As the television magazine show 48 Hours prepares a piece for this fall on the nearly 6-year-old disappearance of Nashvillian Janet March, a new lawsuit offers yet more bizarre details about the missing woman’s husband, suspect Perry March.
In August 1996, Janet March vanished from her comfortable Forest Hills home, prompting a media firestorm, a police investigation and overwhelming suspicion that her husband had something—or everything—to do with the mysterious case. Since then, Perry March has fled Nashville, battled his in-laws in court for the custody of his children and ultimately landed in Mexico, where he is now remarried.
Last week, one of March’s former attorneys sued Random House author Wendy Goldman Rohm, who has been working on a book about the disappearance of Janet March and the various court and media battles that ensued. Attorney Robert Catz claims that Rohm sliced him out of the book deal. According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois, the book, awkwardly titled Home Cooking, had promised to detail March’s saga and “expose judicial collusion in Tennessee courts.”
Not surprisingly, Rohm says she has no immediate plans to publish a book on the March saga and that, even if she did, she wouldn’t title it Home Cooking.
“When I heard about this suit, I laughed,” the Illinois author says. “It’s a figment of Bob’s imagination. I am working on a book on Perry, and it may result in something or it may not.”
But much more interesting than the he- said-she-said over a book that doesn’t exist—and may never—are accounts from both sides that Perry March apparently wanted to profit from his missing wife’s presumed death and the suspicion surrounding him.
According to the lawsuit, plans for the book were outlined in the summer of 2000 near March’s Mexico home “during dinner at an elegant outdoor garden terrace restaurant.” Catz tells the Scene that March and Rohm had even talked about writing a screenplay about the disappearance of his wife. “John Herbison [March’s lawyer since June 2000] was supposed to be played by Billy Bob Thorton, and I was supposed to be played by Bruce Willis,” he says. Alas, Catz couldn’t recall whom they had envisioned to play March; but he recalls that Tom Cruise’s name was mentioned.
While she and Catz clearly have different memories of the book arrangement, Rohm too says that Hollywood was on March’s mind. “At one point when we were discussing the possibility of a book, Perry, like most people who are the subject of a book, asked about the possibility of it being made into a movie,” she recalls. “We never talked to a film agent or talked about money. I was just unraveling the mystery about how books and movies happen.”
John Herbison, who has also represented convicted murderer Byron Looper, says that he recalls talk about his client pitching his story to Hollywood. “There was some discussion about making this into a movie, but I don’t recall if it was a serious proposal or if they were just joking.” Asked if he approved of his client participating in a book about the case, he says, “I did not advise him one way or another. I just figured that this had its own momentum, and I would not concern myself with it.”
Rohm, who has penned books on Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates, says that she received no advance and no contract for any book about the March case. She also says that she reached no agreement with either Catz or March on a specific book.
But Catz, who resides in Palm Springs, Calif., isn’t changing his story. “I stand by everything that’s in the complaint,” he says. Catz says that he met with Rohm for five hours over three days and that she taped her interviews with him. Now he wants his tapes back. “The purpose of this lawsuit is to get my tapes back. She taped me, and she refused to give me them back.” In addition to reclaiming the aforementioned tapes, Catz is asking for punitive damages in excess of $75,000.
“Here I was trying to craft a judicial remedy to bring back the kids to their father, and they are figuring out how to do movie deals,” he says.
Catz, however, says that March may rue the day he collaborated with Rohm. “She is a witness on whatever he has shared with her, whether it’s her notes or tapes,” he says. “None of that is subject to attorney-client privilege or journalistic privilege.”
Rohm has yet to interview many of the major players in the case and, depending on whether she decides to pursue a book, she may never. But she has spent more time with March than any other reporter in Nashville. What does she think about the guy? “I don’t have any judgments on whether he is guilty or innocent, but to this day there has not been evidence gathered to accuse him of killing his wife,” she says. “He has been accessible and has answered all my questions. There are some areas in our interviews that have worried me in terms of inconsistencies, but nothing solid enough to prove one way or another that he is guilty.”
