Killer Poet tells the story of Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer from Massachusetts who served 25 years in prison before escaping to Chicago. There he spent the next two decades living as a poet/intellectual by the name of JJ Jameson - an elaborately crafted false identity - until he was apprehended in 2005, thanks to a relentless police investigation and a compromising trail left by his audacious personna. He had just been named Chicago’s “Poet of the Month” when the law finally caught up with him.

Throughout his prison years, Porter had transformed himself in the eyes of authorities from a convicted killer to a trusted prison leader at the heart of the prison reform movement. Today, Porter is back in a maximum-security penitentiary and will likely die behind bars.

To trace the story, the film interweaves varying perspectives on an elusive and enigmatic persona, from the eccentric characters living in the heart of Chicago’s beatnik-artist community, to the victims’ embittered families in Boston and the vigilant officers of the Violent Fugitive Apprehesion Unit and their twenty year hunt for a killer.

Director/Producer/Writer: Susan Gray
Executive Producer: Bestor Cram
Editor: Andrew Kukura