Jury convicts Perry March of killing wife
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The sequestered jury from Chattanooga deliberated for two days in a murder case that has fascinated and mystified Nashville since Janet Levine March went missing in August of 1996.
Perry March, 45, was found guilty on all of the charges against him ? second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.
March showed no emotion when the verdict was read and defense attorney Steve Massey said he was disappointed, but “on a very even keel” afterward.
There were no known witnesses to his wife’s death, but she was declared legally dead in 2000. She would be 39 today.
Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier scheduled a sentencing hearing on Sept. 6. March could face 15 to 25 years in prison on the murder charge alone.
March is already in jail after being convicted this year of conspiring to murder his in-laws and stealing from his former law firm. The jury was not told about those convictions.
March’s father, Arthur, testified for the prosecution, saying his son told him that Janet had died accidentally. The father said he disposed of her body in a brush pile off Interstate 65 in the Bowling Green, Ky., area, an hour north of Nashville, but searches of the area have found nothing.. .
“It’s very compelling when a father testifies against a son,” Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Tom Thurman said. “It improved it tremendously. Obviously we were ready to go ahead on the circumstantial evidence that we had.”
Perry March took the stand only to say he would not testify in his defense.
An inmate jailed with March in the past year testified March told him he struck Janet with a wrench during an argument at their home in an upscale neighborhood of Nashville. The defense challenged the testimony from that inmate and others, saying they were not credible because they were seeking reduced jail sentences in exchange for their cooperation.
Perry March was identified as a suspect in 1996 and in 1999 moved to Ajijic, Mexico, where he remarried. He wasn’t arrested in the case until August 2005.
“If the government had been forced to present the evidence they had when he was brought here last year, Perry March would be a free man,” his defense attorney said.
Because of the prominence of the March couple, and the mystery surrounding what happened to the wife, the trial has drawn intense interest in Nashville. The cable affiliate of WTVF-TV aired the entire trial. Court TV channel also covered it.
The couple had two children, one son and one daughter, who became the subject of a custody dispute between Perry March and Janet’s parents, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine, a member of the Nashville upper crust. Lawrence Levine is a longtime Nashville attorney and helped Perry March early in Perry’s legal career.
Perry March acknowledged the marriage was strained in its latter stages. Family members have said Janet was scheduled to meet with a divorce lawyer the day after her disappearance.
After the verdict, Lawrence Levine thanked prosecutors, police investigators, and the “many people in the Nashville community who gave us support during these 10 very difficult years in the pursuit of justice for our daughter and our grandchildren.”