Ex-attorney charged with wife’s murder

Nashville police had long ago identified Perry March, a former attorney, as a suspect when his wife, Janet Levine March, disappeared in August 1996.

March also was charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, local and federal authorities announced at a news conference. The murder charge carries a sentence of 15 to 25 years, they said.

March is in custody in Los Angeles, awaiting return to Nashville, authorities said.

“This is a case that has remained on the frontburner of the police department, albeit a bit behind the scenes,” Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas said.

With Janet March an active member of the art community and her father a veteran lawyer, the case and its mystery stirred speculation for almost a decade among the city’s upper crust and others.

Nashville police, FBI agents in Nashville and Mexico and officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office collaborated in the murder investigation and arrest of March. The officials released few details about the investigation, except to say March was indicted in December.

March had never officially been charged in his wife’s disappearance, and was last known to be living in Ajijic, Mexico, with his two children and a new wife. The law enforcement officials said March was arrested after deportation from Mexico, but they declined to say why he had been deported.

A U.S. State Department official said Mexican authorities deported March at the request of the FBI because he was considered an undesirable alien based on pre-existing arrest warrants in the United States.

The body of Janet March, who was 33 at the time of her disappearance, has never been found. She was officially declared dead in 2004.

The authorities declined to say Wednesday that the abuse of corpse charge indicated they had located the body.

“Anytime you illegally dispose of a body, it can be abuse of a corpse,” said Davidson County Deputy District Attorney Tom Thurman.

March and his wife’s parents, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine of Nashville, have fought bitterly in court since Janet March’s disappearance in civil suits and over the custody of the March children. The Levines have contended in court filings that March killed their daughter.

On the day Janet March vanished on Aug. 15, 1996, her husband says he came home to find his wife complaining she needed a vacation. He says she wrote a 12-day to-do list on the home computer then, while the children were sleeping, left in her Volvo with three bags, a passport and $5,000 in cash.

When she didn’t return in two weeks the family went to police. Police found her Volvo a week later in the parking lot of a Nashville apartment complex.

Attorney John Herbison, who represented March in the custody battle, said March hadn’t contacted him about his arrest.

Although March wasn’t charged with a crime, a court once implicated him in the case. In 2003, the state Court of Appeals overturned a trial court’s decision that Perry March was guilty of wrongful death in his wife’s disappearance and owed her parents $113.5 million in damages. In a subsequent case in 2004, a Davidson County Circuit Court judge found Perry March liable in a wrongful death civil suit filed by the Levines.

The Levines have also lost in an attempt to gain custody of their grandchildren.

Following Wednesday’s announcement by authorities, Lawrence Levine said he was grateful to law enforcement officials but did not want to comment about the future custody of his grandchildren.

Authorities said March was flown out of Guadalajara, Mexico, Wednesday morning with FBI agents. Authorities said once the indictment came down, they began surveillance work on March and initiated the extradition process. Thurman said extraditing suspects from Mexico is particularly difficult and can be lengthy because of the language barrier and bureaucratic obstacles.

Authorities said March will be held by the state of California as a fugitive from Tennessee. And if he chooses to waive extradition, he could be returned to Nashville by next week. If he challenges extradition, it could take several weeks for March to be returned here.

Upon his return to Nashville, a Criminal Court judge has ordered March be held without bail pending a hearing.