Chapter 24
Pridemore and Postiglione found it amazing as they listened to the recorded conversations between Perry March and Nathaniel Farris that Perry could plan the cold-blooded murders of his children’s grandparents and speak his children’s names in the same breath. In their minds he could be nothing less than a scumbag.
“When we heard him talk about, ‘Make sure you do it when the kids are not there,’ we just found it incredible,” Postiglione recalled.
“With his hatred of the Levines,” Pridemore said, “he starts calculating how much better his case will be if they were gone.”
“They were in discussions about killing the Levines five minutes into the first conversation,” Postiglione said. “He thought he had Nate wrapped around his finger. The truth is, Nate had him wrapped around
his
finger.”
“Look, Perry, the main thing is that you’re here, okay. And, look, you know, I’m not, you know I’m not gonna run when I do it now,” Farris said as he and Perry continued their jailhouse conversations.
“You can’t,” Perry responded. “You can’t do anything that compromises (inaudible). . . .”
“I promise you that,” Farris said. “But, look, you just promise me that once I do leave, that I’m gonna be okay in Mexico.”
“You establish that yourself, with my dad—”
“Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly. I just, you know, I’m just . . . All I’m doin’, Perry, is just reassuring myself; you know what I’m sayin’? Because . . .”
“No question in my mind. When I get out of jail and I (inaudible) set up in my restaurant, you’re set up forever in business (inaudible). . . .”
Perry went over the plan again with Farris, reiterating the codes that they had set up, using the name Bobby Givings, the e-mail and telephone communications with Arthur March, and the “sale” of the old BMW Perry left behind in Mexico.
“My dad’s the key,” Perry said.
“Whenever you showed me the picture of him, I can see just, you know that, he kinda looks like the chief Indian or somethin’, you know what I mean?”
“He’s totally cool,” Perry said.
At another point, after telling Farris to not draw attention to himself after completing the job, and to just let the police think that “Mexican hit men” or “guys from Singapore” had done the job, Perry raised a point of concern regarding his father.
“They’ll investigate my dad,” Perry said. “Where was my dad? Where was my brother? I’m glad I thought about it; when you talk with my dad, or my dad talks with you, and somethin’ happens, they’re gonna investigate my dad. The FBI’s gonna be in Mexico and they’re gonna check my dad’s phone records, his bank accounts, and everything. . . . They’ll lead ’em right back to you. . . .”
“Well, look, no, I thought about this. When I call your dad, I’m gonna call from a secure line. And what I mean by that is, like, it’ll probably be . . . a cell phone out of New Jersey—”
“Okay, perfect. . . . Anytime, you make sure that he never calls on a phone that can be traced because they’ll have phone records.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want him callin’ me,” Farris said.
“I know, I know.”
“The first time I call him, it’s gonna be very brief. And, like, when I talk to him, I’m gonna let him know through some of these codes that, you just know, that I’m for real.”
“And tell him he’s gonna get a confirmation from Perry. . . . through Kathy . . . an e-mail . . . that Bobby Givings . . . is lookin’ to buy the BMW.”
“I’m gonna have ta write that down.”
“Just think of the BMW.”
“Kathy, okay, yeah, but see, like, I’ll forget Kathy and all that shit. See that’s one of the things I fear about, too, Perry, is me forgettin’ little bitty things, ’cause when I call and, you know, I say the wrong thing and it spooks him, and he never talks to me again.”
“The key for you is to be thinkin’ about the trails of evidence,” Perry said. “Think about everything you touch, everywhere you go. Video or recorded, there’s links. We have to make sure there’s zero links tying us and the reason we have to make sure there’s zero links tying us is so that they’re not thinking that you’re in Mexico. Hold on.”
There was a lengthy pause before Perry continued.
“We got to be careful (inaudible). I don’t want to be (inaudible), fifty-fifty shot against second degree (inaudible) and then give that up and get nailed on the first degree,” Perry said.
“That’s not gonna happen, Perry,” Farris said. “Perry, look here, before I would let that happen, I’d take my own life.”
“No, I don’t want you to do that. . . . You know, what I really want, I just want two years from now . . . living alone and havin’ money and just relaxing and goof in’ around and we can do jobs whenever we want. . . . That’s what I really want. . . . I’m just gonna tell you, it’s going to turn huge when something happens to them.”
“But, look, ain’t you gonna love it, though?”
“Uh-huh,” Perry acknowledged.
“Think about it,” Farris said, laughing. “I mean, really think about it.”
“Oh, oh yeah, you know, there’s no question,” Perry responded, “as long as my kids are safe. . . . There’s no question, but what I’m saying to you is that the day the DA is gonna come in for me like a fuckin’, like a kissing dog did to a cat.”
“Fuck him,” Farris said. “Look here, Perry. He can, but he won’t. You know what he’s gonna do?”
“Nothin’ .”
“Exactly, nothin’,” Farris agreed.
Perry expressed his relief again that Duffer was gone, that he had been moved to a different section of the jail or had been released, because it suddenly gave them a chance to talk without being overheard, to begin making plans to murder the Levines. Perry told Farris that Duffer’s departure had been a “sign of God,” and that he had been praying for a solution to his problem every night for the past three weeks, asking for God’s help.
At another point in the conversation, Perry reminded Farris again about keeping his children safe when he killed the Levines. Farris brought up the issue of whether or not the Levines kept a safe in their house, and Perry told him that he didn’t know whether they did or not. He did say, however, that he knew that they had an alarm system in the house—Sammy had told him about it.
“The kids will be at school and they’ll both be home, and they’ll both be working on my case,” Perry said, relating a possible scenario to Farris about where the children would be when it came time for him to do his job. “Or they’ll both be, you know, he’ll come to the office for an hour or he’ll come back at night again—”
“Hey, hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if I caught ’em and they was workin’ on the case?”
“Yeah,” Perry responded.
“I’d take every bit of information they had,” Farris said, referring to information that they had undoubtedly put together about Perry.
“Yeah.”
“You hear me,” Farris said. “Why, no, I wouldn’t, either; I wouldn’t touch that, but I will tear up the walls and everything, like I’m there looking for somethin’ specific. I would take their rings and you know—”
“But I think there’s plenty of opportunities when my kids aren’t there,” Perry said. “Carolyn stays at home all the time.”
“Aw, well, look that’s good,” Farris said. “I’m not messed up with stayin’ in the house with Carolyn for, you know, four or five hours waitin’ on old Lawrence to come home.”
“Yeah, but the problem is that her brother could come over. . . . My sister-in-law could be bringin’ Tzipi . . . back.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Well, I’m not just gonna watch ’em for two or three days,” Farris said. “You feel me? I’m gonna watch ’em a lot longer, you know, people have patterns, you know what I mean? And, like you know, too, we might get lucky, you know, like they might have a paper delivered and they come and get the paper. You know they walk out to get the paper, or, you know, they might have like when they come out to get the mail out of the mailbox, just anything. I’ll find their patterns, and, you know, I’m just gonna have to time it right and it’s not that hard.”
“No, it’s not,” Perry agreed. “It’s just havin’ the balls and goin’ and havin’ good instinct.”
“Look here, balls and that’s it; balls and instinct,” Farris said. “You know, listen to your gut.”
“The thing you have to remember,” Perry said, “is that you gotta clear the house of kids, make sure there’s no kids there. . . . And then you have to wait for the opportunity of when they’re together . . . and then you leave no trace of evidence!”
They talked briefly of making the murders look like they were the product of a burglary or a robbery, and spoke of somehow getting the fingerprints of another person onto the murder weapon, most likely a gun.
“Well, the idea of makin’ it look like a burglary/robbery, that’s good,” Farris said.
“Exactly; you get a weapon or a club or crowbar held on to by somebody else,” Perry said.
“Yeah.”
“And leave it in the house.”
“Yeah. Hell, look, hey, look here,” Farris said. “I can, you know; look, I can go down to the projects with one of my guns . . . at any time there’s seven or eight people, you know, hanging out selling dope. And, look, I can just walk up and say, ‘Here, man, hold this while I go around here and talk to so and so,’ and let them hold the pistol.”
“And leave the gun in the house,” Perry added.
“Exactly, leave that gun in the house.”
“But make sure it’s fired,” Perry said.
“Oh yeah. Well, look, I can get ’em to fire it.”
“What you do is, like, what you do is you think everything ahead, every step ahead, every step . . . ,” Perry said. “No connection to me or you, see?”
Their conversation soon ended because of a visit from one of Perry’s lawyers. When he was certain that Perry had left the area to go to a visitation room, Farris said the following into the digital recording device:
“Perry just went to see his lawyer, but I’m gonna leave the tape recorder runnin’ ’cause I don’t wanna risk cuttin’ it off and losin’ everything that I’ve got so far. Also, this, uh, list with all these codes words on it, I wrote it in my writin’, but I handed it to him, like two or three different times, to get him to check. Well, just to get his fingerprints on it.”
Perry went to sleep that evening after meeting with his lawyer. He had taken some medication that he had obtained from the jail’s infirmary, which would help him sleep, and therefore could not continue his conversations with Farris until the following morning. They would have approximately two hours to go over their plans again before Farris “made bail.”
Early the next morning, after Perry’s typical knocking on the wall to get Farris’s attention, the two conspirators went over their plans to murder the Levines again, and Perry advised Farris to be careful with e-mail if he used it. He explained to Farris in detail how each computer leaves an Internet service provider (ISP) address that can be traced back to a locale and eventually to a specific computer. Because of this, he advised Farris to use a computer at an Internet café that was not located in Nashville or anywhere near Nashville. Perry also revealed the excitement that he was feeling as a result of all the planning that he and Farris had done, and over their future plans together as “partners.”
“Here, I’ll tell you this,” Perry said, “this is going to be fun. You know why?”
“Why?”
“I’m already figuring this. I’m already startin’ to get a touch of this. We’re gonna be fuckin’ outrageous. When we’re out, can you imagine the two of us havin’ a fuckin’ week on the beach to plan something? I’m so juiced for that, it gives me something totally to look forward to. Nate, can I tell you something? I’m telling you right now. That’s my job.”
“That’s your job,” Farris repeated.
“It’s my . . . I think of this as my career,” Perry said.
“Yeah, well, that’s gonna be my career, too. You know, Perry, I can’t work at McDonald’s. . . .”
“I understand.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You understand our career. I’m not thinking about anything else,” Perry said. “I’m thinking about my career.”
“Well, what a career it’ll be, too,” Farris said. “I’d say what we’d make, like an average an hour, what a couple of grand an hour or—”
“An hour?”
“Yeah.”
“Literally, for an hour of real work . . . we make twenty grand an hour.”
“Twenty grand an hour,” Farris repeated, laughing. “Hey, Perry, none of our lawyers or . . . even the Levines make that much an hour.”
“Especially when you only got to work two or three hours a month.”
Following the discussion about their careers, Perry started in again on the importance of e-mail security, how computers work, and so forth. It was revealing, if not chilling, in that it depicted in his own words just how savvy he really was about the inner workings of a computer. It showed that someone with his knowledge would have little or no difficulty locating and removing a hard drive from the inside of a computer. The fact that Perry wanted to educate Farris on how to effectively delete e-mail from a computer—so that it couldn’t be retrieved later—opened the door for Farris to be able to show Perry’s father how to eradicate anything incriminating from his own computer when Farris met up with him in Mexico.
“When I take the trip down there,” Farris said, “I can actually show him in person how to get rid of it.”
“Yeah, while I think he knows how to delete, but it’s a little bit more complicated than just wanting to delete,” Perry said. “Just let me explain to you about computers. . . The hard disc is a round disc . . . on it, it puts information magnetically.. . . It shoots it and keeps it on there. What a computer does, when it wants to find something, it sends its little optical reader, and it finds that piece of information, and reads it. When you, quote, unquote, delete something from your computer . . . what it does is it takes away the code.”