NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Almost 10 years to the day since Janet Levine March disappeared without a trace, her husband went on trial Wednesday on allegations that he killed her in a rage and disposed of her body in a manner that ensured that she was never found.

"This case is about murder, it's about deceit, it's about the abuse of trust," Davidson County Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tom Thurman told jurors at the murder trial of 45-year-old Perry March. "This is a 10-year odyssey that has finally brought us to this courtroom today."

The saga of what has resulted in the most highly anticipated trial in Nashville's recent history began the night of Aug. 15, 1996, when Perry March called his in-laws and told them that his 33-year-old wife had stormed out of their home following an argument, Thurman said during his opening statement Wednesday.

The odyssey would bring March and his two children across the country and to Mexico before he finally returned to the United States in 2005 to face charges of second-degree murder, evidence-tampering and abuse of a corpse.

By 1996, the couple's relationship, which began when they were undergraduates at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s, had deteriorated to the point where Perry March was sleeping in hotels.

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Prosecutors believe that the night Janet March disappeared, she had discovered that her husband, a prominent attorney who worked for her father's firm, had been sending sexually explicit letters to other women and had threatened him with divorce.

Outside the presence of the jury Wednesday, lawyers for March argued that those letters should be excluded from evidence. In a compromise before a hearing to determine their admissibility, Thurman agreed not to mention in his opening the theory of how March killed his wife in a rage when she confronted him with the letters.

The Nashville-bred children's book illustrator and artist had an appointment with a divorce attorney the following morning, but she never made it.

The night before her appointment, March called Janet's parents, Lawrence and Carolyn Levine, and told them their daughter had packed three bags and stormed out of their opulent West Nashville home, leaving behind two young children and a to-do list for her husband entitled "Janet's 12-day vacation."

Among the directives were instructions to pay a BellSouth phone bill, return a movie rental and collect RSVPs for their son Sammy's upcoming birthday party, which was less than two weeks away.

But those close to Janet were unconvinced that the loving mother would leave her children for that long, especially without calling her parents or her friends to let them know where she was going.

"Janet was very protective of her kids. She was very involved in their lives," her lifelong friend, Diane Saks, testified Wednesday. "They were her first priority."

Twelve days passed, and when Janet March failed to return for her son's birthday or his first day of school a week later, her family and friends feared the worst. Finally, two weeks after her initial disappearance, the Levines accompanied their son-in-law to a police station to report Janet's disappearance.

"I believed what Perry told me. I believed she was just really upset and wanted to cool off," Carolyn Levine testified Wednesday, recalling why she didn't go to police sooner. "I guess I believed him because I wanted to."

But several things stuck in the back of her mind, she testified, from the typed style of the letter to the bags she had packed for her supposed 12-day vacation.

When authorities found Janet's bags in her abandoned gray Volvo in a nearby parking garage, Carolyn Levine noticed that her daughter seemed to have forgotten to pack a toothbrush, a hairbrush or any bras.

"It seemed like a bag that a man had packed," Levine testified, her voice quivering as her husband looked on from the gallery.

Soon after the discovery of Janet's Volvo, Perry March told his in-laws that he was leaving Nashville with his two children, Sammy, 6, and Tzipora, 2, to spend a holiday with his family in Chicago, Levine testified.

Instead, he ended up leaving Nashville permanently. The departure set off a protracted and ugly dispute over visitation rights between March and his in-laws that would go from Chicago to Mexico, where March moved his family to be closer to his father, Arthur.

Though March was long considered a suspect in her disappearance, he was not brought back from Mexico to stand trial until 2005.

While in custody, he hatched a plot with his father and a fellow inmate to kill his in-laws. He was convicted of conspiracy charges stemming from the murder-for-hire plot earlier this year.

His father, who testified against him in the conspiracy trial, is expected to testify via videotaped deposition in this trial.

Defense attorney William Massey said the state could not even prove that a crime had been committed.

"They don't have the evidence because it doesn't exist," Massey said in his opening statement Wednesday. "There is no direct proof that Perry March killed anyone."

Before the jury came in Wednesday morning, Massey announced that he had received an anonymous letter from a man who claimed he was involved with Janet March and that she came to him after leaving her apartment.

She then took a handful of sleeping pills and consumed alcohol and drifted off to sleep, never to awake. The letter writer claimed he then disposed of her body.

Judge Steve Dozier granted the defense the opportunity to pursue the matter further, but refused to delay the trial.

The trial is being shown live on Court TV Extra.