Murder of Janet March

Janet March
Date	August 15, 1996 (1996-08-15)
Location	Forest Hills, Tennessee, United States
Coordinates	36°04′34″N 86°51′11″W / 36.07615°N 86.85302°W / 36.07615; -86.85302
Convicted	Perry and Arthur March
Charges	Second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, two counts of conspiring to commit first-degree murder, (Perry only) grand larceny
Trial	2006
Verdict	Guilty on all counts
Sentence	56 years (Perry), 5 years (Arthur)
Litigation	March v. Levine, March v. Sexton, March v. McAllister

On August 29, 1996, Janet Gail March (née Levine February 20, 1963 ^[1] – August 15, 1996), a children's book illustrator from the Nashville suburb of Forest Hills, Tennessee, United States, was reported missing to police by her family. Her husband, Perry March, a lawyer, told police he had last seen his wife when she left the house on the night of August 15, two weeks earlier, following an argument. He claimed she had packed her bags for a 12-day vacation at an unknown location and driven away. She was never seen alive by anyone else afterwards.

Janet's car was found at a nearby apartment complex a week after the police report, apparently having been there for some time. Other evidence began to suggest that Perry had fabricated some evidence of his wife's supposed motive for departure, and attempted to tamper with or destroy other items that might have provided evidence. Police soon reclassified the case as a homicide, despite the absence of Janet's body, and named Perry as a suspect. Shortly afterwards he moved back to his native Chicago area with the couple's two children. After his in-laws won visitation, he fled with the children to Mexico, where his father, Arthur, a former U.S. Army pharmacist, had retired. The case received attention in the national media, where it was the subject of two segments on the CBS News program 48 Hours.^[2][3]

For several years afterwards, Perry fought his former in-laws in state and federal court over the administration of Janet's property and the status of his children. Janet was declared legally dead in 2000. Nashville police continued investigating the case and found further evidence suggesting Perry had in fact killed her. In late 2004 a grand jury indicted him on murder and other charges in her death; it was kept secret by police until the following year, when they were able to arrange for him to be arrested in Mexico and extradited to Tennessee to face trial. While he was in jail, police learned that March was conspiring with his father and another inmate to have his in-laws killed;^[4] Arthur March was then arrested and extradited himself. After telling prosecutors that he had helped Perry move Janet's body to Kentucky, he agreed to cooperate with them and testify against his son in exchange for a reduced sentence; however he was unable to recall exactly where he had disposed of the body and it has never been found.^[5] Arthur's plea bargain was rejected and he died in federal custody shortly after beginning his sentence.

Perry was convicted of all charges in 2006, despite the absence of Janet's body. He unsuccessfully appealed the conviction in state court, alleging some of the evidence had been gathered in violation of his constitutional rights. A federal appellate panel reviewing his later habeas petition agreed that the case presented some issues but did not feel it had the statutory authority to overturn the conviction on those grounds; and in any event it found the evidence against Perry had been so overwhelming as to make those issues harmless error. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court denied his certiorari petition, exhausting his appeals. He has maintained his innocence throughout the case, and is currently serving his 56-year sentence at Tennessee's Morgan County Correctional Complex.

Background

The couple met as undergraduate students at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s. Both Janet and Perry had been educated at exclusive private schools in their respective communities.^[6]

Disappearance

On August 15, two cabinetmakers who had worked on the house during its construction came to the March house in the afternoon to do warranty work, installing two countertops in the kitchen and tightening a faucet. Janet supervised them closely while Perry played with the children. They completed their work within an hour and left, the last people outside her family to have seen Janet.^[9]

That evening, after the children had been put to bed, Perry, who had spent most of his nights the previous two weeks at local hotels, claims he and Janet started arguing again. Around 8 p.m., he said, he offered to go to a hotel for the night.^[4] Instead, he said, she announced she was leaving for a short vacation to somewhere she would not share with him.^[3] According to Perry, she packed some clothes into two bags and a suitcase, got into her gray Volvo 850 with her passport, US$1,500 in cash and a bag of marijuana. After leaving him a written list of things to do in her absence, he says, she left the house around 8:30 p.m.^[9]

Shortly after 9 p.m., records show, Perry made phone calls to family and friends telling them Janet had left him and the children. He called first his brother and then his sister, both of whom still lived in the Chicago area. At 10 p.m., he told Laurel Rummel, a lifelong friend of Janet's in whom he had confided about the couple's marital problems as well, that Janet had left.^[9] At midnight, he called his in-laws. Carolyn Levine said later that it struck her as unlike Janet to walk out after a fight, but told Perry at the time to have Janet call her whenever she returned.^[4]

Police investigation

After taking the Levines' report, detectives looked through local hospital admissions and Janet's credit card and bank accounts, but found no trace of her. Janet's brother Mark had come to Nashville from California by this time, and recalled that shortly after the report was made an MNPD police car came to the Levines' house. Perry, who was also there, became so anxious at the sight that it took him several tries to stand up from his chair due to his uncontrollable shaking. He then asked Mark to call his own brother, Ron.^[4]

The first break in the case came a little over a week later, on September 7, when Janet's Volvo was found backed into a parking space at an apartment complex roughly 5 miles (8.0 km) from the house. Inside were most of the items Perry said Janet had taken when she left.^[9] The detective who processed the Volvo later testified that there was a layer of dust and pollen on the exterior, suggesting it had been parked there, unused, for some time. There were cobwebs in the wheel wells, and when the tires were removed, the brake rotors were found to have rust on them, further confirming this supposition. Inside, police found a purse with Janet's identification, credit cards, passport and $11 in cash; a suitcase packed with clothing and a small canvas bag with toiletry items. A gray suitcase Perry said Janet had taken was not in the vehicle. A 50-dollar bill was in the glove compartment.^[4]

The front passenger seat had been pushed back, while the drivers' seat was up close to the wheel.^[4] On the floor in front, the former detectives found a pair of Janet's white sandals. The footwear appeared to have been "carefully positioned", they later told a reporter, rather than discarded as a wearer might after taking them off. Investigators also considered it unusual that while Janet's suitcase had been packed with sundresses a woman might wear at that time of year, she had apparently not packed any bras. Nor did her toiletry bag contain any toothpaste or hairbrush.^[9]

That same day, a private investigator hired by the Levines spoke to Perry. She noted that he referred to Janet in the past tense. After the interview, she went to the apartment complex where Janet's car was found and attempted to speak to residents there about whether they might have seen anyone leave the Volvo there. Perry apparently found out she was doing so and called her, angrily demanding that she fax him a list of everyone she had talked to and what they said after she was done, then hung up.^[4]

Five days later, the MNPD searched Perry's Jeep. The same detective who had searched Janet's Volvo later testified that hair and fiber evidence was recovered from the back seat. He admitted under cross-examination that the vehicle did not appear to have been cleaned recently, but said he did smell some type of cleaner or disinfectant.^[4]

On September 10, police interviewed Perry. The detective said he appeared nervous as he was advised of his rights to avoid self-incrimination and refuse consent for a search of his house, rights Perry said he understood as a practicing attorney. He wrote out by hand a statement giving his account of what happened on the night of August 15.^[4]

Perry took the children to Chicago over the next weekend, September 14–15, to observe the Rosh Hashanah holiday with his family, although Arthur did not accompany them as Perry said he could not afford the trip. During this time, the MNPD obtained a search warrant for the March house and told March's lawyer on September 16 that they intended to execute it the next day. When they did, they discovered that the computer's hard drive had been forcibly removed and could not be found.^[4]

The police further investigated Perry's actions since the disappearance. They found that on August 21, almost a week afterwards, he had gone to a local tire store and bought new tires for his Jeep. The tire store owner told them that the existing tires were in excellent condition and he did not see why Perry would have wanted them changed. Perry said he had wanted a different brand. Records also showed that before the disappearance Janet typically used only a Visa credit card and Perry put most of his purchases on a MasterCard, but Janet had not used either since the disappearance while Perry had used both.^[4]

Suspicion of Perry March

Shortly after the search, Perry moved his children to the Chicago area. He rented a house in Wilmette, where his brother lived, and took most of his and Janet's possessions with him. Andrew Saks, a friend who helped him pack on September 18, recalls that Perry seemed businesslike but aggravated at that time. At one point he said that he wanted to "fuck the Levines and fuck the Nashville police", which Saks found alarming; he noted later that Perry did not respond to his offer to help find Janet.^[4]

Saks' wife Diane, a longtime friend of Janet's, also later gave testimony to a possibly incriminating remark made by Perry. She was speaking with him on the phone after his move to Chicago when he suddenly asked if she thought he had killed Janet. Before she could answer, Perry elaborated, asking what she might say if he told her that he had put Janet's body in the back of her car, driven away with the children sleeping alone in the house, and returned "like nothing ever happened?" After that, Andrew told Perry not to call them anymore.^[4]

By the time Perry left the Nashville area the Levines had come to believe this scenario. Many of the Marches' friends came to agree, since Perry had never returned their calls offering support or reached out to them. After the police announced they were treating the case as a homicide, with Perry as their suspect, local media reported on the case. It preoccupied the Nashville area during Fall of 1996 as no local crime had since the Marcia Trimble rape and murder almost 20 years earlier.^[9]

The police brought in Army helicopters, divers, cadaver dogs, and thermal imaging devices as they searched the area's woods for Janet's body. Perry's lawyer informed the police his client would no longer cooperate with them and that they would need a warrant for any future searches of his property. Suspicion deepened in November when Perry did not attend Janet's memorial service; a friend who said he was not yet convinced of Perry's guilt was discreetly told by an intermediary that he should not come to visit the Levines while they sat shiva for their daughter, to avoid any awkwardness.^[9]

In early 1997, the Nashville Scene alternative weekly ran a two-part article about the case that disclosed some new information such as the content of the letters Perry had left for the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991 and the questions about his mother's death. It outlined the police theory of the case at that point: that Perry had killed Janet, in all likelihood unintentionally, perhaps through a hold he might have learned through his karate studies (which an instructor told the Scene he would have been capable of doing at the black belt level), fabricated the list and then taken Janet's Volvo to where it was found, packing his mountain bike in the car so he could return home. They believed he had hidden her body, perhaps initially in the rug Marissa Moody saw (but, at the time, no one else claimed to) and then later somewhere more permanent, possibly with his father's help.^[9]

Perry was interviewed for the article at his home in Wilmette. He compared himself to Richard Jewell, wrongly suspected of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing that summer, and said that he was arranging financing to buy his father-in-law's share of the house and return to Nashville, where he could start his own law firm. "I will not allow one misguided police officer, one vengeful man, and a few low-life journalists to destroy what I've taken years to build," he told the reporter. He also threatened to file defamation suits against the former Michigan classmate who had accused him of assaulting her, The Tennessean newspaper (whose spokesman told the Scene that neither Perry nor his lawyer had complained to the paper about the accuracy of its reporting on the case), and Bass Berry, although Perry's lawyer said he did not think his client would follow through on those threats.^[9]

Although Lawrence Levine declined to comment, the Scene reported that he was equally committed to seeing that Perry faced justice for killing Janet. None of his friends or law partners would talk on the record. "When Larry is lucid," said one who was not identified, "all he can talk about is destroying Perry."^[9]

Civil litigation

Perry's determination to emerge triumphant, and his father-in-law's resolve to destroy him, reflected civil litigation between Perry and his in-laws that commenced shortly after his move to the Chicago area. In October, Perry filed a petition in Davidson County probate court to have himself appointed the administrator of Janet's assets in her absence. The Levines opposed this, and filed their own motion, first in Tennessee and then in Cook County, Illinois, family court for grandparent visitation rights, which Perry opposed with equal vigor. In 2003, a Tennessee Court of Appeals judge writing for the majority in the last decision in the case called it "[31] months of what can only be described as trench warfare";^[15] a dissenting judge agreed that "the acrimonious relation of the parties is resplendent in these proceedings".^[16]

In the probate proceeding, the trial court quickly appointed a conservator to protect Janet's property while the parties resolved their dispute. It warned that given the difficult relationship between them, Janet's liquid assets would soon be depleted if the parties continued, which would force the court to require the sale of personal property to which either or both might ascribe great sentimental value. After Perry moved, the Levines argued that when the court ordered Perry to return some of these personal items, he either did not or returned them in a damaged condition. At one point, they claimed, he had moved some of it to Hammond, Indiana, without telling them until they showed up to pick it up, purely, they alleged, to inconvenience them. Perry also refused to be deposed initially, and then walked out when he was; all these actions led to contempt citations against him, which he initially appealed.^[15]

The Levines filed their visitation petition at the time Perry moved with his children to Wilmette. Perry argued that their real goal was to allow the police and/or the media to interview Samson, which he did not want to permit (in any event, he claimed, the boy was asleep when Janet left).^[4] During an October deposition in the case, Perry invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in response to 15 questions, including when asked if he had killed his wife. This made headlines in the Nashville media and further reinforced the public's perception that he had indeed done so, although legal experts said that was the only thing he could do in that situation.^[6]

Other evidence that would later be used against Perry came from activities associated with these lawsuits. Carolyn Levine was searching the Forest Hills house in early 1997, after Perry had moved and taken most of the family's possessions to Chicago with him. In the garage, she found two envelopes with the logo of a company only Janet used and her name handwritten on them, both containing typewritten letters. These turned out to be the originals of the ones Perry had sent copies of to the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991, and Carolyn called the police. They theorized that perhaps Janet had discovered these, confronted Perry with them and demanded a divorce that night, which led to his murderous reaction.^[4]

In March 1999 a court-appointed Chicago-area family lawyer visited Perry at his house to interview him in the visitation case. She testified later that there were no photographs or other mementoes of Janet in the house, which she found disturbing. After she filed a report recommending visitation be granted, she said Perry became angry with her and threatened to disappear with the children to Singapore.^[4]

Mexico

Ajijic, where Perry moved with the children in 1999

The court awarded the Levines visitation late in 1999. When they arrived in Wilmette to pick up the children, however, Ron March, one of his brother's attorneys at that time, told them that Perry had moved with them to his father's residence in Mexico. "I brought Perry down here because he didn't have any other place to go", Arthur explained to CBS News later.^[13] Within a week of settling down, Perry met a local woman, Carmen Rojas, whom he soon married.^[17]

Back in Nashville, the Levines responded by amending their probate claim to include a wrongful death allegation against Perry. To support it they had Janet declared legally dead. Perry, disbarred earlier that year for misconduct unrelated to his disputes with the Levines,^[18] did not appear in court himself, nor retain any lawyer, to defend himself, and so default judgment was awarded to the Levines. He was ordered to pay them US$113.5 million, which he then appealed.^[19]

Arrest and jail

The resolution of the civil cases in Perry's favor did not deter the MNPD. Despite the continuing absence of her body, two detectives on the department's cold case squad began looking into Janet's disappearance again.^[14] Perry's business activities in Mexico had made him some enemies there, where many expatriates who had done business with him accused him of fraud.^[18][27] The detectives learned that in 2001, Perry threatened a Mexican lawyer and his client that "he would do away with us the way he did with his wife."^[4]

In late 2004 the two detectives and prosecutors began secretly presenting evidence against Perry to a grand jury. After hearing 59 witnesses, it returned an indictment on charges of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. The indictment, like the proceedings that produced it, remained secret while prosecutors worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mexican government to secure the paperwork for Perry's arrest and extradition.^[14]

In August 2005, Perry was arrested at his restaurant as he prepared to open for the day. He was taken to Guadalajara International Airport and put on a plane to Los Angeles. Once it landed, Mexican authorities turned him over to the FBI and he was arrested on the charges he had been indicted for. The Levines initiated another action for full custody of the grandchildren, which ultimately succeeded.^[14]

On the plane to Nashville, Perry was escorted by Pat Postiglione, one of the two cold case detectives. Perry began to talk to him, although Postiglione reminded him that he had no legal obligation to do so. Perry said he wanted to talk anyway, and made some admissions related to the case. He told the detective it was "time to close this chapter in my life" and said he was willing to plead guilty if he could be assured a sentence of no more than seven years. If such an agreement were reached with the prosecution, he promised to be completely honest. Postiglione said he would relay that information to the district attorney's office.^[4]

"Prior to the Janet incident," Perry told Postiglione, "I have not been involved in any other criminal-type activity." He asked about what life was like in prison, the difference between maximum and minimum security. Perry also wanted to know about the evidence against him, whether they had discovered Janet's body or not, and posed as a hypothetical question as to whether someone could be guilty of second-degree murder if the death was accidental. While he had loved Janet intensely, Perry told Postiglione, she had been portrayed somewhat idealistically in the media since her disappearance.^[4]

Trials

Perry was a convicted felon even before his murder trial began. In April 2006 he was found guilty of embezzling $23,000 from his father-in-law's firm over the two years before Janet disappeared.^[7] Two months later he was convicted of the murder-conspiracy charges.^[5]

Two months after that, almost ten years after Janet's disappearance, Perry's trial began. To avoid the effects of pretrial publicity in the Nashville area, jurors were selected from the Hamilton County pool in Chattanooga, and then taken to Nashville to be sequestered while they heard the case.^[28] Prosecutors presented a predominantly circumstantial case-in-chief against Perry, augmented by some forensic evidence and the incriminating statements Perry had made to Detective Postiglione, the Mexican lawyer, his jail neighbors and the Sakses. The manuscript of his novel was also entered into evidence.^[4]

Moody, Goldshmid and Beard testified to what they saw at the March house the morning after. Carolyn Levine testified to the couple's mounting marital problems, her appointment with Janet to see a divorce lawyer that day and Perry's complaint that Janet had ruined his life. Janet's college roommate, who had introduced her to Perry and later moved to Nashville herself to practice medicine, told the jury that Perry had threatened her after she talked to the media, and that she never knew Janet to back her car into a parking space.^[4]

The prosecution presented several witnesses to convince the jury that Perry had taken the Volvo to the apartment complex himself. A resident who worked for an airline testified that he had returned from work around 1 a.m. and seen a surprised Perry walking a mountain bike past him. The owner of a bicycle shop explained how a mountain bike could be transported in a sedan by using the quick release button to remove the front wheel, and said that a muddy stain on the floor of the Volvo in photographs taken of the car looked consistent with having been left by a bicycle tire. Finally the Volvo salesman who had sold the Marches the car said it was designed to hold a standard mountain bike with the front wheel removed.^[4]

Another detective said that lab tests had found that mitochondrial DNA in the hair from the back of the Volvo was consistent with samples recovered from Janet's hairbrush. His testimony was complemented by an FBI forensics technician who had analyzed fiber samples from the rear of Perry's Jeep. They were consistent with carpet fibers, and their colors matched those that Marissa Moody had recalled seeing on the rolled-up Oriental rug.^[4]

The jury was shown a videotape of a deposition given by Arthur March, who had been arrested in January and taken a plea deal on the murder-conspiracy charges of a reduced sentence in exchange for offering evidence against his son. He said he had thought about killing the Levines since at least 2002: "They were liars, they were political animals who used her position with the Jewish mafia and his position with the Democratic Party to get what they wanted," which led the Levines to laugh mildly as they watched. He did not have a high opinion of their daughter, either, calling her "a typical ... Jewish-American princess ... Anything she wanted, if she needed it, she went to her father. To my knowledge, Perry was there for show purposes."^[5]

He did, however, further confirm that Perry had killed her that night, and said that he had disposed of the computer's hard drive in the woods at Perry's behest. After that, he offered the first details about what had been done with the body. A few weeks after the murder, he said, Perry had taken him one night to a wooded area on the north edge of the city, a 100-acre (40 ha) lot whose purchaser he had recently represented, and given him directions to where he had hidden the body in a leaf bag, then driven off. Arthur found it, picked it up, saying it weighed about 50–60 pounds (23–27 kg). After he brought it back to Perry's car, the two drove north to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where they found a motel. While Perry slept, Arthur took his Jeep and drove to the other side of the city. As the dawn broke, he abandoned his original plan to throw it in a creek, since none were deep enough, and instead buried the bag, Janet's clothes, and her skeletal remains within a large pile of brush he found.^[4] He was unable to find the location of the pile when prosecutors took him to Bowling Green again after his plea deal, but they nevertheless found his account credible.^[1]

Perry's defense case-in-chief consisted primarily of attacking King's credibility. Several of the Davidson County jail's correctional officers testified that he had complained about ghosts in his cell and water that ran continuously due to a plumbing problem, and had possibly threatened Perry with physical harm to get extra food from him. His last evidence was a videotape of an interview Samson March had given to a television station in 2000, in which he recalled that his mother had gone to his room and kissed him goodbye as she left, and then he had seen her waving to him as she drove away.^[4]

The video drew three rebuttal witnesses from the prosecution. Samson's kindergarten teacher at University School of Nashville testified that he had been downcast when he started classes on August 27, despite it being both his birthday and the first day of school. When she asked why, he said he was sad because his mother had left two weeks ago and he hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. A Chicago lawyer who was appointed the children's guardian ad litem in the custody case there said Samson told her that on the night his mother disappeared, he heard his parents arguing from his bedroom, and when he woke up, his mother was gone. Carolyn Levine was recalled and testified that not only had the boy never told her about his mother driving away, he would not have been able to see anything but a vehicle's roof from his bedroom window.^[4]

Appeals

As they had said they would, Perry and his lawyers appealed his conviction to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Their chief claim of error was that the trial court should have suppressed his conversation with Postiglione on the plane from Los Angeles and the taped conversations between himself and Farris, and his father and Farris. All of them, Perry argued, were obtained in violation of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination and to the assistance of counsel, since at those times he was in police custody after his arrest and indictment.^[4]

He claimed his conversation with Postiglione had been coerced and his statements not made freely. Nor had he properly waived his right to counsel at that point. And even if he had, he added, the conversations were largely settlement negotiations and thus inadmissible under Tennessee's rules of evidence.^[4]

His conversations with Farris had mostly, Perry conceded, concerned his attempt to have the Levines murdered, a crime for which he had not been charged at that point, and so those discussions were admissible in the trial on that charge. But statements he had made concerning Janet's murder during those discussions should not have been as they were made without counsel present. The precedents the trial court had relied on in allowing them into evidence had, Perry noted, been abrogated by United States v. Bender,^[31] a later decision by the same federal First Circuit Court of Appeals that had decided those precedents. He also argued they served primarily to impeach his character without any relevance to the charged offense.^[4]

In addition to the constitutional issues, Perry also claimed that the letters he wrote to the Bass Berry paralegal, her testimony, and the draft of his unpublished novel were prejudicial to him to an extent that far outweighed their relevance to the case. Further, he said the tolling of the statute of limitations on the lesser charges associated with Janet's murder during the time after he left the state interfered with his freedom of movement, and denied him equal protection of the laws since it only applied to nonresidents. Lastly, he said, even if none of the trial court's errors were individually enough to justify overturning the conviction, the cumulative effect was sufficiently prejudicial.^[4]

Aftermath

All of the civil court actions were eventually disposed. Before Perry's murder trial had even begun, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the 2005 juvenile court decision giving the Levines temporary custody of the children.^[42] The probate action ended with the court assessing a $220,000 judgement against Perry's brother and sister for dividing possessions of Janet's that Perry had taken with him to Chicago amongst themselves after he moved to Mexico; that was upheld on appeal the following year with permission to appeal further denied in 2008.^[43] Later in 2008, the TCCA upheld Perry's theft conviction, but reduced his sentence for the crime to three years since it agreed with him that his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated when the sentence was enhanced based on a fact not determined by the jury.^[44]

Perry is currently serving his sentence at Morgan County Correctional Complex outside Wartburg.^[45] He told the media he volunteers his time in the prison's law library, helping other inmates with their appeals.^[40] He will not be eligible for parole until 2038.^[45]

Neither the exhaustion of his criminal appeals nor his disbarment has deterred Perry's appetite for litigation. In 2017 he filed, pro se, a 200-page suit in Middle District federal court against the TDC and Aramark, its food provider, alleging religious discrimination. He claimed the kosher meals he receives are neither nutritious nor properly prepared, and are deliberately done so in an effort to get him to abandon a kosher diet due to past issues with other inmates falsely claiming to be Jewish and thus driving food costs up.^[46]

Legacy

After Perry had been convicted, Lawrence and Mark Levine drafted changes to Tennessee law to remedy what they saw as its shortcomings, based on their experience fighting Perry in family court. They expanded grandparent visitation rights, and allowed judges to terminate custody of parents found criminally or civilly liable for the death of the other parent. After they were introduced into the Tennessee legislature, they were passed quickly by both houses, with unanimous support. Mark would later point to the experience when he successfully ran for a seat in Virginia's House of Delegates in 2015.^[47]

An art gallery at Nashville's Gordon Jewish Community Center was named for Janet as a memorial.^[48]

Her case is featured on the Season 2, Episode 3, titled "High Society Sins", from the show, Deadly Sins.

See also

• Crime in Tennessee
• List of murder convictions without a body
• List of solved missing person cases
• Uxoricide

References