In 1997, Perry March described himself to a Scene reporter as the Richard Jewell of Nashville, victimized by police allegations that he murdered his 33-year-old wife Janet and disposed of her body so well that they still haven’t recovered it. But unlike Jewell, the hard-luck Atlanta security guard cleared by prosecutors three months after he was accused of the Olympic bombing, March continues to see charges dog-pile against him. The latest accusations, released in an indictment Oct. 28, allege that March, with the help of his father, Arthur, was prepared to hire a drug-addicted East Nashville man with a lengthy criminal record to kill March’s former in-laws, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine. The Levines and March have a history of acrimony over Janet March’s disappearance, including a multimillion-dollar wrongful death suit and a subsequent custody battle over the Marches’ two children, Samson and Tzipora, who are now living in Nashville with the Levines. Prosecutors have been extremely tight-lipped about the indictment, but early speculation is that if Perry March wanted the Levines dead, it was because of the child-custody dispute. The hit man March allegedly was prepared to hire is Russell Nathanial Farris, a 28-year-old former Tire Barn employee whose arrest record dates to at least 1995. Farris, who has a balding head, close-set eyes and a drooping mouth, might seem like the ideal hit man because of his violent past. He was awaiting trial on two unrelated attempted murder charges stemming from shootings in East Nashville last April. But most of his crimes have been low-level acts almost comical in how clumsily they were performed. For example, in the April 9 shooting, Farris and another man, Jackie Johnson, went to the Eastland Street boarding house apartment of Clinton Roberson, looking for drugs. A scuffle ensued, and Roberson was shot once in the left hip. Police found him lying on the boarding house’s front porch. Prosecutors charged both men. Almost two weeks later, on April 20, Farris was riding with a friend, Bobby White, who claimed to have been ripped off in a drug deal. The two caught up with the alleged dealers, Sheila Murphy and Lloyd Tobitt. Farris allegedly handed White a 9-millimeter pistol and told him to “just scare” Tobitt and Murphy. White began pounding Tobitt on the head, dropping Tobitt to his knees, when the gun went off, striking Murphy on the left side of her neck, a wound that was not fatal. Farris and White were caught three days later as police intercepted them at Highway 70 and I-40 when the two returned from Camden. Police found the 9-millimeter on White and a .25 caliber handgun on Farris, which was a violation of the terms of his jail release for two burglaries last January. Farris’ bond was set at $275,000. Perry March was placed in a cell next to Farris, in a segregated part of the jail, when March was brought here from Mexico in August. The two apparently began talking about killing the Levines during the latter part of September, according to law enforcement sources. They probably didn’t pass notes back and forth because written contact between inmates is forbidden—a jailhouse rule that would not have been suspended even for a murder-sting investigation. One source says the two might even have been corresponding through a post office box set up in Texas, a risky enterprise because all inmate mail is monitored. When Farris eventually tipped off investigators, they were cautiously optimistic that he was telling the truth. He’d provided enough specifics, especially about March’s father, that they felt comfortable going forward. They wired Farris for conversations with March. When March allegedly cut off communication because Farris was given a cellmate, sheriff officials moved the interloper to another part of the jail. Jail officials also relied on a state-of-the-art phone system that only a few other correctional facilities in the nation possess. The system is able to track phone calls by inmate identifier, time or cell block. Inmates must log into the phones by placing their thumb inside so that it can read their thumbprints. The phones are also capable of photographing inmates as they talk. That same phone system was instrumental in convicting Parley Hardman earlier this year for conspiring to assassinate assistant U.S. Attorney Sunny Koshy here in 2003. Prosecutors appear ready to present phone conversations between Farris and Arthur March in court. A retired pharmacist who has no criminal history in Davidson County, Arthur March was allegedly instrumental in paying off Farris and arranging for safe transport and shelter once the Levines were murdered. The tough-talking 77-year-old curmudgeon prone to exaggeration has been investigated as an accomplice for allegedly helping his son dispose of Janet’s body, possibly using his Ford Escort. According to prosecutors, Arthur March actually traveled to the airport in Guadalajara, Mexico, last week on the assumption that Farris had committed his end of the bargain. Actually, Farris had been moved to a jail cell in Williamson County Oct. 7, where he remains today. The child-custody dispute between Perry March and the Levines has been longstanding and storied. At one point, Perry March even obtained a Mexican kidnapping arrest warrant against his in-laws after they took their grandchildren from that country during visitation in 2000. (In fact, an Aug. 25 story in the Scene stated that the arrest warrant “apparently remains in effect.” It doesn’t; it was nullified and set aside because a Mexican court ruled that the transport of the kids from Mexico to Tennessee “was carried out legally and by competent authority,” another point that the Aug. 25 story got wrong.) The Janet March murder case, Nashville’s highest profile homicide in 30 years, has made international news and been heard in the nation’s highest courts, excluding the U.S. Supreme Court, which at one point declined to hear the dispute between the Levines and Perry March over custody of the March’s two children. In late August, Juvenile Court Judge Betty Adams Green awarded custody of the children to the Levines indefinitely. It’s still too early to tell if or how March’s team of attorneys will be able to poke holes in allegations against their client. But already they sniff that the latest round of charges suggests that District Attorney Torry Johnson’s office has missed the mark again. It took prosecutors nearly 10 years to build a case against March and they still have no body, no murder weapon and a spotless crime scene—presumably the March’s affluent West Nashville home. (Janet March was declared legally dead in 2004.) “The use of a jailhouse snitch,” says March attorney John Herbison, “is a time-dishonored way of shoring up a shaky case.”
