Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 14:19:05 -0400
From: STUMANGRUM@aol.com
Subject: Cacophony Race of Doom

San Francisco, 7/9/95

What started as an oddball prank took a tragic turn today as onetime
counterculture scenester and San Francisco Cacophony Society member Timothy
Liddy apparently plunged to his death in the icy waters of the Golden Gate.
Though officials expressed concerns that the dive may have been accidental,
or even the result of foul play, others were quick to proclaim Liddy the
1,000th person to commit suicide by jumping from the historic span.  

The trouble started when sixteen members of the pranksterish Cacophony
Society, a longtime fixture in the local underground scene, chose the day of
the San Francisco Marathon to dress up in jogging togs, don the number 1000,
and race to the center of the bridge in a simulated mass suicide. An article
in the Examiner the day before had set the official Bridge death toll at 999,
and expressed concerns among law enforcement and public health officials that
people would be "lining up to be number 1,000."  The Cacophonists responded
with their ill-fated "Race of Doom," a black-humored piece of guerilla
theater complete with official-looking marathon-style number placards for all
the runners. "It was just a joke," explained Cacophony spokesperson Lloyd
Void. "We're just a bunch of harmless kids having fun."

Liddy, on the other hand, was no kid, and according to some sources far from
harmless. After nearly achieving notoriety in the 60's as the unindicted
eighth conspirator in the Chicago Seven trial, the 45-year old Liddy went
underground in 1976 under a cloud of drug, weapons and money laundering
charges. Federal officials were guarded when queried about Liddy's
background. One source, who asked not to be identified, expressed doubt that
the jumper could have been Liddy at all, as Liddy was known by the NSA to be
in Haiti with longtime acquaintance and golfing companion Robert Vesco.
Noting that no body had been recovered from the Bay, he implied that the
whole affair was nothing more than "a crude attempt at disinformation,
possibly by the Mossad."

Eyewitnesses on the Bridge, however, insist that a man matching Liddy's
description jumped, or was pushed, or accidentally fell from the railing at
mid-span at about 6:25 P.M. Members of the Cacophony group were engaged 
in a mock shoving match, each trying to climb up the railing ahead of the 
other, when Liddy apparently went over the side.

Liddy, whose autobiography "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" has been tied up in
litigation since 1982, left no known survivors. His publishers, Duke Press,
referred a request for comment to their Accounts Receivable 
department.      

Subject: Re: Cacophony Race of Doom - Posthumous Postscript
Date: 95-07-11 01:56:46 EDT
From:	sblack@library.berkeley.edu (Steven Black)

One of the surviving Cacophonists on the scene of the Race of Doom found 
this unsigned message, perhaps left by that late millennarian Timothy Liddy:


THOUGHTS OF DYING AT THE THOUSAND MARK
brooding on a morbid body count
off the Golden Gate Bridge
July 9, 1995

Why this of all Sundays
			I decide
				to die
A millstone off the
			bridge
				of life
Gold		molten		red
City's blood
			latticed
				eyes

I seize the night
from under		the sun	a knife of
				water
Caresssing	teeth		steals
		my 	breath 	away
Hello

in

	fin
		
		it


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