Few Niagara Falls stunters were able to benefit financially from their jumps — hoping to get rich, Annie Taylor instead died in the poorhouse — but for a time, it looked like Jones just might. Not long after his jump, Dick Garden, the owner of Toby Tyler Circus, offered Jones a $50,000 contract and a percentage of photograph sales if Jones would join his troupe. “He had a lot of media attention,” Garden says. “I thought he might be a draw — the World’s Greatest Stuntman sort of thing.’”

Jones found a home with the circus. He lived in a trailer that was divided into eight rooms, with neighbors like Khan, an eight-foot-tall man from India, and Chuy, the “Wolf Boy” from Mexico who was covered head to toe in hair.

Garden dispatched his business manager, Phil Dolci, to track down Kirk Jones. Dolci hired a private detective, who found Jones living in Oregon, where he’d moved to be with his parents. The circus flew Jones to Texas for a trial run. When Dolci went to pick him up at the airport in Corpus Christi, Jones was surrounded by a phalanx of news reporters and cameramen who’d caught wind of the new hire.

Garden didn’t have much of a plan for Jones at first; basically he wanted him to help the circus attract bigger crowds. But Jones was an awkward fit. He was a heavy drinker and out of shape, not exactly fitting the bill of the World’s Greatest Stuntman. There was talk of having him be shot out of a cannon during the show. Jones was game, but there was an obvious problem: “It involved acrobatics, tuck and roll, but I’m not sure he was good for that,” Gordon says. “He was a little pudgy.”

Instead, Jones was dressed up in a white suit with gold sequins and rhinestones to lead llamas into the ring during an opening procession. Just before intermission, Jones would conduct a Q&A with the audience. “It felt like I was being swallowed by a living beast,” is how we would describe going over one of the world’s largest waterfalls. Later, Jones was tasked with cleaning elephants.

Although Jones wasn’t a great draw, Dolci says he found a home with the circus. He lived in a trailer that was divided into eight rooms, with neighbors like Khan, an eight-foot-tall man from India, and Chuy, the “Wolf Boy” from Mexico who was covered head to toe in hair.

Jones sobered up. He worked out. “He did situps, pushups, he ran in place,” Dolci says. “He viewed the circus as a second chance in life. I think he appreciated not being dead.” To promote himself, Jones would call up radio stations pretending to be a random caller — “kind of like Trump used to do,” Dolci says — and tell listeners to come out and meet the great Niagara Falls daredevil.

The good times didn’t last. The circus folded after a few months, and Jones was out of work again. He moved back to Oregon. He would, however, periodically return to Niagara Falls to try to cash in on his name, signing autographs, taking photos, and attempting to sell the clothes he wore during the stunt.

Louie Antonacci was the only souvenir shop owner who responded to Jones’ pitch to make personal appearances. He’d put Jones up in a hotel when he came to town and let him set up a photo booth. “We never really set the world on fire,” Antonacci remembers. “People liked to talk to him but didn’t want to pony up five or 10 dollars for a picture.”

The two became friends over the years. During one visit to Niagara Falls, Jones and Antonacci visited a section of Oakwood Cemetery where Annie Taylor is buried. Alongside her is Carlisle D. Graham, who made barrels for stunters, and Captain Matthew Webb, who gained fame swimming the English Channel before perishing in the Niagara rapids.

During the visit, Jones kneeled down beside what some have nicknamed the Stunters Section and asked Antonacci to take a photo. “In his mind and in his heart, he wanted to meet other people that were connected, mentally,” Antonacci says.

Jones thought about writing a memoir he would call You’re Kidding Me: A Knucklehead’s Guide to Surviving Niagara Falls. He mused about performing new stunts, like jumping off a building in Las Vegas into foam pads. But none of it happened, and back in Oregon, what was left of his good fortune ran out. In 2007, his father Ray died of a heart attack. And the next year, Jones and his brother Keith were caught selling cocaine out of the Salem home they shared with their mother.

Although it was the first time Jones had been arrested, friends say he had a long history of drug abuse. According to a friend from Michigan named Tony Fox, who once hired Jones for a short-lived painting job, the drug use went back years, as did his problems with Keith. “It’s a sad story,” Fox says.

Kirk Jones after his release from jail in 2003. Photo: Getty

With no criminal record, Jones received probation, but after failing to perform his court-ordered community service, he served five months in jail. When Jones got out, he and Keith moved their ailing mother, Doris, to Florida.

Keith died of a heart attack in 2015, at age 55, and Doris passed away the following year. Jones met and married a woman named Holly Marion, but the relationship fizzled. In 2014, he was caught shoplifting from a Walmart. He was fined $50 and ordered to perform 20 hours of community service.