In-laws fight for kids with man they think is a killer

NASHVILLE - Sammy March was about to start kindergarten, his little sister Tzipi still in diapers, when their mother vanished four years ago.

Janet March, a young artist born into wealth and privilege, is presumed dead, although her body never has been found and no one has been charged.

Her disappearance has pitted her husband, Perry March, against her parents, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine, in a complex and unprecedented child-custody case involving the Tennessee Legislature, the State Department and the judicial systems of Tennessee, Illinois and Mexico.

The Levines want custody of Sammy and Tzipi, now 9 and 6, because they believe March killed their 33-year-old daughter and is an unfit father.

March, 39, says he's innocent and that the Levines have used their money and power to trample on his civil rights. The case is expected to go to trial late this fall.

"This case is . . . filled with emotions about the most fundamental and personal of family ties," said Jeff Mobley, the court-appointed conservator of Janet's estate. "This is a family tragically altered by events we still can't explain."

On the surface, Janet March seemed to have a comfortable life.

She recently had moved into a $750,000 custom home that she helped design. Her husband was an attorney in her father's prominent law firm, and the family was influential in Nashville's Jewish community.

Then she vanished on Aug. 15, 1996.

Friends describe Janet as a responsible mother who would not abandon her children. But March says he came home that day to find his wife complaining she needed a vacation. He says she wrote a 12-day to-do list on the home computer and, while the children were sleeping, left in her Volvo with three bags, a passport and $5,000 in cash.

March acknowledges his nine-year marriage was strained. Family members say Janet was to meet with a divorce lawyer the day after her disappearance.

When she didn't return in two weeks - missing Sammy's sixth birthday and his first day of school - the family went to police. But by then, the trail was cold. Police found her Volvo a week later in the parking lot of a Nashville apartment complex.

An exhaustive search turned up no clues.

March stopped cooperating with police when the investigation began focusing on him. He says he didn't go to police earlier because the Levines wanted to keep family problems private and believed she would return.

March says his cordial relationship with the Levines soon unraveled. He was fired from the family firm, his pension fund was frozen and his Tennessee law license was stripped.

He moved with his children to a Chicago suburb, then in 1999 to Ajijic, Mexico, where his retired father lives. March opened a legal consulting business, ended his children's visitation with the Levines and says he recently married a local woman with three children.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Levine was laying the groundwork to gain permanent custody.

Levine worked with a state senator to amend Tennessee's parental-rights law so a court can remove custody from a parent convicted or found civilly liable in the death of the child's other parent.

He obtained a civil default judgment against March in January as a Nashville judge declared Janet legally dead and ruled him responsible. A jury later awarded the Levines $113.5 million - the largest judgment in Tennessee history.

After seeking advice from State Department officials, the Levines flew to Mexico and, on June 21, persuaded a Mexican judge to enforce a Chicago judge's visitation order. They took the children from school while March was being interrogated by immigration officers.

The Levines returned to a Nashville judge to gain temporary custody and requested permanent custody under the revised state law they helped write.

"The Levines have orchestrated a perfect chess play here," said March's Chicago attorney, Vincent Stark. "It shows that if you've got the money and the power, you can get things done."

March, who faces arrest in Nashville for violating a court order to return several of Janet's personal items to the Levines, is now fighting for his children from Mexico. He believes the amended Tennessee law is unconstitutional.

"I want my kids back," March said in a telephone interview.

"I have been the subject of judicial rape in Nashville . . . and my children have been stolen from me. But there is a United States Constitution, and eventually someone will read it and enforce my rights under it."

Levine attorney Harris Gilbert says the couple always has followed the law and pursued the children's best interests.

"This wasn't an abduction or kidnapping," he said. "They are doing what's right for their family and doing it in a lawful manner."