Love, Lies, and Murder

Detective Miller, a soft-spoken man, asked Perry March point-blank if he had killed his wife and disposed of her body. Perry adamantly denied having harmed Janet in any way. He admitted that he and Janet had argued on the night of August 15, but he said that he had not attacked her. She simply took the things that she had packed and drove away in her Volvo.

“Look at me,” Perry said at one point. “On August 15, 1996, I was a respected lawyer in Nashville. I had it all. A beautiful wife. Two wonderful kids. Gorgeous home. I was a go-to guy in the business community. I was making good money. Now, my wife has left me.”

Later, Perry would go on-camera on CBS News’
48 Hours
and tell a national television audience: “Janet was a wonderful mother. Very doting.”

It seemed strange how he referred to her in the past tense.

Also by Gary C. King

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOVE, LIES, and MURDER

PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

My sincere, heartfelt gratitude is especially reserved for my immediate family. Without their full support during the writing of this book, in which they endured months of inconvenience as I isolated myself from them and forced them to virtually live on their own, this book would not have been possible. I am especially grateful to my wife, Teresita, who persuaded me to embrace this project and helped me see what a great story it really was, even though she knew it would cause us to live our own separate lives until it was finished. Thanks also to Kirsten and Sarah, who were always there when I needed them most!

A very special thank-you goes to Kevin James Bell, a very dear and close family friend who, through his love and devotion to me and my family, repeatedly came to my rescue and helped fulfill some of my duties and obligations when I was unable to do so myself, and for helping keep my family unit in top form during my self-imposed isolation. The world needs more people like Kevin!

I would also like to thank Chief Ronal Serpas, of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, along with his staff, for their cooperation during the writing of this book. I also want to acknowledge the dedicated work and service of Sergeant Patrick Postiglione and Detective Bill Pridemore, veteran homicide detectives who were named Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s Investigators of the Year for 2005 for their effort in bringing Perry March to justice and for providing closure to a case that, at times, seemed like it might never be solved, and to Captain Mickey Miller and Detective David Miller, retired.

I would also like to acknowledge the very fine work of the reporters at the
Tennessean
who followed this story day in and day out. It was through their great work that I was able to stay informed at a distance of the continuing developments of this fascinating case. Willy Stern also did an outstanding job in his two-part series “A Good Thing Gone Bad,” which appeared in the
Nashville Scene,
and whose work actually assisted the police in locating sources that they had been unable to find. Stern’s articles were instrumental in providing a basis for some of the historical aspects concerning the March family. The Nashville
City Paper,
CBS News’
48 Hours,
Court TV, and the work of a number of other news agencies, too numerous to mention here, are all worthy of acknowledgment. Attribution is provided throughout the book where information from the aforementioned sources has been used. Thanks also to Jorge Jaramillo, of the Associated Press, for his assistance with the photos used in this book.

I also want to thank my longtime literary agent, Peter Miller, of PMA Literary & Film Management, for bringing Michaela Hamilton, Executive Editor at Kensington Books, and me together again for this project. Michaela bought and edited my first book,
Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer,
in 1992, when she was at Penguin USA, and was instrumental in making it a great success. Michaela’s integrity, professionalism, and business savvy in the publishing industry are without reproach, and I couldn’t be happier working with her again.

Last, but definitely not least, I would like to gratefully acknowledge Stephanie Finnegan for the exceptional and thorough job she did copyediting the manuscript. I’m sure that it was no easy task, but Stephanie’s effort and attention to detail served to greatly improve the final product. Thanks, Stephanie!

The book that you are now reading is a true crime story. It is not the typical true crime story that attempts to titillate the reader with gruesome or overly sensational details, because a body was never found. There was, nonetheless, a murder that was committed—according to the victim’s family, the police, a prosecutor, and a jury—as well as a host of other alleged serious crimes, including a kidnapping, con artist schemes, shady real estate deals in which elderly women were charmed and duped into turning over their life savings to an unscrupulous sociopath, and a murder-for-hire plot that made this story one of the most compelling that I have ever told. It is my hope, my intention, really, that this book will transcend the typical true crime genre and move the reader into the realm of a gripping and captivating human interest story involving two wealthy professionals who seemed to have everything, and the numerous lives that were destroyed due to the unfortunate chain of events that were set in motion following a purposeless homicide—an ultimate tragedy if ever there was one.

The characters in this real-life drama include former Nashville, Tennessee, attorney Perry March, whose wife, Janet, literally disappeared without a trace. According to all accounts, she did not leave a note behind, nor did she instruct anyone to convey a message from her to anyone—not even an attorney to deliver divorce papers to her husband on her behalf. She simply vanished, leaving Perry and her children amid an unusual turn of events that would eventually find the lawyer living an entirely new life in Mexico, presumably to be able to make a living and evade public scrutiny in the United States.

Portions of this story were related to me by residents of La Manzanilla, Mexico, who were knowledgeable about certain aspects of the bizarre case surrounding Perry March. The story will follow Perry March as he attempted to assimilate into his new environment, his various alleged schemes that revolved around shady real estate deals made with retired expatriate women, and how he became involved, along with two other attorneys that he retained, in getting his children returned to him after the children’s maternal grandparents, armed with a visitation order and the cooperation and assistance of a Mexican judge, who had the children picked up at their school, whisked them out of Mexico and brought them back to the United States without March’s knowledge or approval.

This story first came to my attention in 2002, as it was still developing, and due to prior contractual commitments on other book projects, I could not get involved at that time. However, by the time the case broke in 2005, the timing for my involvement was just right. I was just finishing up the manuscript for
Stolen in the Night,
my book about the Joseph Edward Duncan III case, and I was actively looking for a story that was markedly different from anything that I had ever written before. The Perry March case fit that bill perfectly.

Though at times the story might seem like fiction—how could a story like this have really happened?—I want to take this opportunity to assure my readers that all of the incidents portrayed herein are indeed factual and all of the characters depicted are real people. The research needed to bring this story to fruition included hundreds of hours of research, and interviews with people who were close to the case and the investigations. I have attempted to present the facts of the case as they are known and as they have been presented to the public in various media formats, including newspapers, magazines, tabloids, television and radio news and entertainment programs, as well as what happened in the courtroom at the various stages that this case has gone through. Some of the dialogue that appears herein is based on statements that were made in the various news media mentioned above, as well as from my own interviews with certain individuals. The dialogue quoted from news sources includes, but is not limited to, the following: the
Tennessean,
the
City Paper,
Court TV,
Nashville Scene,
CBS News’
48 Hours
, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, the
National Enquirer,
and a host of other sources, including police documents, transcripts of taped conversations, and trial documents. I have made every possible effort to present the story as historically accurate as possible. Because of the story’s complexity, I elected to tell it in more or less chronological order for the sake of clarity and to enable the reader to relive it, if you will, in the order that it occurred.

—G.C.K.