Perry then mentioned a newspaper article about a person who had reported seeing him with a dead dog, and insisted that the article was not only ridiculous but had been published to smear him. He told Postiglione that he had not wrapped Janet inside a rug, and he had not thrown her into a Dumpster or into an incinerator. Postiglione said that sometimes, hypothetically speaking, people will come forward with information to help their own predicament.
Perry asked Postiglione his opinion about whether or not he believed that Tom Thurman could help get his wife, Carmen, to Tennessee because she was not an American citizen. Perry indicated that he would tell her that he could be out of prison in five to seven years and ask her to wait for him. He said that he believed she would wait that long, but not likely any longer. He then gave Postiglione his word that he would seriously consider a plea if his conditions were met, and again stressed that he wanted Postiglione to ask Thurman if a plea arrangement was “doable.”
“To be honest,” Perry said, “I am scared shitless about this!”
Soon after landing at Nashville International Airport, Perry March was transported to the Criminal Justice Center in downtown Nashville, shortly after 10
P.M.
, where he was processed through night court. The charges of second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and evidence tampering were read to him. Perry said very little aside from indicating that he understood the charges. He was also informed that he would not be able to post bond—as if he could—until after his arraignment, which would not occur until the following week. Following the procedures of the night court, the Davidson County Sheriff ’s Department made every effort to bring Perry into the jail as quietly as possible. Noting that the jail inmates watch television, they were well aware of the new kid on the block by the time he arrived. For his own protection, Perry was at first placed in an isolated cell.
“A lot of times a new person to the system doesn’t understand that they bring some sort of a trophy at times with their reputation, with their identity,” Sheriff Daron Hall said. “Mr. March has had plenty of attention in the media, both now and over the years, and I think he will be, at least from the inmates’ side of things, an attractive person for them to be involved with, so we don’t want to put him in any danger from that standpoint or anyone else in any danger.”
Sheriff Hall said that the isolation can be difficult for inmates like Perry March, and that it can also be dangerous.
“The first seventy-two hours are the most volatile time,” Hall said. “Perry March fits the profile of inmates most likely to take their own lives—young, white, and rarely arrested. While he’s not on suicide watch, he is under close supervision. He’s in our protective unit, our most secure environment. Mostly, so we can evaluate his physical and mental status and know what we’re dealing with.”
Perry would be required to spend twenty-three hours a day inside his cell, with one hour out for recreation, showers, and telephone calls. Perry kept himself busy the first three days by meeting with attorney John Herbison, compiling a visitor list of people that he would agree to see, and trying to call home, to Ajijic, to talk to his wife and his father. However, he encountered difficulty getting through on the Mexican phone lines, as is frequently the case when trying to place a call from the United States to Mexico.
“Calling Mexico is different than, say, calling Antioch, but we’re making arrangements,” Sheriff Hall said.
The following Wednesday, August 17, 2005, Perry March, shackled at his feet but dressed in a dark business suit instead of the typical jail-issued orange jumpsuit, was brought before Davidson County Criminal Court judge Steve Dozier. William Massey, a second attorney retained by Perry, was with him.
“Perry simply wanted to appear looking as nice as he could, without an orange jumpsuit and with a suit on,” Massey said. Massey, president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, has been practicing law in Nashville for more than twenty years.
“It does appear to be an interesting case,” Massey said, “and we want to know what new evidence the government has been able to come upon in the last nine years that brings this matter to . . . open court.”
Even though security appeared tight, photographers and reporters seemed to be everywhere as Perry was led into the courtroom, which was, at the moment, a media circus.
“Bring Mr. March up,” Dozier commanded.
As Perry stood before the judge in the crowded courtroom, he provided his date of birth and Social Security number to Dozier. After he entered a plea of not guilty to each of the charges, he was led out of the courtroom through the passageway for defendants. Prosecutors hadn’t provided any new information about the evidence against Perry, and his bail had been set at $3 million, an amount that he was not likely to be able to raise.
After leaving Judge Dozier’s courtroom, Perry was escorted to juvenile court to continue a custody hearing regarding his children. The custody hearing had actually begun earlier that morning, but was in recess at the time of Perry’s criminal hearing.
Sammy and Tzipi had been staying with Perry’s brother, Ron. The purpose of the present hearing was to allow both sides to present their arguments as to who should be granted custody. The Levines’ argument was that they should have custody due to the fact that Perry had been deported from Mexico and arrested for his wife’s death.
“This is hard on Mr. March,” Massey said. “It’s hard enough facing charges from a secret meeting being brought against him. It’s very hard facing those charges when you’re also watching your children being taken away from you.”
As many people had expected, a week later, on Friday, August 26, the juvenile court judge granted temporary custody of Perry’s children to the Levines. Ron March, along with Perry’s wife, Carmen, would likely appeal the judge’s decision.
Perry March, through his attorneys, would later file a motion to exclude from evidence any and all statements that Postiglione and Pridemore alleged that he had made during their August 12 flight from Los Angeles to Nashville. Perry cited the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. He claimed that he was not given his Miranda warnings, that the detectives engaged in custodial interrogation or the functional equivalent of custodial interrogation after he had asserted his right to counsel, and that the discussion between himself and Postiglione had been in the context of Perry’s attempt to ascertain what nontrial disposition of his charges might be possible and therefore should be excluded under Tennessee Rule of Evidence 408. After the court cited that his claims were basically without merit, Perry’s motion to exclude evidence of his in-flight conversations with Postiglione and Pridemore would eventually be denied.
For the next several weeks, Perry March shared a section of the jail facility with sex offender Jeremy Paul Duffer, thirty-five, who was awaiting trial on a Tennessee indictment charging him with seven counts of child rape, four counts of aggravated sexual battery involving a child, and two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. Duffer, who worked at a Nashville game store, had been involved in a sexual relationship for several months with a twelve-year-old boy whom he had befriended at the game store.
Also housed in the same section of the jail was Russell Nathaniel “Nate” Farris, twenty-eight, who was in jail on an arrest warrant charging him with aggravated assault that allegedly occurred in a domestic-related fight with his girlfriend. According to his thirty-seven-year-old girlfriend, Farris had been drinking and had taken a Xanax. On house arrest Farris had wanted to leave, but his girlfriend had advised him against it, at which time he purportedly became angry and grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against a wall. After he hit her in the face, she grabbed a kitchen knife to protect herself, but Farris had taken it away from her and held it to her throat, threatening to kill her if she called the police. Bald-headed Farris, with a goatee, mustache, and a tattoo of a question mark on the middle of his throat and another on the side of his neck, looked intimidating. He also had open cases in Davidson County Criminal Court on charges of attempted murder and aggravated robbery.
Perry and Farris had befriended each other shortly after Farris’s arrival at the jail, and they began talking to each other regularly. Neither of them liked Duffer—who would? It wasn’t long, however, as Perry and Farris became better acquainted, before Perry made another huge mistake in his life. If Farris could make bail, Perry wanted to know if he would murder the Levines for him in exchange for a monetary payment and a new life in Mexico. He told Farris that his plan would solve both of their problems, indicating that he would stand a better chance of not being convicted if the Levines were taken out of the picture. He also told Farris how good life can be in Mexico, and that his father would help Farris make the transition to his new country. Although Farris had initially agreed to Perry’s proposition, he began to worry about what he might be getting himself involved in. Needing someone other than Perry to talk to about the murder plan, Farris called his mother, who, in turn, notified Larry and Carolyn Levine. The Levines then reported the plot to Tom Thurman.
“We didn’t know who Nate Farris was,” Thurman said. “We didn’t know if maybe Perry had confessed to him, or if he was just another inmate trying to work a deal for himself. When he described it to us, we asked him if he thought he could get Perry to talk about it, so we could get it on tape. His response was that Perry never stopped talking about it.”
Under the direction of the district attorney’s office, Postiglione and Pridemore provided Farris with a digital recorder with which to record his conversations with Perry about Perry’s plan to have the Levines murdered. Perry’s “intense hatred” for the Levines would ultimately work against him.
Chapter 22
As Perry sat in his jail cell in Nashville, his wife, Carmen, remained his most staunch supporter. Described by those who knew her as a very decent and kind person, and as a person very much involved in her church, Carmen struggled to make ends meet for her and her children after Perry’s sudden departure from Mexico. Perry’s children had loved her, and had accepted her as their mother and not as their stepmother. In the few short years they had been together, Perry and Carmen’s new family had become very tight-knit. Even though she needed the money, she continued to keep the Media Luna Bistro Café closed on Sundays, which, according to the locals, is the busiest day of the week for the restaurant trade in Ajijic, so that she and her employees could observe the day as one of worship and spend it with their families. With two children from a very troubled previous marriage, one from a prior relationship, and yet another from Perry March, it was all that Carmen could do to keep her and her family with a roof over their heads and food on their table. But she continued running the restaurant, and her perseverance became very admirable to those who knew her. A strong woman trying to succeed in a male-dominant society, where it was viewed that a woman’s place was in her home, was certainly not an easy obstacle to overcome—but she continued trying, all the while in support of a husband whom she sincerely believed had been “kidnapped.” Although it was difficult for outsiders to understand why, Carmen maintained that she loved Perry and would continue to stand by him. An attractive woman, Carmen had plenty of potential suitors, wealthier and of much better character than Perry, who had made it clear that they would like to have a chance with her—but she chose to remain faithful to Perry.
Why? many people asked. Perry, like he had done with the Levines when Janet had first gone missing—when he convinced them to wait two weeks before going to the police—was very persuasive in his ability to get others to see things his way or to do his bidding. It seemed possible, even likely, that Perry’s actions in nearly everything he did were the product of a sociopathic mind at work. He certainly didn’t display the actions of a man who had a conscience, at least not publicly.
Things did not seem to be any different as he sat in his Nashville jail cell and plotted his next moves.
“Hey, Perry? Perry? Perry?” Nate Farris called out from his cell adjacent to Perry’s, on Thursday, October 6, 2005. Farris had the digital recording device that would be monitored by Detective Bill Pridemore and Sergeant Pat Postiglione.
“I’m so glad he’s gone,” Perry responded.
“Huh?” Farris asked.
“I’m so glad he’s gone,” Perry repeated.
He was referring to the fact that his neighbor, Jeremy Duffer, the sex offender, had made bail. Someone, a relative, had posted $90,000 for Duffer’s release. Little had anyone known at the time that Duffer, confined to house arrest until trial, would skip bail and become a regular face on
America’s Most Wanted
for the next several months.
“Man, I am too, but it’s, it’s crunch time,” Farris replied.
“It’s okay, wait till I come out . . . ,” Perry said.
“Okay, I’m just gonna straighten up my bed and stuff.”
“Nate,” Perry called out. “Nate. Nate.”
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
“We gotta be real cool now, Nate.”
“Yeah, I’m glad he’s gone, too,” Farris said, his mind still on Duffer’s departure.
“Oh, man, it’s a blessing.”
“When Howard (a jail employee) told me (about Duffer leaving), I thought he was bullshittin’. Howard said, ‘You know your buddy’s gone.’ I said, ‘Who? Perry?’ And he said, ‘No, Duffer.’ I said, ‘Uh-uh . . . well, fuck, it really don’t matter now. Hell, I’m you know, bonding out in the morning.”
“Can I tell you something?” Perry asked.
“Yeah?”
“That’s perfect.”
“Hell, yeah.”
“I’ll come to the door,” Perry said.
A short time later, Perry knocked on the wall to get Farris’s attention.
“Are you able to talk?” Perry asked.
“Hell, yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Perry said. “I thought you were gonna be gone today. I thought you were gonna come back and be gone this evening. . . . So, I was going to try to write all this in a . . . letter. It’s so much better that we can just talk.”
Perry spoke briefly about being taken to the classifications section of the jail facility, where he purportedly spoke to an administrator about Jeremy Duffer. He claimed that he told the administrator, who he also claimed was a friend of his, that Duffer was a “loony tune that you’ve got to get out of here.” He said that he told his friend that “Nate is a good boy. Nate has done everything to keep from getting in trouble.”
“Really?” Farris asked. He wanted to know which administrator was Perry’s “friend.”
“The long-haired fellow,” Perry replied. “He’s a case administrator of the jail. You didn’t know this?”
“Uh-uh!” Farris responded.
“When I first got here, he came up and introduced himself,” Perry said. “You know what he told me? He said, ‘You know my wife, Cheri?’ And I said, ‘I do,’ ” Perry explained that she had worked for him when he was at Vanderbilt and on the Law Review. “You know what that is?” he asked Nate.
“Who?”
“Law Review?”
“No.”
“Law Review is the top, top students in the . . . school.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Perry responded. “I was smart, and we’d write magazines.
The Vanderbilt Law Review,
it’s a magazine and publisher, and we have a staff and everything, it’s published. Anyway, his wife was my secretary.”
“For real?”
“When I was [a] third-year law student, I was the editor of [it]. I was number one in the Law Review. . . . Anyway, so I was really nice to her and I did all kinds of great things for her. Anyway, he remembered me. So, he’s gonna help me get the contact visits and everything. . . . Be [a] real quickie. Anyway, he said, ‘Thank you, Perry, we’re gonna get him out of there now.’ Fifteen minutes later . . . a captain, a black captain, came up here, opened the door, and cleared Duffer’s shit out. . . . They ambushed him.”
“Well, good.”
“Okay, we’ve got to talk about our situation,” Perry said, now whispering and obviously changing the subject. Because of their whispering, some of what they said was inaudible. “. . . I’m one hundred and ten percent on board with everything we’ve talked about. I can’t tell you how excited I am. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Farris said.
“But I wanted to give you time to talk with me about hard facts. Okay?”
“I know, I know but, but . . . it’s just, man, Perry, you know this is all I’ve been thinking about,” Farris said as he deceived Perry. “You know, and especially now that I’m fixing to get out . . . it’s just, it’s, it’s real heavy on my mind. . . .”
“Well, that’s it,” Perry said. “I’m set(ting) some rules . . . some perimeters [
sic
] now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Here’s what I wanted to explain. Your witnesses may not show up in your cases, right?”
“Well, that’s just one case,” Farris said. “Even if my major cases get dismissed, Perry, I’m still looking at twenty, twenty-five years, and it’s at eighty-five percent.”
“Talk low,” Perry said. “You’re talking too loud.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” Farris said, his voice again at a whisper.
“I’ve got about a forty percent chance of walking,” Perry said. “Forty.”
“That’s not good enough,” Farris said.
“I agree . . . hear me all out,” Perry said. “I’m not telling you anything different. . . . It won’t be easy. . . . I’m just trying to explain to you what we have to deal with.”
Farris continued to talk about his percentages of going back to prison, and he expressed to Perry how much he hated being in prison and he did not want to go back. Perry explained to Farris how he did not want Farris to get into any more trouble, particularly for him.
“So that is what I was trying to say,” Perry said. “I mean it, okay?”
“I believe you, too, Perry,” Farris replied. “I’ve never had no big brother, Perry. I’ve never had anybody outside of my family that I just really felt, you know, any real compassion for, man. And, Perry, just talkin’ to you . . . I was kind of at ease with myself because I knew I could talk to you.”
“We’re gonna win,” Perry said.
“I know we’re gonna win, Perry. Look, like at first, I kinda doubted everything, but then just somethin’ inside me was, like, you know, this is gonna come through, and, look, it’s starting to happen. And, and, Perry, look, I’ll tell you something, too. I’ve, I’ve done somethin’ like this before.”
Perry cut in and stopped Farris from talking.
“Hold on,” Perry said. “Now, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna get real smart right now.”
Perry explained that he was going to step back and talk to someone else for a moment, and that he would return in a few minutes. Farris acknowledged his comments, and then could be heard speaking to someone else about an X-Men movie that was being viewed nearby.
“I feel like an X-Man,” Farris said.
Moments later, Perry knocked on the wall again.
“All right, now listen,” Perry said. “We got to make sure that we don’t (inaudible) make it worse for yourself.”
“Well, man, look, Perry. The only thing that can be worse for me is me going back to prison.”
“Well, I know there’s a couple of things that could be worse,” Perry said. He reiterated how they had to play it smart so that none of what they were planning could come back on them. “I’d rather take a shot at forty percent . . . you know what I’m saying? Okay, even if I get convicted, I’ll get fifteen years. I don’t wanna die and neither do you. . . . Hey, trust me. Do you think I’d be talking to you if I had any doubt?”
“Oh, I know,” Farris responded. “I’m gonna be takin’ a great big step and you know . . . right now . . . I’m trusting you with my life.”
Farris explained that he wasn’t concerned about getting the job done, and reiterated that he could do it and said, again, that he had already done things like what they were planning. He wanted some assurances that “the colonel, your dad” would know who he was when he called him and that he would not deny knowing him and refuse to assist him after he finished the job that Perry wanted him to do.
“They don’t know you right now, but they will,” Perry said, referring to his father and anyone else who he planned to involve. “First of all, my dad is the totally coolest guy in the world. . . . If you showed up at my dad’s door right now . . . my dad would . . . feed you like a king and take care of you the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go into it blind, Perry,” Farris said.
“Well, you’re not,” Perry assured him.
“I’m serious about what I’m gonna do,” Farris said. “I’ve . . . done it before, Perry. And you know, there’s not a doubt in my mind that I’m gonna do this. . . . I’ve just got to know that, that once I do, that I’ve got a safe haven. That I’ve got somebody who’s gonna know. . . . the money problem . . .”
“You’re safe,” Perry said.
“Are you sure?”
“Hundred percent.”
Perry explained that he would talk to his dad, presumably about their plan, but for the moment the most important thing for Farris to do was to follow the ground rules that Perry had set up. Perry also said that once the deed had been done, that is, after the police had learned that the Levines had been killed, the police would be at Farris’s door asking where he was at the time.
“We’ll have to put together an alibi,” Perry told him. “You have to stick to the plan and get it done. . . Safety and security are more important, you have to be very careful. . . .”
Perry advised Farris to remain low-key for a while following his release on bail, to go about life as he normally would, for approximately thirty to sixty days, before carrying out the plan. He kept driving home the point that Farris needed to be ready when the cops showed up at his door and began asking questions. When it came time to establish contact with Perry’s dad, Arthur, Perry cautioned him that he had to be careful where he called from. He suggested that Farris use a cellular phone.
Perry explained that he would be contacting his father to fill him in on what was going to happen. He also said that Farris needed an alias, a code name that he could easily remember and use when speaking to Perry’s father. They came up with the name “Bobby Givings,” which had been the surname of a friend of Farris’s from his childhood. Perry said that he would call his father within a day or two from an unmonitored telephone, which he claimed he could use, and would tell his dad that a “buddy,” Bobby Givings, would be calling him. He said that he would instruct his father to take good care of Bobby.
“Well, look . . . let me ask you something,” Farris said. “When this happens, when I get rid of these motherfuckers and I call your dad, he’s gonna know . . . what happened. He’s not gonna flip out, is he?”
“My dad has killed about three hundred people in his life,” Perry said. “My dad was a Green Beret colonel.”
Farris said that he wanted to speak to Perry’s father before carrying out their plan, and suggested that perhaps they meet in Texas.
“My dad is a soldier, okay . . . ,” Perry said. “He’s at the end of his days. You know he’s seventy-six. He wants nothing. He would give himself up for me in a blink of an eye. . . . That’s where he is in his life. Okay, so here’s the thing. If you want, you could even go down there first. He can’t be leavin’ Carmen to come up to Texas . . . because he’s helpin’ with the restaurant and the kids. . . . What you can do is just go down to Mexico first and meet him . . . if that doesn’t violate your parole.”
“Well, I’m not worried about that, you know,” Farris replied. “Perry, look, what I’m worried about is . . . catching both of the Levines together, you know, ’cause I want to—”