Lynn’s ‘killer poet’ denied parole

LYNN – The state Parole Board on Tuesday released its decision to deny release to Norman A. Porter Jr., the so-called “killer poet” whose murder victims included a Lynn store clerk slain during a 1960 robbery on Route 1 in Saugus.While in custody and awaiting trial for the murder of John “Jackie” Pigott, 21, of Lynn, Porter became involved in a Cambridge jailbreak. David Robinson, the jail master, was shot dead during that 1961 escape attempt, although Porter was not the triggerman.Porter pleaded guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to second-degree murder in Robinson’s case and received a sentence of life imprisonment. He was also convicted of second-degree murder in Essex Superior Court for the Pigott case and received a consecutive life sentence. As if to make certain he would remain behind bars forever, Porter received an additional 10 life sentences for armed robbery while masked, charges related to the Saugus crime when Porter and two accomplices burst into the Robert Hall clothing store, robbed the employees and killed Pigott with a shotgun blast.Days before the Saugus holdup, Porter and accomplice Theodore Mavor of Peabody were also involved in the armed robbery with sawed-off shotguns of an IGA Foodliner in Lynnfield and planned to rob a Beverly Farms bank.Porter’s luck began to change in 1975 when the first life sentence for Robinson’s murder was commutated to a term of 36 years and six months to life. The ruling made Porter immediately eligible for a parole hearing. Shortly thereafter, Porter was paroled from that sentence but remained in prison because of the second life sentence.In 1980, Porter escaped from jail for two days. On Dec. 21, 1985 he escaped again by walking away from a minimum-security facility in Norfolk. He caught a bus to Providence, R.I. and then to New York City and Baltimore, finally settling in Chicago under an alias, Jacob A. Jameson, which he picked out of a phone book. Prior to his escape, Porter had stashed about $3,000 in the woods near the Norfolk pre-release center, funds he used to finance his escape route. A fugitive warrant was issued for his arrest.For the next 20 years, Porter lived on the lam, becoming a minor literary celebrity among Chicago’s community of street poets. He was known as J.J. Jameson and often gave public readings. He had a circle of friends and worked for a church. During those two decades he was arrested on three occasions – for drunk driving, shoplifting, and failing to appear on a warrant.The long arm of the law caught up with Porter in 2005 when his fingerprints matched those of a suspect arrested for theft of services in Chicago in 1993. Porter was returned to Massachusetts, where the courts tacked three years onto his jail sentences for the escape.Last Oct. 6, Porter appeared before the Parole Board to request his release. The board took the matter under consideration and in November found him ineligible, offering to review the case in five years.”We’re very pleased with the Parole Board’s decision to reject the arguments he made,” Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said Tuesday. “He has not accepted responsibility for being the triggerman in Pigott’s murder.”Blodgett emphasized that Porter played a role in the death of two men, has shown little remorse and was arrested three times while a fugitive. “He cannot come back before the Parole Board for five years. But the most important thing is, he is off the street. He is where he belongs, and he can’t come up to bat again for five years. We will be there when he does,” the prosecutor said.When Porter applied to the Parole Board for a hearing last year, Nancy Bray, whose mother, former Lynn resident Claire Wilcox, was engaged to Pigott, spoke out against it. “He’s an animal. He belongs behind bars for the rest of his life,” Bray said.Pigott’s murder made headlines for its brutality and because the victim was the son of a prominent Lynn family. Pigott’s father was vice president of Essex Trust in Cent