Be Careful Who You Boo Off The Stage

From the Chicago Sun-Times: Killer Poet Caught On West Side

In Chicago, J.J. Jameson's voice resonated deeply on poetry stages. He marched for peace and even helped set up chairs at community policing meetings in his Far West Side neighborhood.

But in Massachusetts, Jameson's story is a much darker tale of murder and jail break and a 20-year run from the law.

On Tuesday morning, Massachusetts authorities finally caught up with Jameson -- whose real name is Norman A. Porter Jr. -- and arrested the twice-convicted murderer. Porter was picked up at the West Side church where he worshipped after simply walking into the church office.

Porter, 65, appears to have been in Chicago for at least the past decade and possibly the whole time he's been a fugitive. He made a name for himself as a poet, local handyman and quirky neighbor. He occasionally talked of family and growing up on the East Coast, but neighbors said the anecdotes were short on details.

"This is a huge one,'' said Marc Smith, a Chicago poet. "It will be shocking to everybody and a little disconcerting. That's pretty wild.''

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He had served 26 years in prison for the 1960 execution-style shooting of a clothing store clerk in Saugus, Mass., and the 1961 shooting death of a jail master at the Middlesex County Jail, where Porter was housed while waiting for his trial on the murder of the store clerk.

Porter attacked the jail employee during the jailbreak while another inmate, who also was breaking out, shot him, according to Massachusetts State Police. Porter was arrested a week later trying to rob a store in New Hampshire.

Once back behind bars, Porter earned an undergraduate degree from Boston University. He published poetry, founded a prison newspaper and by 1975 had his first life sentence commuted and began serving his second life sentence, according to Massachusetts state police.

He was transferred to Norfolk in September 1985, where he did maintenance work on prison grounds. In December, Porter walked away from the facility.

In various alerts issued over the years by Massachusetts, Porter is described as a diversely talented activist and poet. That much seems to have carried over to his life in Chicago, where he sometimes turned up at the city's well-known poetry slam at the Green Mill in Uptown.

"He was a total character,'' said Smith, who runs the slam. "The old anarchist. .. . If you tried to pin him down and be serious, he was going to [mess] with your mind.''

Smith said he loved watching Porter engage with the audience, who often booed him off during the sometimes raucous, loose slam. He said he was also sometimes hard to control.