David Robinson’s selfless deed, enduring presence honored
Almost exactly 65 years after Robinson’s murder, a flag ceremony was held at his final Acton resting place.
On Mother’s Day 1961, the master of the East Cambridge County Jail — Acton native David Robinson — gave many of his correction officers the day off to be with their families. Although it was his own day off, he reported to work.
He was like that, according to his nephew Peter Robinson, who lives in Acton. Even the inmates liked him.
Robinson planned to spend time with his own mother later that afternoon, once he was relieved from watching the lockup.
He never made it.
Instead, Robinson, then 53 years old with 27 years of service with the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office, would be fatally shot as two defendants awaiting trial — Norman Porter and Edgar Cook — escaped.
Almost exactly 65 years after Robinson’s murder, the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department held a flag ceremony at his final Acton resting place, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where he lies alongside his wife and three brothers.
A wreath was placed on his grave. A bugler played taps.
“David Robinson represented the very best of public service and the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office,” Sheriff Peter Koutoujian told The Acton Bridge in an email following the remembrance. “He gave his life trying to prevent a violent escape and protect our community on Mother’s Day — a day he volunteered to work so others could spend the day with loved ones. We will never forget his sacrifice or his service.”
Peter Robinson, who attended the solemn service at Sleepy Hollow, says the killing devastated the close-knit family.
“Dave’s wife died of a broken heart afterwards,” he said, and “it was rough on my grandmother, losing one of her sons.”
The fatal confrontation
Porter later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case.
He “denied actually pulling the trigger in the escape at the Cambridge jail,” said grandson David Robinson III. “He never took accountability for his actions. It was always somebody else’s fault.”
Porter had been charged with murder in the death of John Pigott, a Saugus clothing store clerk, during an attempted robbery and was awaiting trial in the East Cambridge jail. Cook was awaiting trial for the killing of Cambridge Police Officer Lawrence Gorman, also during an attempted robbery.
That Mother’s Day at the jail, “they were on a skeleton crew, [and] both Cook and Porter were supposed to meet with their attorneys,” Robinson III said. “It gave them an opportunity to get out of their cells.”
Prior to those meetings, a .25-caliber Beretta pistol was smuggled into the jail, according to Robinson III. The attorney meeting room was adjacent to the administrative offices, which had a door that opened to the street.
“A commotion broke out, and my grandfather went to look,” Robinson III said. “He saw these guys unsecured. They somehow knew they needed to get through the jail master’s office to get to the exit. … They pointed the gun at him and said, ‘You’re going to let us go.’”
Robinson responded that it wasn’t going to happen.
Fleeing from justice
After the jail master’s shooting, the two escaped. A massive manhunt ensued. Cook was cornered in an apartment in Boston, where he allegedly took his own life to avoid capture, according to Robinson III.
Porter was captured in New Hampshire four days after his escape, during another robbery. He received two life sentences for the murders of Robinson and Pigott.
Behind bars, Porter was a model prisoner. By 1985, he was being held in a minimum-security facility — from which he escaped.
Porter surfaced in Chicago, where he eluded capture for 20 years and became something of a local legend in that city’s literary circles, as well as a fixture at a church congregation under the alias J.J. Jameson. After his recapture in 2005, he earned the moniker “The Killer Poet.”
Repeatedly denied release — Robinson III testified at every hearing — Porter died at 83 in 2023 while on medical parole.
“My aunt would meet me for these hearings,” the grandson remembered. “It was always so difficult for her. We would read our petitions to the board, appealing to the better angels of their nature to keep him in prison.”
The Robinson family was particularly incensed when, in 1975, then-Gov. Michael Dukakis commuted Porter’s life sentence for the jail master’s murder, leaving in place his sentence for the Pigott murder.
“It shocked everybody, especially law enforcement officers,” Peter Robinson said. “They thought that was a travesty, [for] a murderer of a law enforcement officer, to commute that sentence.”
One family member missing at Porter’s parole board hearings: David Robinson Jr.
“My father was never able to come to grips with going to the parole hearings,” Robinson III said. “He was a stoic guy, but he couldn’t do it.”
The murder left an unfillable void in the Robinson family.
‘He always loved Acton’
Peter Robinson remembers his uncle as a “kind, loving gentleman.”
“He was great,” Robinson said. “He’d go out to the town forest with us and go skating. He knew a place where he could get the skates sharpened professionally. If there was a ballgame in town, he’d get tickets and bring us along. All of the nieces and nephews loved him.”
Robinson was a gifted high school sportsman, playing both baseball and football and earning induction into the Hall of Fame.
“He was a tremendous athlete in high school and prep school — baseball, football, track and field, he did all that,” Robinson III said. “He had several records at Acton High that took years to be broken.”
Ironically for an athlete of such prowess, Robinson “had no depth perception,” his grandson added. “He lost his eye when he was 8. He was in his grandfather’s shop and a screwdriver slipped, and he lost his eye. He had a glass eye.”
Robinson was signed as a pitcher by the Boston Braves — now the Atlanta Braves — according to Peter Robinson, but was unable to complete the contract because of an injury.
“That’s how good of a baseball player he was,” but he was an even better person, Peter Robinson said.
His uncle “was always a pleasure to be around. I always looked forward to seeing him,” he said. “He was a Acton boy; he always loved Acton.”
