Did chuck berry assist in the crime in 1944?

Answer 1

Essentially yes, according to his own memoir published in 1987. Here's the way it went down.

In the summer after his sophomore year in high school, he went on a road trip with his two buddies Skip and James. They were heading west and their car broke down a couple hundred miles or so out of Saint Louis. The three of them had only a few dollars between them and no more spare tires or patches. One night Skip told the guys he'd get some money if they would drop him off then come back for him fifteen minutes later. Chuck and James refused to let Skip do the crime alone so they decided they'd all participate.

They stuck up a barbershop and one or two other small businesses. They spent some money on the car and headed back to SL, but had another breakdown en route. After a couple of hours they managed to flag down another motorist to help them by pushing their car with his, bumper to bumper. Chuck slid into the passenger seat next to the other driver and they began the pushing operation. What happened next isn't entirely clear, but the upshot was that they were charged with armed highway robbery and pleaded guilty to it. They got ten years, although Chuck was released after about thirteen months.

I think the store robberies were dropped as part of the plea deal. IIRC nobody had an actual gun, but one of them had the barrel of one with which he threatened the victims.

It's amazing to think how narrowly he missed meeting a premature and violent end of his own making before becoming one of the immortals of rock and roll. It also seems that his PR team was really successful at keeping this sordid episode out of public knowledge. I can't imagine that would have gone down well in the 1950s.