Love, Lies, Murder?

Surprising Arrest In Disappearance Of Janet March

(CBS) 
How did the Levines choose that day to pick up their grandchildren? They had gotten a warning from the FBI that Mexican immigration officials planned to question and maybe even deport Perry that morning. This would be a good time, they were told, to try once again to enforce their court order for visitation.

“This was a court order in which we were doing what the court said we had a right to do!” says Larry Levine.

While the court order said they had to return the children to their father in 39 days, the Levines were now taking steps to get permanent custody of Sammy and Tzipi. They enrolled the children in a Nashville school.

Back in Mexico, Perry was afraid he was going to lose his children for good. But then everything changed.

“Two heroes showed up in my life – lawyers by the name of Bob Katz and John Herbison – who had been following my case, and volunteered to get my children back for me,” says March.

His American attorneys found a law that changed everything: not a Tennessee law, not even a United States law, but an international treaty.

“The bottom line is that this treaty says that you can’t steal children and try to make custody determinations in the jurisdiction where you stole them to,” says Perry.

His lawyers took the case to a U.S. federal court and won. The Levines were told to send the children back “with all due speed.”

Perry says his kids’ return was a celebration. “The first thing they did is they hugged me and said ‘Daddy, why did it take so long to get us home?’”

By the summer of 2005, Perry and his new family had settled into life in Mexico. Sammy and Tzipi were stars in their school’s Spanish language production of “Grease,” and Perry and Carmen opened a café.

But nine years after Janet’s disappearance, police were about to make a stunning arrest.