Mystery of the Missing Wife Stymies Police

Attorney Perry March acknowledges his marriage was in trouble when his wife vanished last year. He admits he waited two weeks to report her missing.

But he bristles when asked if he killed her.

“I’m just so sick of that question,” he said. “It’s offensive. Of course not.”

Police are not so sure.

“We never named him a suspect, but you have to start at the inner circle and work your way out,” said Capt. Mickey Miller. “Since he stopped cooperating, we can’t eliminate him as a suspect.”

A year after Janet Levine March disappeared, police appear no closer to solving the mystery, though they do not expect to find her alive.

“The body could be here to Mexico,” Miller said. March’s father, Arthur, a retired military pharmacist, lives in Mexico.

What led to the disappearance is almost as baffling as what happened to Janet Levine March. On the surface, she had it all.

The dark-haired beauty was an accomplished artist. She was married to a noted lawyer for nine years and they had two children. The family had just moved into an expensive home and were prominent in Nashville’s Jewish community.

March, 36, described his 33-year-old wife as lovely, headstrong and impetuous, a brilliant artist but not street-smart and a little “oblivious to the world.”

She vanished Aug. 15, 1996. The Marches were having marital problems at the time, and for a few nights Perry March says he went to a hotel after the children fell asleep.

March says his wife complained she shouldered more of the responsibility for their children while he was wining and dining clients.

That night, Janet decided it was her turn for a vacation, he says. She wrote a 12-day to-do list on their home computer, then left with three bags, a passport and $5,000 in cash, March says.

“I thought she was going to take a weekend trip and come back,” he said in a telephone interview from his Chicago office.

He became worried later that night and called his wife’s parents, Carolyn and Lawrence Levine. They urged him not to call police, he said.

“They thought she’d come back and they didn’t want to embarrass her,” he said. “It was the worst decision of my life.”

March said he called some of her out-of-town friends, checked hotels and the airport parking lot, but there were no signs of her. He held out hope that she would return Aug. 27 for their son’s 6th birthday party.

She did not. Party guests were told she became ill while visiting her brother, an attorney in California.

March waited two more days. On Aug. 29, he reported his wife missing.

Police are skeptical about why March waited so long.

“With two weeks, you got a lot of time to get rid of a body,” Miller said. “A lot of crucial evidence is gone.”

Police found Janet’s Volvo on Sept. 7, parked at an apartment complex about five miles from the couple’s home. Inside were some clothes and her purse, but nothing to indicate her fate.

The couple’s home was searched, but when police began questioning March, he stopped cooperating. Police had to get a warrant to search the house again. They discovered the data-storing hard drive of the home computer was missing.

March says he doesn’t know what happened to it.

“I didn’t take it out. I had nothing to hide on my hard drive,” he said, adding, “If someone thought they were helping me, they didn’t. It hurt me.”

The Levines have said through their attorney, Harris Gilbert, that they believed March’s story until a few weeks passed and they still hadn’t heard from their daughter.

Other than that statement, they have declined to speak publicly about their daughter’s disappearance or her husband. When reached by telephone, Carolyn Levine said talking about what happened “is very difficult for me to do.”

March, who is battling the Levines in court over everything from custody of the children to who should keep the wedding china, believes his father-in-law knows “much more about what happened to Janet than I do.”

The Levines held a memorial service for Janet in November. Through friends, they told March to stay away. It was further evidence that their relationship, once strong, had deteriorated.

March, whose education at Vanderbilt University Law School was financed by the Levines, was fired in September from the law firm where Lawrence Levine is a partner.

Fearing the Levines would get custody of the children, Sammy, 6, and Tzipi, 3, March took them to suburban Chicago to live near his brother, also an attorney. After several court hearings, the Levines now get limited visitations.

When asked why the Levines would turn on him after they had treated him like a son for years, March said: “That’s the thousand-dollar question. I’m being treated like a murderer and they [the Levines] are taking away all our property.”

On the anniversary of his wife’s disappearance, March was in Davidson County Probate Court seeking $3,550 in monthly child support from his wife’s estate. He says since the Levines have frozen the couple’s bank accounts, he needs the money.

A judge appointed attorney Jeff Mobley as executor of Janet’s estate to put an end to some of the squabbling. He is to preserve her financial assets until she returns or is declared dead.

The lavish home Janet designed on four wooded acres in the Forest Hills neighborhood sold for $726,600 in February. The home was titled in Janet’s name since her parents paid for the bulk of it, and the money is now in her estate.

Meanwhile, police keep searching. Miller said in the first six months after the disappearance, investigators were bombarded with leads.

They used cadaver-sniffing dogs and helicopters to check the couple’s property where a foul odor was reported about the time Janet disappeared.

Divers searched nearby lakes. Scientists used a ground-penetrating, radar-like device to search for clues. Freshly poured concrete foundations in the area were examined. All yielded nothing.

Miller would not comment on the results of the lab tests on a bath mat, shirt and computer disks taken from the home.

Recently, investigators checked a rock quarry and a garbage disposal business operated by one of March’s friends, both in neighboring Wilson County. Still no clues.

One of the chief investigators, David Miller, was taken off the case in January after he discussed police theories with reporters.

He said investigators believed March, who has a black belt in karate, accidentally dealt a death blow to his wife during a heated argument, possibly over a sexual harassment allegation against him.

March left the prominent Bass Berry & Sims law firm in 1991 to work for his father-in-law after he was videotaped leaving sexually explicit notes for a paralegal, police said.

The woman later sued March and the law firm; a settlement was reached out of court. Two days before Janet disappeared, her husband wrote a letter to the woman explaining why he could not pay the other half of the reported $25,000 settlement, according to probate court documents filed by the Levines. Police believe Janet found the letter and confronted her husband, possibly threatening to divorce him or cut him off financially.

March would not verify anything relating to the incident, only to say his wife knew what happened and it wasn’t related to her leaving.

Meantime, he continues to hold out hope she will turn up alive, but seems resigned to not seeing her again.

He said when his children ask questions about her, he tells them: “We don’t know what happened to Mommy.”

“The longer we go, the less likely we are to hear from her,” he said. “We can’t hold out false hopes. I have to tell them the truth.”

If she doesn’t turn up, March says, the children will survive.

“People live through worse,” he said.

“If she doesn’t return, they won’t be the first children who lost their mother. We will deal with it even though it’s not a wound that will ever fully heal.”