking for them.

A short time later, the Levines filed a motion in federal court claiming that “Perry March or his agents are secreting the children to hide them from Mexican authorities in violation of Mexican law. . . . As the children’s closest non-incarcerated relatives in the United States, the Levines would like to care for their grandchildren.”

The mystery surrounding the children’s whereabouts, however, was short-lived. Carmen March came forward with information that the children had been taken to Chicago, where a judge had granted temporary custody of them to Perry’s brother, Ron. She said that they had been with Ron for a few days, but indicated that she eventually wanted them returned to Mexico.

Arthur March, as part of an interview he provided to Nashville television station WTVF-Channel 5, claimed that Perry and his family had been very happy living in Mexico until the FBI showed up.

“The next thing I know, they kidnap my son,” Arthur said. “To say the least, I’m pissed.”

Arthur March charged that the U.S. and Mexican governments conspired to carry out his son’s removal from Mexico, and that they had agreed to do so because of the influence of the Levines.

“They kidnapped my kid,” Arthur said. “First they kidnapped my grandchildren, and the federal court admitted to it, and we got the kids back. The next thing I know, they kidnapped my son.”

 

 

Many people, when news of Perry’s arrest and deportation began circulating in the news in the United States, began wondering what had changed in his case to warrant the sudden action by Mexican, U.S., and Tennessee authorities following so many years of apparent inaction. Although the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office wasn’t saying anything, there were sources who told Nashville media outlets that, even though the evidence was primarily circumstantial, there was an item of physical evidence found in the backseat of Perry’s Jeep that, prosecutors might argue at trial, linked him to Janet’s death. It was a strand of Janet’s hair entwined with a carpet filament or fiber. If such evidence was to be admitted at trial, it could bolster the police theory that Perry had rolled up Janet’s body inside a carpet for disposal.

“I wouldn’t want to speculate about the significance of a person’s own hair being found in one’s own car,” said attorney John Herbison, who would be on Perry’s defense team. “If the government has brought those charges, it’s now up to the government to prove the charges. Perry, all along, has emphatically denied having anything to do with Janet March’s disappearance.”

Herbison, meanwhile, had already begun receiving calls from national news media outlets, including
Inside Edition,
FOX News,
Larry King Live, Good Morning America,
and
48 Hours
. Dealing with all of the calls, Herbison told the
Nashville Scene,
had been “pretty much a full-time job.”

On Thursday, August 4, 2005, the day after Perry was booked into the Van Nuys Jail, John Herbison spoke with him by telephone. Following the conversation, Herbison said that Perry had decided to waive extradition to Tennessee and would formally do so in a Los Angeles courtroom the following day.

“He’s eager to return to Nashville, get this process under way, and get it in a forum where somebody has to finally bring forth evidence,” Herbison said in his good ol’ boy Nashville twang. “Because it hasn’t happened yet. His accusers are going to have to bring forth something. Previously there’s been a great reluctance to do that, but every court that’s looked at evidence has ruled in Perry’s favor.”

During his court appearance on Friday, August 5, Perry, exhausted and unshaven, was represented by attorney Brett Fossett, a classmate of Perry’s when the two of them had attended Vanderbilt University Law School years earlier. Fossett echoed Herbison’s acknowledgment that Perry was ready to return to Nashville to have his day in court, so to speak.

“Anyone can see that this is a father who has been ripped away from his family without notice,” Fossett said. “He was not a fugitive from justice; he was not given the opportunity to voluntarily appear in Nashville to face these charges. He was seized, and, I think, just as a human being, you can say he is concerned. Anyone would be in the same situation. Perry wants to get to trial as soon as possible so he can get home and see his family as soon as possible.”

Jim Todd, an attorney who had worked in the district attorney’s office for twelve years before opening his own practice, told a reporter that the second-degree murder case against Perry could be difficult to prove without the victim’s body having ever been found.

“You have to prove in a homicide that someone was killed,” Todd said. “Usually, you have the body, and a medical examiner comes in and testifies that the cause of death was homicide by asphyxiation or whatever. In this case you’re going to have to prove the homicide first, before you can prove who committed it.”

Despite the difficulty facing the district attorney’s office in proving Perry’s guilt without a body, Todd believed that the attorney chosen to prosecute the case, Davidson County deputy district attorney (DA) Tom Thurman, wouldn’t have gone to the grand jury if he had not believed that he could win the case.

“Thurman crosses his
t
’s and dots his
i
’s. . . . ,” Todd said. “It’s going to be a good case.”

 

 

Since it was their case, Postiglione and Pridemore would make the trip to Los Angeles to take custody of Perry March from the U.S. government. The two seasoned cops began making preparations for their four-and-a-half-hour flight to Los Angeles, looking forward—after all the time that had passed since Perry had left for Mexico—to having their prime suspect in Janet March’s disappearance firmly within their grasp once again.

On Friday, August 12, 2005, Sergeant Pat Postiglione and Detective Bill Pridemore, of the MNPD, picked up Perry March at the Los Angeles area jail, where he had been held for the past nine days, and escorted him in a rental car to Los Angeles International Airport for their flight back to Nashville. While en route to LAX, Perry told the detectives that he had spoken to an attorney, whom he identified as a friend from college. Noting that Perry seemed to be in a talkative mood, Postiglione told him that because he recognized him as a formerly licensed attorney that he would understand that he did not have to speak with them if he chose not to do so. The detectives claimed that they did not pressure Perry to speak to either of them, but indicated that they would obviously listen to any comments or questions that Perry may want to talk about.

While returning the car to the rental location, Perry expressed his appreciation for Postiglione’s earlier remarks and indicated that he was ready to close this chapter of his life. According to what Postiglione later recounted, Perry said that he felt his attorneys would be contacting the police again soon. Not sure how to interpret what Perry had meant, Postiglione suspected that Perry’s comments about his “attorneys contacting the police again soon” may have been a way to subtly steer the topic toward that of possibly making a deal. Postiglione, sensing that had been Perry’s intention, responded by saying that “sometimes things happen that some people may perceive one way, when, in fact, it is something totally different.”

Postiglione followed up his comments by using as an example “a moment of anger instantly regretted.” He laid out a scenario of someone killing another person by accident as opposed to someone cold-bloodedly walking up behind another person and shooting them in the back of the head, and pointed out that there is a stark difference between the two.

While riding the shuttle bus from the car rental location to the Northwest Airlines terminal at LAX, the three men said little and engaged in only small talk. Upon boarding the aircraft, Perry took the window seat in coach class, Postiglione sat next to him in the middle seat, and Pridemore took the much-coveted aisle seat. Both Postiglione and Pridemore had decided before the flight that they would posture themselves by taking the position that they would not speak to Perry unless he spoke to them first.

Perry sat quietly for the first forty-five minutes of the flight, at which time he initiated a conversation with the detectives by asking about a newspaper photo of a woman at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. He said that the woman in the picture resembled Janet, and that he had sent a copy of the photograph to the prosecutor’s office in Nashville. The photo had been taken from a film of the spectators watching the games, and he had claimed at the time he sent the photo to the prosecutor’s office that Janet was in the crowd. The Levines, however, had examined the photo and had said that the woman in question was not their daughter—the woman in the picture looked considerably younger than Janet would have been in 2004. Postiglione told him that the lead had been investigated to the extent that they knew it was not Janet in the photo. Perry then suggested that Janet might be alive in Quebec, and began asking questions about the case and describing the evidence as circumstantial. He referred to the case as “the Janet incident.”

“He wanted to know what we had, how strong the case was against him, whether we had direct or physical evidence,” Postiglione said later, recalling the flight to Nashville.

Postiglione told Perry that they would not discuss the evidence with him, but Perry remained persistent and continued asking for more information. Among the things that he wanted to know were whether the police could establish whether Janet was dead, whether the civil suit had been the basis of him being charged with her death, and whether he was the only person indicted. While the conversation was occurring between Perry and Postiglione, Pridemore sat quietly reading a book about the Apostle Paul. When Perry asked him about the book, Pridemore told him that he was reading it for his Sunday-school class.

“Perry leans over and says, ‘You know Paul was a Jew,’” Pridemore said, recalling the incident to a reporter for the
Nashville Scene
. “I told him I knew that. He said, ‘You know, I’m a Jew.’ Pat and I just looked at each other, and I told him I knew that, too. He said, ‘When all this is over, I’d be happy to come to your Sunday-school class and talk about Paul.’ When all this is over? The guy lives in his own little world.”

During his conversations with the detectives, Perry adamantly denied any involvement in Janet’s disappearance, but soon began to talk about a deal in which he would plead guilty and do five to seven years in prison. Postiglione told Perry that he could not speak for the district attorney’s office, and explained to him that he had no authority to make a plea offer. Perry, seemingly absorbed with the prospect of making a deal, told Postiglione that he was excited to meet with Deputy DA Tom Thurman to begin discussing the possibility of making a deal, but insisted that Thurman would have to “be reasonable and honest” and “lay the cards on the table” regarding the strength of the case against him. He also said that he would plead guilty—even though he was not guilty—in order to avoid a thirty-year prison sentence. Perry added that if he did more than seven years in prison, he would lose his wife, Carmen, and he would not get to see the four-year-old he had with her grow up.

At one point during the flight, Perry asked Postiglione about the various prison types being operated in the state of Tennessee and whether or not he would be able to go to a minimum-security institution. He also asked questions about the different levels of murder, and presented a hypothetical scenario in which he questioned the possible outcome if a killing was an accident and whether it would still be considered second-degree murder if he admitted to an accident. Postiglione referred him back to his earlier statement in which he had said that such a determination could only be made by the district attorney.

At another point Perry told Postiglione that he could get an acquittal if his case went to trial because it only took one juror to hold out. Postiglione reminded the lawyer that a one-juror holdout would result in a hung jury, not an acquittal.

Perry also shared with Postiglione that his nearly week-and-a-half incarceration in the Los Angeles Jail had shown him a taste of prison life and that he now believed that he could serve five to seven years in prison. He said that he was going to “take the high road, do the right thing . . . be a man . . . and do his time” if he could reach an agreement with the district attorney’s office. He also told the detective that he did not believe that he could get a fair trial in Nashville, and asked about prison visitation rules, such as whether children could visit him, whether he could have conjugal visits, and so on. He said that he did not expect to be placed inside a “Martha Stewart” type of prison, but would like to possibly get into a minimum- to medium-security facility.

Perry eventually turned the conversation toward sentencing, and he told Postiglione that prior to the “Janet incident,” he was not involved in any other criminal activities. He told the detective that he “intensely” loved Janet, but did not respond when Postiglione told him that people sometimes hurt those they love during a moment of anger. A short time later, Perry asked the detective if they had a witness who saw him kill Janet, and why it took nine years to indict him. He also asked if there was any new evidence. Postiglione did not respond to those questions.

Following a short period of silence, Perry told Postiglione that Janet was not the angel that the media had portrayed her to be, and that he was not the monster. He turned the conversation at one point toward local Nashville television news reporter Larry Brinton, who has been reporting the news in Nashville for nearly a half-century, by saying that Brinton was on his “shit list” for traveling to Chicago and asking Perry’s neighbors if they knew that the children’s father had been charged with murdering their mother.

Brinton, it is interesting to note, had traveled to Mexico in 1999 to interview Perry and his family at their new home on behalf of the television station where he worked, WTVF-Channel 5. In the interview Sammy recounted details that he claimed he remembered on the night of August 15, 1996.

“I waved to her and she waved to me when she left,” Sammy had said during the interview. “She told me that she’d be back soon. She came in and gave me my goodnight kiss. She took her bags, went downstairs, got in the car, and left.” Sammy had also said during the interview that he remembered his mother had been wearing “her favorite white shirt and some brown velvet pants.”

Sammy’s statement to Brinton was markedly different from what he had told a psychologist three years earlier, shortly after his mother had disappeared. He had said that he was asleep when his mother left and that he could not recall anything about her going away.

Postiglione, as he reflected on Perry’s comments about Brinton, recalled that Detective Miller had spoken with Sammy’s kindergarten teacher at the private school, University School of Nashville, who had indicated that Sammy had been upset on the first day of school, August 26, 1996, eleven days after his mother disappeared, because he didn’t know the whereabouts of his mother and had not said good-bye to her. He also recalled reading in the files about a domestic relations attorney in Chicago who had said that the last thing Sammy claimed to have been able to remember about his mother was a noisy argument between her and his father the night she disappeared. A child psychologist who’d had sessions with Sammy nearly thirty times would later say that Sammy had wanted to please his father and that the boy had “favored” him. It was conceivable that Sammy might be untruthful in order to cover up for his father; it was also possible that someone might have coached the boy about what to say at different times over the last several years.

Carolyn Levine would later tell the police that Sammy could not have seen his mother drive away from the house from his bedroom window because of its location in the house.

 

 

As the flight to Nashville continued, Perry became even more fixated on trying to work out a deal with the district attorney’s office. He told Postiglione that not everyone who was representing him was looking out for his best interest and that he would be the best attorney in the room in that regard. He also mentioned that the cost of going to trial would be a good incentive for reaching some kind of plea agreement.

Postiglione explained to Perry that he would likely have to answer very specific questions that would be posed to him by the district attorney’s office. Perry said that if he could work out a deal with Tom Thurman, he would answer all the questions completely and honestly and be “one hundred percent truthful.” Postiglione later wrote in his report: “Judging by his words, demeanor, and body language, this appeared to be a departure from his earlier denial and more of a sign of resignation, which seemed to imply guilt.”

Perry asked Postiglione if he was authorized to carry on a conversation like the one they were having. Postiglione explained to Perry that he was a police officer whose job entailed working on homicide cases—as such, he would listen to whatever Perry had to say. He also reminded Perry that he didn’t have to speak with them at all, if he chose not to. He reiterated the fact that neither he nor his partner was authorized to speak on behalf of the district attorney’s office and Deputy DA Thurman. Perry then wanted to know whether the district attorney’s office valued Postiglione’s opinion, to which he responded that they valued both his and Detective Pridemore’s opinion. Perry stated that he wanted to be treated with respect by everyone involved—anything less, he said, would result in him wanting to go to trial, at which his attorneys would “bloody the Levines and Tom Thurman.” Postiglione noted in his report that Perry had mentioned several times during the flight that he desired to now close this chapter of his life if a deal could be worked out so that he would have time left to spend with his family. Perry went so far, according to Postiglione, as to ask the detective to speak with Tom Thurman over the weekend about a possible plea agreement. He did not want to wait until Monday.

“This could have been taken care of nine years ago,” Postiglione said.

Perry responded that he wished that he had taken care of it nine years ago.

“You know specifics about the case that I don’t know,” Perry said to Postiglione, “and I know specifics about this case that you don’t know.”

“I would be happy to discuss the specifics with you,” Postiglione said.

“I bet you would,” Perry responded.

At another point Perry began voicing his concern about the tremendous influence he believed the Levines had over the district attorney’s office. He added that his ability to impeach some of the state’s witnesses would help him decide whether he would agree to a deal or not, and he again mentioned the five-to-seven-year-sentence range that he earlier said he might be willing to serve in a plea bargain. Perry told the detective that a guilty plea would be easier on everyone involved and commented about the expense of having a trial, and said that a guilty plea would bring closure to Janet’s family. After a moment of silent contemplation, Perry asked Postiglione if he knew whether a convicted felon could ever practice law again.