By Chester Campbell
True crime writers take a murder case and explore it from beginning to end, going into great detail about the partipants, their actions, and their motivations. It takes a mountain of research to make sure all the facts are correct. Otherwise, they would likely face a lawsuit. Some do anyway.
Mystery fiction writers take an actual case and change enough of the facts that they can say whatever they wish without getting into trouble. That's what I did in my first Greg McKenzie novel.
I wanted to saddle Greg with a recent troubled past. I had him quickly tire of retirement and take a job as an investigator for the district attorney in Nashville. I needed something that would get him fired from his job, plus anger many in the police department. I picked a case that remained unsolved but was in and out of the news on a regular basis.
A young lawyer had reported his wife, a talented artist, missing two weeks after she supposedly left home for a "12-day vacation" following an argument. Her friends said she would never leave her young son and daughter like that. The police quickly targeted the husband but were unable to find a body.
I changed the husband to a CPA and the wife to an interior designer. They had only a young son. But I kept most of the circumstances of the police search and their concentration on the husband as the murderer.
In the real case, the wife was the daughter of a prominent local attorney, who sided with the police in believing his son-in-law guilty. I made the missing wife the daughter of a prominent banker, who was the chief backer of the district attorney. When my protag, Greg McKenzie, makes some off-the-cuff remarks quite critical of the lead investigator, they turn up on the front page of the newspaper. The wife's father is infuriated and Greg gets fired.
Long after my book was published, the actual case reached a conclusion when the husband's father turned on him and testified he had helped dispose of the wife's body. The story was told in a true crime book titled An Unfinished Canvas, by Nashville author Phyllis Gobbell and Michael Glasgow.
Fictionalizing fact is a much simpler operation. Of course, Nashvillians who read my book recognized the similarity to the Janet and Perry March case. After his conviction in August of 2006, March was sentenced to 56 years in prison. I can't tell you what happened to the young CPA in Secret of the Scroll. That would be a spoiler.
ChesterDCampbell.com
Read my blog Murder Mania
Showing posts with label Perry March. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perry March. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2009
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Nothing Hides Forever
By Beth Terrell
Today, I've been reading An Unfinished Canvas by Phyllis Gobbell and Michael Glasgow. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's an exceptionally well-researched true crime book about the disappearance of Janet Levine March and the eventual prosecution and conviction of her husband, Perry. Janet disappeared in 1996. Although her body was never found, there was a mountain of evidence (including the testimony of Perry's father, Arthur March) that Perry had murdered her.
Janet's murder, like the 1975 rape and murder of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble, hit Nashville hard. Of Marcia's death, Police Captain Mickey Miller said, "In that moment, Nashville lost its innocence. Our city has never been, and never will be, the same again. Every man, woman and child knew that if something that horrific could happen to that little girl, it could happen to anyone." I was 15 that year, older than Marcia, but like most of my peers, I followed the case religiously. For 33 days, while police searched for Marcia, we waited and worried, knowing something horrible had happened and unable to conceive of the evil mind that could have caused it. When she was found and we learned what had happened to her, it felt like the world would never be safe again.
When Janet disappeared in 1996, it was like "deja vu all over again," to quote the famous Yogi Berra. My friend Tammy was in Janet's book group and saw Janet shortly before she died. Later, Tam told me, "We all knew he had killed her. He was always so cold and arrogant. And we knew she would never have left those children."
Once again, my friends and I were riveted by the case. We were haunted by the thought that this woman--this artist, this mother, this book lover--someone a lot like me and my friends (though quite a bit richer) could have been murdered in her dream home by someone she had once loved. Murdered in the very place where she should have been safest.
Worse, for almost a decade, it looked like he'd gotten away with it. But the real-life detectives,, like our fictional protagonists, never gave up. In 2005, March was extradited to Nashville from the Mexican paradise to which he'd fled. The defense attorney insisted that, since there was no body, there was no evidence of murder. In hopes of creating a reasonable doubt, he spun a tale of a mysterious lover who had disposed of Janet's body after she took an overdose of sleeping pills. The jury didn't buy it, and in 2006, March was finally convicted of Janet's murder.
Two years ago, a friend of mine and his hashing group ("a drinking group with a running problem") were holding an event in a wooded area near the Kentucky/Tennessee border. One of the men came into camp swinging a leg bone. "Look here, guys," he said. or something to that effect. "I found a deer bone."
One of the others, whose day job was in the medical profession, paled. "That's not a deer," he said. "That's human."
Of course, they called the police. Waiting for the investigators to arrive, the hashers speculated that they might have found Janet March's remains. It was, after all, in the vicinity of the area where Arthur March claimed he and Perry had dumped Janet's body. They wondered if, at last, her bones would reveal their secrets and be released to her family.
It was not to be. The skeletonized remains belonged, not to Janet, but to another woman, a local woman who had been missing for two years. She too had been murdered.
Occasionally, my friends and I still talk about the Janet March tragedy. "That body will never be found," someone always says. "Perry made sure of that."
But I still hold out hope. Roads are widened and wilderness is developed. People bring their dogs to camp in wild areas. Rain and weather change the face of mountains, bury what lies on the surface and churn up what was buried beneath.
Nothing hides forever.
Today, I've been reading An Unfinished Canvas by Phyllis Gobbell and Michael Glasgow. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's an exceptionally well-researched true crime book about the disappearance of Janet Levine March and the eventual prosecution and conviction of her husband, Perry. Janet disappeared in 1996. Although her body was never found, there was a mountain of evidence (including the testimony of Perry's father, Arthur March) that Perry had murdered her.
Janet's murder, like the 1975 rape and murder of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble, hit Nashville hard. Of Marcia's death, Police Captain Mickey Miller said, "In that moment, Nashville lost its innocence. Our city has never been, and never will be, the same again. Every man, woman and child knew that if something that horrific could happen to that little girl, it could happen to anyone." I was 15 that year, older than Marcia, but like most of my peers, I followed the case religiously. For 33 days, while police searched for Marcia, we waited and worried, knowing something horrible had happened and unable to conceive of the evil mind that could have caused it. When she was found and we learned what had happened to her, it felt like the world would never be safe again.
When Janet disappeared in 1996, it was like "deja vu all over again," to quote the famous Yogi Berra. My friend Tammy was in Janet's book group and saw Janet shortly before she died. Later, Tam told me, "We all knew he had killed her. He was always so cold and arrogant. And we knew she would never have left those children."
Once again, my friends and I were riveted by the case. We were haunted by the thought that this woman--this artist, this mother, this book lover--someone a lot like me and my friends (though quite a bit richer) could have been murdered in her dream home by someone she had once loved. Murdered in the very place where she should have been safest.
Worse, for almost a decade, it looked like he'd gotten away with it. But the real-life detectives,, like our fictional protagonists, never gave up. In 2005, March was extradited to Nashville from the Mexican paradise to which he'd fled. The defense attorney insisted that, since there was no body, there was no evidence of murder. In hopes of creating a reasonable doubt, he spun a tale of a mysterious lover who had disposed of Janet's body after she took an overdose of sleeping pills. The jury didn't buy it, and in 2006, March was finally convicted of Janet's murder.
Two years ago, a friend of mine and his hashing group ("a drinking group with a running problem") were holding an event in a wooded area near the Kentucky/Tennessee border. One of the men came into camp swinging a leg bone. "Look here, guys," he said. or something to that effect. "I found a deer bone."
One of the others, whose day job was in the medical profession, paled. "That's not a deer," he said. "That's human."
Of course, they called the police. Waiting for the investigators to arrive, the hashers speculated that they might have found Janet March's remains. It was, after all, in the vicinity of the area where Arthur March claimed he and Perry had dumped Janet's body. They wondered if, at last, her bones would reveal their secrets and be released to her family.
It was not to be. The skeletonized remains belonged, not to Janet, but to another woman, a local woman who had been missing for two years. She too had been murdered.
Occasionally, my friends and I still talk about the Janet March tragedy. "That body will never be found," someone always says. "Perry made sure of that."
But I still hold out hope. Roads are widened and wilderness is developed. People bring their dogs to camp in wild areas. Rain and weather change the face of mountains, bury what lies on the surface and churn up what was buried beneath.
Nothing hides forever.
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