It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

At least if they are also fugitive murderers (thanks to University Diaries for noticing this story; how does she find all this good stuff?).

In Chicago, he is one of the city's most beloved antiwar poets, an author of two books and a congregation leader at a West Side church. But in Massachusetts, he is notorious for executing a clerk at a Saugus clothing store in 1960, aiding in the murder of a Middlesex County jailer in 1961, and then escaping from a Norfolk County correction center in 1985.

Yesterday, his past and Massachusetts authorities caught up with Norman A. Porter Jr.

Now 65, the man on the ''Most Wanted" list has been living in Chicago for at least a decade as Jacob Jameson. As J.J. Jameson, he has been a frequent performer at Chicago lounges and was named Chicagopoetry.com's poet of the month in March 2004.

It seems that life as a fugitive poet may not have been all that enjoyable:

Horton said Porter is not married and ''looks like a sick old man who hasn't eaten a good meal in about 10 years."

Horton described Porter's home, a tiny second-floor apartment across the street from the church, as a wreck.

''He was living like a pig," Horton said, adding there was dog feces on the floor and clothes strewn about. ''It was a mess."