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.''
Members of the Massachusetts State Police Fugitive Apprehension Unit arrived in Chicago Sunday to coordinate the arrest with their Illinois counterparts, said Illinois State Police Sgt. Lincoln Hampton. The Boston Herald reported that the Chicago connection was made after the FBI matched Porter's fingerprints to a 1993 arrest here. The paper also reported Porter had been arrested four times between 1989 and 1993 in Illinois and Washington state.
The Illinois and Massachusetts teams set out to visit several addresses Tuesday, Hampton said. While investigators were at Third Unitarian Church, 301 N. Mayfield, Porter just happened to walk in and surrendered, Hampton said.
Gotta watch them artistic-types, y'know? The oxymoronic phrase "killer poet" just kinda grabbed me, I must admit.
That being said, how well do you know the people you think you know? What if the guy repairing your phone line is a pedophile? Or the guy yukking it up in the next cubicle is running from the law in another state? It's not outside of the realm of possibility... believe me.
I don't have the same level of trust for people that I once did. I've never been a real "people-person" anyway, but I'm even less so now than I used to be. Maybe it's stemming from reading the news too much, or maybe just being exposed to too many people with closets full of skeletons. Yes, people can change, but I haven't met very many that really do, particularly on their own apart from Christ's transforming power.
What does it take for you to trust someone to be alone with your child? Your car keys? Your wife? Are you sure that's enough?
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