Great Escape
American Daredevil
Kirk Jones was the first person to successfully jump off Niagara Falls with no safety equipment. That was just the beginning of a bizarre and tragic tale.
At night, Horseshoe Falls is illuminated for tourists by fantastically colored spotlights that give it the impression of a once-majestic beast dressed up for a circus. Looming above, the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, does the circus metaphor justice, with its hotel-casinos, wax museums, and strip clubs, popular among the many bachelor parties that visit the area.
On the evening of October 19, 2003, a man with an uncanny resemblance to Ron Jeremy — mustache, paunch, receding hairline — stopped into one of those clubs for what was, given its context, a pretty notable drinking session.
The man’s name was Kirk Jones. He was a 40-year-old out-of-work auto parts salesman from Canton, Michigan. The next morning, he planned on heaving himself into the cold waters of the Niagara River and plummeting over the 188-foot precipice of Horseshoe Falls, the more dramatic of the two cataracts that make up Niagara Falls. Moreover, he intended to perform the stunt without a life-supporting device of any kind — not a barrel, not even a life jacket. Nobody in the history of…
