Love, Lies, and Murder (25 page)

Russell Nathaniel Farris, under the assumed identity of Bobby Givings, did not call Arthur March back the next day, like he had said he would. In fact, he did not call him again until Tuesday, October 25, 2005, during one of the scheduled secret setup calls made in the presence of the authorities. Upon retrospect, many people later wondered why Arthur March had not been able to see through the sting—perhaps, like his son, he was so consumed with hatred for the Levines and with wanting them killed that he would have gone along with nearly anything presented to him. Whatever it was, Arthur March had swallowed the whole enchilada that “Bobby” had served him. Arthur picked up the phone on the second ring.

“Colonel?” Farris asked. “Hey, how you doin’? This is Bobby.”

“Hi, Bob.”

“Look here, I got some good news for you,” Farris said. “I will—I’ll probably be with you tomorrow. . . . Everything looks good from up here, depending on the weather tomorrow . . . I’m gonna get this done. But, uh, I’m not gonna ride a bus. I’m gonna take a plane from here . . . to Houston. Then from Houston to Guadalajara.”

“Okay,” Arthur replied. “Now you got your birth certificate or identification with you?”

“Well, well . . . yeah . . . see, like, once I get to Guadalajara, Bobby Givings is gone. You know that’s not my real name and I’ve got—”

“Okay, okay fine.”

“I’ve got—”

“I don’t want to know,” Arthur said. “I’m around . . . this . . . number is available.”

“Oh, okay. Well, look,” Farris said. “If it rains tomorrow—it’ll probably be delayed another day. But I’ve already checked, uh, Continental Airlines and the ticket’s about three hundred fifty bucks. . . .”

“Okay,” Arthur said. “And I’ll have some money I can give you, actually a week from today.”

“I can probably be in Guadalajara by five or six tomorrow. And once I get there . . . will you come pick me up?” Farris asked.

“Oh yeah. You just make the phone call. I’ll be there. . . . Good luck . . . I’ll see you tomorrow,” Arthur said. It seemed like he wanted to end the conversation.

“I hope so. Just have me a cold beer on hand if you can.”

“I got a whole refrigerator. Two sizes . . . the small economy and the large economy.”

“Well, I hope everything will be good, and I—”

“Well, I hope you have your luck, buddy,” Arthur cut in.

“Okay, and . . . just, just reassure me that . . . once I get there, everything . . .”

“Once you get there, you’re home free,” Arthur said.

“Okay, I just, you know . . . don’t want no bullshit about this, ’cause—”

“You ain’t got no bullshit,” Arthur interjected. “You got a place to live and everything else is taken care of.”

“Well, good, Colonel. Uh, be waitin’ for a call tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

They each said good-bye, but Farris called back a minute or so later.

“There’s a couple . . . of things I forgot,” Farris said. “I just kind of jumped the gun. Do you know a certain place to pick me up there at the airport?”

“You just get to the airport,” Arthur said. “When you come off, there’s only one place you can come out. You come out through the international . . . I’ll be there.”

“What kind of car will you be drivin’?”

“Well, it’ll be in the lot. I’m driving a Blazer. When you walk out, I’ll be there. How will I recognize you?”

“I’ve got a slick bald head,” Farris said. “And I’ve got a question mark tattoo on my throat. I’ll wear a yellow shirt . . . that way you can see me from far.”

“You got it. And you’ll see me, I’ll, uh—”

“I already know what you look like,” Farris cut in. “I’ve seen a picture. . . . Perry showed me a picture of you.”

“Well, I’ll be there as you come out—you can’t get lost.”

“Have you talked to Perry?” Farris asked.

“Not about this.”

“Oh, well, of course not. I mean, just . . . in general . . . have you talked to him?”

“I talked to him, uh, Friday.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s doin’better. Seems to be acclimating. . . . I hope tomorrow’s a good one for him,” Arthur said.

“Oh yeah . . . I’m pretty positive it will be good. I done a walk-through today and I’ve got my car parked and I’m catchin’ a bus in the mornin’to go out—”

“All right,” Arthur interrupted. “I’m waitin’ for you, buddy.”

“Well, man, I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ you.”

“We’ll have some times. . . . Good luck.”

 

 

Two days later, Thursday, October 27, 2005, Bobby Givings called Arthur March for the last time.

“Bueno”,
Arthur said.

“Colonel? Hey, this is Bobby. Look here. Everything’s done, I’m in Houston right now and I will be in Guadalajara at about two-thirty. My flight number is twenty forty-six from Continental Airlines.”

Arthur apparently took down the information, as he repeated it to Farris.

“Okay. There’s nothin’on the com—on the computer on it,” Arthur said.

“On the computer,” Farris repeated. “Well, I’m in Houston now. . . . I’m leaving at, like, twelve.”

“Yeah, but you finished the job up there?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah, uh, that’s done. Every—everything’s done.”

“How come it’s not on my computer?”

“I don’t have a clue about the computer.”

“Okay, I’ll check the news later.”

“Okay,” Farris said, ending their final telephone conversation.

 

 

Investigators claimed that Arthur March drove to the airport in Guadalajara to pick up Farris, who, of course, was still in Nashville. However, the district attorney’s office felt that they now had enough to move forward. Arthur, on the other hand, when later confronted after being tailed to the airport by an FBI agent, denied knowing anything regarding “what Perry did with this guy.” Arthur was not arrested at that time.

The next day, Friday, October 28, a Davidson County grand jury indicted Perry and Arthur March on one count each of solicitation to commit murder and two counts each of conspiracy to commit murder. As Perry reeled in shock at the deception that had been carried out on him and his father while he sat in his Nashville jail cell, having previously brimmed with confidence that he had set things up so that he could beat the charges against him, Arthur, upon hearing about the indictments, again reiterated his previous sentiments about not returning to Nashville willingly. Confronted by officials from Nashville, he was informed that if he did not surrender, the extradition process would begin.

“I don’t go peacefully,” Arthur said. “I don’t go like Perry. There’ll be blood shed somewhere, whether it’s theirs or mine. I’m a big boy. I take care of myself and carry my cane. That’s all I do.”

Arthur’s “cane” purportedly acted as a sheath for a razor-sharp blade, approximately two feet long.

The paperwork necessary to begin extradition proceedings against Arthur March was promptly drafted and filed with the proper state, U.S., and Mexico governments, making it only a matter of time before Arthur would be in the hands of Nashville authorities. His days in Mexico were numbered.

By the end of November 2005, the wheels of justice began turning a little faster as the district attorney’s office announced that Perry March would be tried in three separate criminal proceedings. The first trial that was placed on the Davidson County Criminal Court docket was scheduled to begin on April 17, 2006, on a charge of felony theft, which stemmed from the embezzlement indictment for allegedly stealing an amount of money that ranged between $10,000 and $60,000 from Lawrence Levine’s law firm while employed there. His second trial was scheduled for June 5, 2006, to face the charges against him for allegedly plotting to have the Levines murdered. During the third and final trial, scheduled for August 2006, Perry would face the charges of second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and evidence tampering surrounding the disappearance of his wife, Janet. As things continued to get hotter in the kitchen, Perry remained cool and confident that he would be acquitted when he had his day in court.

As November passed into December, there was much going on behind the scenes—although it wasn’t all being seen publicly, yet. Perry spent Christmas and New Year’s Day uneventfully inside his jail cell, with the exception of his one-hour-a-day out to exercise, shower, and make telephone calls. It gave him plenty of time to ponder his fate and, of course, to try and think up new schemes that might help him escape justice. In the meantime, Perry had no idea just how close the authorities were to arresting his father in Mexico and the bizarre case continued to come together for the authorities and to unravel for Perry and his father.

On Thursday, January 5, 2006, officers assigned to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion (INM), the Mexican equivalent of the INS in the United States, showed up around 8:00
A.M.
at the doughnut shop that Arthur was known to frequent with his cronies almost on a daily basis. Jose Luis Gutierrez, INM chief of that agency’s Guadalajara office, explained that Arthur’s FM-3 resident status was revoked because of an official demand from the U.S. Consulate based on Arthur’s indictment in October for his part in his son’s scheme to have the Levines killed. Under Mexico’s immigration laws, the Mexican government can revoke a person’s residency status if it was determined that the person in question has a seedy background. In Arthur’s case, the INM had determined that Arthur’s indictment and arrest warrant were sufficient grounds to revoke his residency and deport him. Gutierrez said that if it turned out that Arthur was cleared of the charges against him in the States, he would be welcome to return to Mexico. The government, Gutierrez said, had waited until an
amparo,
or injunction, that Arthur had obtained in a separate proceeding that served to shield him from actions by a number of Mexican agencies had expired before agents showed up to take him into custody.

“We were prudent,” Gutierrez said. “We were patient. And I want all his friends to know that he was not kidnapped. He was subject to an expulsion procedure with all the rigors marked under law. He put up resistance and tried to attack one of the agents with a knife he pulled out of his belt buckle.”

Mexican officials showed photos of a specially crafted, very sharp knife that had been fashioned into a part of the belt buckle Arthur had been wearing. In order to pull the knife, the person wearing it would have to release the belt connected to it first, then pull it out of the sheath that kept it hidden and which gave it the appearance of being a part of the belt itself. Because Arthur was known to have carried a cane that also served as a two-foot-long swordlike weapon, and was suspected of possessing firearms, Gutierrez’s agents approached him with caution and disarmed him without any of the agents being harmed. Although Gutierrez’s official position was that Arthur had put up a struggle, the descriptions of the incident provided by two men Arthur had been having coffee with contrasted significantly.

“There was no resistance,” said one of Arthur’s friends.

“He is seventy-seven years old, having had a total hip replacement. He was approached from behind by two plainclothes personnel who immediately pulled his hands behind him, and he was handcuffed immediately.”

The friend said that Arthur had gotten up from their table when the agents identified themselves and accompanied them to the front of the doughnut shop, where he was searched and handcuffed. Another friend provided a different account of how Arthur’s arrest had occurred.

“March was walking toward his vehicle when he was jumped from the rear by three men in civilian clothes, and rapidly handcuffed,” said the other friend who had also been with Arthur that morning. “The belt buckle knife takes two hands to open, and could not have taken place by a man with his hands behind his back.”

When asked by a reporter to comment on why there were varying stories about the manner in which Arthur March had been arrested, Gutierrez dismissed the two men’s claims.

“They are his friends,” Gutierrez said.

Following a brief routine procedural hearing, which occurred at the INM offices at the Guadalajara Airport, Arthur was handed over to FBI agents, who placed him on a Continental Airlines afternoon flight to Houston, Texas. Upon his arrival in Houston, Arthur appeared before a judge prior to being placed in a jail medical facility because of his frailty and poor health. Fletcher Long, a lawyer from Nashville that Arthur had asked to represent him, indicated that Arthur would likely fight extradition to Tennessee. Long said that his client’s detention and deportation had not been expected.

“Of course we haven’t heard from our client,” Long said. “We didn’t see this coming.”

Within days, however, Arthur decided against fighting extradition and agreed to return to Tennessee. On Friday, January 13, 2006, Arthur March was picked up at the Houston jail by two Tennessee police officers, who escorted him on a flight back to Nashville. At 10:30
P.M.
, he arrived at Nashville’s Criminal Justice Center, the same facility where his son had been jailed since his arrest and deportation from Mexico several months earlier. He chose not to be processed through night court because of his inability to stand for lengthy periods of time, and instead consented to make his appearance via video while Postiglione presented the indictment to the night court judge. He pleaded innocent to the charges against him, which, if convicted of them, could net him twenty years in prison. Arthur, whose seventy-eighth birthday was only a day away, had expressed concerns about his health.

“He made it very clear in the press that he’s on various medications,” said Metro Jail spokesperson Carla Krocker, who indicated that his health would be closely monitored. “We wanted to ensure that we’re prepared to receive him, but he’ll be assessed like any other inmate for his classification and be held.”

He was being held without bail until a bail hearing could be scheduled, but prosecutors, who considered him a flight risk, said it was unlikely that he would be immediately released. Although his lawyer had planned to ask that Arthur be released on his own recognizance because of his health issues, prosecutors indicated that such a move would not likely occur.

“We have every intention of asking the court to set a reasonable bond based on the health concerns of an elderly man with high blood pressure and heart problems, among other things,” countered his lawyer, Fletcher Long.

 

 

At seventy-eight years old, and facing twenty years in prison, Arthur March didn’t have to stew for very long in jail before he began thinking about making a deal. On Monday, February 6, 2006, barely three weeks after being jailed, Arthur, through his attorney, told authorities that he was ready to make a deal in return for a lighter sentence. When it had been formally agreed that Arthur would serve only eighteen months in a federal prison in exchange for pleading guilty to a charge of solicitation to commit murder and for agreeing to testify against his son, Arthur seemed ready to tell the authorities what they had long wanted to know.