Escape Artist Anthony Martin Faces Coffin Skydive At 14500 Feet

Imagine the terror of being handcuffed, chained and locked inside a wooden casket that is subsequently dragged out of an airplane at 14,500 feet. That's the scenario Anthony Martin faces later Tuesday when he takes to the sky over Serena in northern Illinois. "How many of us have never been in a situation that we wished we could get out of?" the 47-year-old escape artist asked recently with a sly grin. And he's quick to insist, he's no fake. Martin said his father shattered his early fascination with magic when he explained the trickery behind a floating pen illusion. So at age 6, he resolved to find a more respectable means of impressing an audience and began studying the art of escape. "I thought that skill and knowledge could surpass trickery and magic," he said. Martin took locks apart until he understood how the mechanisms operate and are put together. "At 10 I had pretty much started to specialize in escapes," Martin says. "By the time I was 13, the sheriff was locking me in his handcuffs. And I was getting out." Jumping from a raft into a lake at age 11 — naturally, with his hands cuffed behind his back — whet Martin's appetite for high risk escapes. So in February 1990, he performed his most dangerous water stunt, in which he was locked in a cage and lowered through a hole in the ice and into the frigid water at a Wisconsin quarry. It took him one minute and 45 seconds to emerge. "It was very, very cold," Martin said. "It doesn't take long for your fingers, even with gloves, to get numb and lose effectiveness ... you have to work very quickly." Martin now is planning to revisit arguably his most dangerous escape — an August 1988 stunt in which he escaped from a casket dropped from a plane at 13,500 feet. It was just his 17th skydive.

• 2013-08-07T21:08:32+00:00
• Duration: 02:05

Share

Keywords

Escape Artist Anthony Martin Faces Coffin Skydive At 14, 500 Feet , Anthony Martin, escape artist Anthony Martin, 2013, news, people, Illinois, Escapista se lanza amarrado en ataúd a 14500 pies de altura , escapista se lanza en ataud, 2013, gente, personas, escapista Antohony Martin