NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When police searched the home of a missing Nashville woman almost a month after she disappeared, they discovered the hard drive of her computer inexplicably missing, a detective testified Thursday in her husband's trial.

On the evening of Aug. 15, 1996, prominent Nashville attorney Perry March called his in-laws and told them that his wife, Janet March, had packed her bags and left the home after the couple had an argument. She was never seen again.

He told them she had left behind a typed to-do list titled, "Janet's 12-day vacation."

When she still hadn't returned by Aug. 29, March and his in-laws, Larry and Carolyn Levine, filed a missing person's report. Three weeks later, police obtained a warrant to search the couple's upscale West Nashville home and its contents, including the couple's computer.

But by the time police arrived on Sept. 17, the hard drive had been removed from the computer, Nashville Metro Police Det. David Miller testified Thursday in March's second-degree murder trial.

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"The hard drive was definitely gone," testified Miller, while March, a small, balding man, who wears neatly tailored suits to court, listened attentively, occasionally taking notes.

Davidson County prosecutors contend that March, acting on a tip that police were coming, ripped out the hard drive to conceal evidence related to the death of his 33-year-old wife.

In 2004, a grand jury indicted March on charges of second-degree murder and abuse of a corpse for allegedly killing his wife and disposing of her body, which has never been found.

He is also standing trial on one count of evidence tampering stemming from the computer hard drives.

Janet March

But lawyers for March contend that the story their 45-year-old client told in 1996 is as true now as it was then. They agree that Janet March is dead, but they claim she did not die at her husband's hands, and point to a lack of evidence, including a body, connecting him to her death.

During the Sept. 17 search, authorities swarmed the March's wooded, six-acre property with teams of investigators, police cadets, cadaver dogs and bloodhounds, as the Army searched with heat-seeking helicopters. They found nothing.

Lawyers for March also point to his willingness to assist authorities as evidence of his innocence, and Det. Miller admitted that before the Sept. 17 search, March cooperated.

On two previous occasions, March had consented to searches of the family's home, which Janet March had personally designed in the style of a French country house, overseeing each detail of its construction. He provided a voluntary statement and gave his fingerprints.

He also consented to searches of both his Jeep and the 1996 Volvo that he told police his wife had driven away the night of their argument. Police found her car abandoned in an apartment complex parking lot on Sept. 7, 1996, about three weeks after she disappeared.

The 8-men, 8-women jury panel, which was selected in neighboring Chattanooga at the request of the defense, viewed pictures Thursday of both vehicles, along with the contents of Janet March's two bags and purse, which were found in her Volvo.

The items in part corroborated March's claims that his wife left the house with three bags, but other items found in the car raised suspicions of those who knew Janet March as a caring and devoted mother of two.

Behind the driver's seat was her 2-year-old daughter Tzipora's car seat. A baby stroller and a bag of diapers were also found.

Janet March's mother and several friends testified Wednesday that they were immediately reluctant to believe that the loving mother abandon her two children to escape her troubled relationship.

The children's babysitter, Ella Goldshmit, described Janet March as the "ideal" mother who "never failed to sacrifice her time" for 5-year-old Sammy or Tzipora.

"She was smart, caring and devoted," Goldshmit testified through a Russian interpreter Thursday morning. "I never heard her demand anything from her children without explaining why."

Goldshmit also testified that Janet March never left town without notifying her or leaving her a detailed, hand-written note with instructions for the children. She said she received no communications of that kind from Janet March before she disappeared.

Prosecutors allege that Perry March killed his wife in a rage when she confronted him with explicit letters that he had written to a paralegal at the law office where he worked before joining his father in-law's firm.

Outside the presence of the jury Thursday, trial watchers got a taste of the letter's contents in a hearing to determine their admissibility.

Paralegal Leigh Reames testified Thursday that she began receiving several letters of a sexually explicit nature in 1991. She said she received the last one on Aug. 13, two days before Janet March disappeared.

"The letters related to acts that you found offensive?" defense lawyer John Herbison asked the witness.

"Yes, very," Reames answered, avoiding March's gaze.

"But it was nothing violent or threatening?" Herbison asked.

"I felt it was threatening, emotionally," she answered.

An internal investigation at the law firm, Bass, Berry and Smith, eventually determined that March, then a partner, was sending the letters.

After a $25,000 confidentiality agreement was reached between Reames and March, his departure from the firm was discreet and he began working for his father-in-law, Lawrence Levine.

"Did you ever receive your final payment from Mr. March?" Davidson County Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tom Thurman asked Reames.

"No," she answered.