Editor's Note: In this newspaper's 1997 award-winning reports on the Janet March case, investigative reporter Willy Stern made public for the first time what was then the Metro Police Department's detailed theory as to what happened at the idyllic home of Janet and Perry March on the evening of Aug. 15, 1996. In these articles, both excerpted and paraphrased here, Perry March also responded for the first time in public to the Metro Police Department's theory, claiming his innocence and characterizing himself as "the Richard Jewell of Nashville," referring to the suspect in the 1996 Olympic bombing who was ultimately exonerated. It is unclear whether this remains the Police Department's working theory. The vast majority of the information in the articles, which were based on more than 200 interviews, had never been reported before.
♦ Around 10 a.m. on the morning of Friday, Aug. 16, Marissa Moody and her 6-year-old son pulled into the driveway of Janet and Perry March's four-acre estate in Forest Hills. Moody, a divorced mother of two, had never felt accepted by the Marches, who seemed to have a picture-perfect family. Perry, 35, was a successful lawyer, practicing with his father-in-law's firm, Levine Mattson Orr & Geracioti; Janet, 33, was a dark-haired beauty and an accomplished artist who frequently lunched at the upscale Cakewalk restaurant, eating alone so that she could have the time to make notes in her sketch pad.
Their children—5-year-old Samson, known as "Sammy," and 2-year-old Tzipora, called "Tzipi"—seemed healthy and well-adjusted. Both children adored their part-time Russian nanny, Ella Goldshmid. What's more, they spent lots of time with their maternal grandparents, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine, leaving Perry and Janet with plenty of independence and the time to socialize with a circle that included some of West Nashville's most prominent young Jewish couples.
Marissa Moody may have had good reason to feel intimidated. On that Friday morning, at any rate, she felt snubbed once again. Just the evening before, Moody recalls, she and Janet had made plans for their sons to spend part of the day together. Yet, when Moody and her son arrived, neither of the Marches was available even to greet them. Tzipi was playing in the side yard with nanny Ella. After Sammy let Moody and her son into the house, they chatted for a while. Moody remembers that, while she and her son waited just inside the kitchen door, Sammy sat on the end of a large, dark-colored rug that was rolled up and lying on the floor just off the kitchen.
As he bounced up and down on the rug, Sammy told Moody that his mother was not at home. Perry apparently was working in his at-home study, which was located on the same floor as the kitchen, but Moody never saw him. March sent word, via Sammy, that it was all right for the play date to proceed as planned. Moody did not find March's behavior unusual; she merely assumed that he was ignoring her once again. Leaving her son to play with Sammy, Moody drove away.
In Moody's memory, the only thing that was curious about that morning was the rug. She recalls the decor in the Marches' house as minimalist, almost spartan. In most of the rooms, she says, the polished wood floors were bare. Everything always seemed clean and well organized. The oversized rug didn't seem to fit in. When she returned a few hours later to pick up her son, Moody says, the rug was gone.
Homicide detectives in the Metro Police Department are convinced that Moody's memories of that morning can provide vital clues in solving one of the most widely discussed—and most potentially lurid—cases in recent Nashville history. Investigators suspect that, even while Moody and her son were waiting in the Marches' kitchen, Janet Gail Levine March's 104-pound body may have been concealed inside the rolled-up rug. They theorize that 5-year-old Sammy may have been jumping on his own mother's corpse.
♦ According to Perry March, Marissa Moody is mistaken. March says Moody never even entered the house that day. The March children's nanny doesn't recall seeing the rug, and Perry March says it never existed.
Deneane Beard, the Marches' $75-a-visit cleaning woman, says she was at the Blackberry Road house for at least two hours on the morning of Moody's visit. During that time, Beard says, she never saw the rug. She also says Perry March told her not to clean the children's playroom that morning. The playroom opens onto the area where Moody says she saw the rug. Beard left the house before Moody arrived.
♦ March does agree with the homicide detectives on one point: He admits that he and his wife had an argument on the night of Aug. 15. But Perry March says he didn't attack his wife. Instead, he recollects, she packed three bags of her belongings and took an estimated $4,000 to $5,000 in cash, a plastic bag of marijuana and her passport. Then, at about 8:30 p.m., he says, she drove off in her gray 1996 Volvo 850.
♦ "Look at me," March said during a Christmas Day interview with the Scene in 1996. "On Aug. 15, I was a respected Jewish lawyer in Nashville. I had it all: beautiful wife, two wonderful kids, gorgeous home. I was a go-to guy in the Jewish community and the business community. I was making good money. Now, my wife has left me."
March grew visibly angry as he described the scrutiny to which he's been subjected. "Without a shred of evidence, the police and my in-laws have taken away my house, my livelihood, my community. They're trying to screw around with my son and daughter. I've been wrongly accused of sexually abusing my kids. My daughter has been subjected to a complete medical examination." Still he predicted, "But you'll see. I'll be vindicated."
♦ Perry March is no angel. He stresses, "If anybody else had been subjected to the kind of scrutiny I've received in the past few months, you'd find people to say unpleasant things about them as well." In interviews with people who have known March at various points in his life, a portrait of a man who has not always been a model citizen emerges. One woman, with whom March was an undergraduate at Michigan in the early 1980s, even alleges that he assaulted her, punching her in the face with his fist in a sudden fit of jealousy.
March denies hitting the woman. "She was a slut," he told the Scene on Christmas Day 1996. "I fucked her for a few months. Then she came back from vacation, told me she had the crabs, and I dumped her." The woman says she and March never had sex. She also says she did not report the alleged incident at the time to the police or to campus security.
♦ The Marches had been having marital problems for some time when Janet went missing. Together, and at times separately, they'd been seeing a Nashville psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas W. Campbell. Campbell refused to comment on the Marches' case, but a variety of sources—including law enforcement officers, an attorney who was representing Perry March, and several of Janet's friends—say the couple were working on a list of issues. For one thing, Perry apparently resented what he perceived as pressure to change himself to make his wife happy. On the other hand, Janet may have felt that Perry had never finished grieving for his mother, who apparently committed suicide with a barbituate overdose in 1970, when Perry was 9.
Several close friends of the couple speculate that Janet may have been depressed. She lived in a dream house, one that had been painstakingly designed according to her own specifications. She had two beautiful children. Friends suggest she may have felt empty and left behind. Perry's career was taking off, and, they say, he may have been getting bored with his wife of almost a decade.
Perry March acknowledges that he and Janet had mentioned the word "divorce"; but he says, at least to his mind, they never discussed the subject seriously. Deneane Beard, the Marches' cleaning woman, says that, at some point during the months before Janet disappeared, she saw a book about divorce on Janet's bedside table.
Perry March had begun spending more and more time away from home. Employees at the Jewish Community Center told the Scene that they had assumed Perry was single, since they thought no married man would have time for workouts like Perry's regular programs of aerobic work and weightlifting that lasted two hours or longer.
♦ Meanwhile, several sources reported to the police that, during the months before Janet's disappearance, Perry March had been seen in the company of other women. One source claims to have seen Perry leaving Belcourt Cinema arm-in-arm with an attractive blonde. Another source allegedly saw Perry sharing an intimate dinner with a brunette at Bound'ry restaurant. Ironically, Janet and her girlfriends met at the same restaurant for a "girls'-night-out" dinner on the Tuesday before she disappeared.
No one has charged that Perry March was having an affair. March says he routinely ate and socialized with women as part of his work. He declined to make specific comment as to whether he'd been unfaithful to his wife.
By early August 1996, Janet and Perry's relationship had worsened. They began spending some evenings apart. March acknowledged approaching one of his law clients, Paul Eichel, the rough-and-tumble owner of Music City Mix Factory, and asking him about renting Eichel's spare condo, which, as it turned out, was not available. Sources at the Hampton Inn near Vanderbilt University and the Budgetel Inn on Lenox Avenue confirm that Perry March spent a total of five nights at the two hotels during the week before Janet's disappearance. Police have subpoenaed records from both hotels.
March acknowledged spending nights at each of the hotels, but he said he always stayed home until after the children were in bed and was always back by 7 a.m. on weekends to help with morning chores. March said he checked into the hotels simply to get some sleep.
♦ Metro homicide detectives are convinced that Perry March killed his wife, and they believe that they know how he did it. Perry says their theory is "bullshit." According to the chain of events suggested by police, the March children went to bed, according to their usual routine, some time between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Before long, investigators theorize, a fight developed. The reason for the squabble, they say, was money. It also had a lot to do with sex.
Just two days earlier, Perry had allegedly written a letter to a woman, an attractive paralegal who, like March, had been employed at the Waspy, gray-suited Nashville law firm of Bass Berry & Sims in the early 1990s. At the time he was hired, fresh out of Vanderbilt University School of Law in the fall of 1988, March and one of his Vanderbilt classmates were the only Jews the firm had ever hired on a full-time basis.
March had shown great promise at Bass Berry & Sims, but he had been required to leave the firm in 1991 when it was determined that he had written three seamy, sexually explicit notes to the woman, who was highly regarded for her work at the firm. March had agreed to pay the woman $25,000 to avoid a sexual harassment suit, but the Levines' attorneys said in Davidson County Probate Court in November 1996 that Perry still owed the woman $12,500 at the time Janet March disappeared.
The letters detailed the writer's sexual fantasies with the woman: "I want to inhale the essence of you. I want to taste your arms. The pure animal sexiness of your body grips me and embarrasses me," one letter said, before proceeding to a languorous description of the woman's "perfect" body and a graphic, no-holds-barred depiction of "hours and hours" of cunnilingus. "If I were granted a single wish in life," the writer insisted, "I would not hesitate for that wish to be to devour you. This is what I think of most often." There was talk of "licking and sucking," "kissing and caressing" her "soft belly and thighs," and "nibbling and stroking."
Bass Berry & Sims hired a security firm to determine who was writing the letters, and even set up security cameras to catch the culprit placing them.
According to two sources who have read March's Aug. 13 letter to the paralegal, March indicated that he was having trouble coming up with the settlement amount agreed upon to avoid a lawsuit. Detectives suspect that Janet learned about the letter and confronted her husband with its contents. March declined to comment on any matter involving Bass Berry & Sims. The paralegal, through her attorney, also declined comment. Numerous sources familiar with the situation say she left the law firm about two weeks before March departed in 1991, apparently angry that March had not yet been pushed out the door. Bass Berry & Sims declined comment.
♦ Homicide investigators suggest that, some time around 8 p.m. on the evening of Aug. 15, the Marches' argument grew heated and that, as was their custom, the couple continued their disagreement out on the back porch, well out of earshot of Sammy and Tzipi's second-floor bedrooms. In the heat of the argument, Perry March said, his wife announced that she was going to take a short vacation and proceeded to make good on her threat.
Investigators have another theory: They suggest that, as the argument continued, Janet said something that caused Perry to snap. Their best guess is that she demanded a divorce and threatened to cut him off financially.
It was then, detectives say, that March dealt a death blow to his wife. The killing was, they think, accidental.
♦ According to phone records, Perry placed a call to his younger brother, Ron, in Wilmette, Ill., at 9:11 p.m. on the night of Aug. 15. They talked for three minutes. At 9:14 p.m., March called his sister, Kathy, at her boyfriend's home in New Buffalo, Mich. That conversation lasted for four minutes. Detectives suggest that these phone calls were March's first attempts to cover up the accidental killing. March said he simply called his two siblings to let them know that Janet had left him and the children.
When they were interviewed by the Scene, March's siblings presented carefully coordinated, complementary accounts of the conversations. Amy March even called back the day after her interview "to clarify" her story.
After Perry hung up from his conversation with his sister, at 9:18 p.m., police officers theorize that he hid Janet's body in the woods or in the basement of the house. Then, they suspect, he likely packed his wife's bags, threw them into her Volvo, and drove the car to the Brixworth apartment complex on Harding Road. There, according to police theory, he abandoned the car and either jogged or mountain-biked the five-or-so miles back to his home. All the while, according to the police scenario, March's two children slept soundly upstairs. A representative of Music Country Volvo, who sold the Volvo 850 to the Marches, confirmed that it is designed to carry a standard mountain bike inside.
Police also suspect that, before he left home, Perry drafted and printed on his home computer a note that listed 23 things he was to do while Janet was away on her purported 12-day vacation: feed the kids healthy meals, pay the psychiatrist, call the driveway guy. It ends: "I agree to do all of the above before Janet's vacation...is over." Perry then signed his name above the date, Aug. 15, 1996, at the bottom of the note. Computer records indicate that the file was saved at 8:17 p.m.
March told the Scene his wife wrote the note and demanded that he sign it before she walked out the door. Detectives say they have three reasons to doubt that Janet herself wrote the to-do list:
First, it makes no mention of the fact Janet and Marissa Moody had arranged a play date for their sons the following morning. The play date is not mentioned, Perry said, because it was he, not Janet, who had scheduled it. Moody is adamant that she and Janet made the arrangements. When Moody arrived at the March house on the morning of Aug. 16, she says, it appeared that neither Sammy nor Perry knew about the play date. In fact, she says, Sammy told her he and his father were planning an excursion to Perry's office.
Secondly, the list is written using capital as well as lower-case letters, a style that is consistent with the way Perry wrote lists. (Other lists drafted by Janet, and obtained by the police, use only lower-case letters, even at the beginning of sentences.) Finally, Perry's lists are typically dated at the bottom of the page, while Janet's are dated on the top.
March waited until around midnight to call his in-laws. Investigators say that delay provided more than ample time for him to hide his wife's body, draft the list, dump the car and formulate a plan of action. March says he did not call the Levines promptly because he and Janet had an agreement that they would not involve her parents in their problems. First, he tried a few local hotels. He finally called his in-laws, he says, because he thought she might have driven to her parents' house to spend the night. It was at least the next day, investigators believe, before March could dispose of his wife's body.
♦ As the week wore on after Janet March's disappearance, Perry says he advised the Levines that the police should be informed that she was missing. March says his in-laws were adamant that the police should not be called, for fear of embarrassing their daughter.
♦ There are only a few facts that suggest someone may have attempted to cover up the traces of some unusual occurrence. According to the cleaning lady, the house seemed to be particularly spotless when she came to clean after Janet went missing—"almost as if somebody had already scrubbed the place and emptied all the trash," she recalled. During the two weeks after Janet March disappeared and before she was reported missing, the National Weather Service reported traces of rain on four days and .09 inches of rain on another day. Any amount of rainfall only made even harder work for the police forensics team, which searched the premises for traces of blood and other clues.
♦ Investigators seem fascinated by the fact that the hard drive on Perry March's Ambra home computer was ripped out. Detectives searched the house on at least two occasions shortly after Janet's disappearance was reported; during at least one of those investigations, they examined the computer with Perry's help. He even printed a file for them. But on the weekend of Sept. 14 and 15, Perry March was with his children in Chicago. His father, Arthur March, visiting from Mexico, spent at least part of that weekend at the house on Blackberry Road, and he says that, during some of that time, the house's burglar alarm system was turned off. Investigators suspect that, for some reason during that weekend, Perry's father removed the computer hard drive—perhaps without telling Perry.
Arthur March denied that allegation, just as he denied any other implication that he was involved in Janet's disappearance. Perry says that, like the Police Department, he is puzzled by the disappearance of the hard drive.
♦ Even when Perry March has chosen to remain silent, his silence has been interpreted, both in the press and on the streets, as still more evidence of his guilt. For example, during a civil deposition on Oct. 15, 1996, in connection with visitation rights for his children, March invoked his Fifth Amendment rights at least 15 times. March recalled the deposition and a later one as a grueling ordeal. "They beat the shit out of me," he said. One of the questions he refused to answer was whether he'd killed his wife.
Apparently, March was acting on sound legal advice. When a suspect in a criminal case gives a deposition in a concurrent civil case, it is standard procedure for the suspect's lawyer to advise him to take the Fifth. Nevertheless, The Tennessean splashed the story on its front page with a headline that read, "March takes the Fifth. Won't answer on how wife disappeared."
On the advice of his attorney, March also refused to take a lie-detector test, initially because he was taking medications that could have affected the results.
