Frederick Louis Bodreau Jr. was contracted by Rocky Point Management to make a jump from an airplane on July 8, 1928 to thrill park guests. Bodreau, 28, who worked as a parachute jumper and wing-walker, hired pilot Raymond Menard of Fall River to fly a plane belonging to Armand Pothier of Woonsocket for the spectacle.

The jump had been scheduled for 3 p.m. and as that time neared, Menard circled the drop area – about a quarter mile from the shore, between the park’s wharf and the Shore Dinner Hall.

“How high are we flying?” Bodreau called to Menard.

“One-thousand two-hundred feet,” Menard informed him.

“Throttle down the motor,” Bodreau directed. As the plane slowed down and began to glide, Bodreau stepped out onto the wing and crouched down, a recently-packed, brand new parachute harnessed to him. Those in the distance watched Bodreau jump. The chute didn’t open. The young daredevil plummeted into the deep water below.

Two men on the shore pushed a small motorboat out into the water and hurried to the scene. The closed chute was providing buoyancy for the unconscious jumper and the two men attempted to pull him into the boat, one grabbing Bodreau’s head and the other grabbing the chute. During the recovery, Bodreau slipped out of the harness and his body sunk below the surface of the water.

Professional diver Charles Crepeau searched the bay’s depth with no luck, followed by Warwick Police unsuccessfully moving through the area with grappling hooks.

Bodreau, the son of Frederick Louis Bodreau Sr. and Georgianna (Marshall), was born in Pawtucket on April 23, 1906. He grew up on Lonsdale Avenue, his father – a United States Navy veteran – supporting a wife and two children as a machinist in a machine shop. The family later removed to Fall River where the elder Frederick worked as a machine shop foreman.

Bodreau had been honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps in 1927. He remained on the west coast where he performed the daredevil feats. He returned to his parents’ home on Legion Way in Auburn in 1927. He was called back by the death of his 12-year-old sister Esther. At that time, he settled into a house in Cranston. By the summer of 1928, he and his wife Vivian were in the process of divorce.

Six days after the fatal jump, two men walking along Warwick Neck, discovered Bodreau’s body – clad in a red bathing suit and white skullcap – washed up on the shore. The cause of death was attributed to the shock of falling and striking the water.

The cause of the parachute malfunction was determined to be an erroneous knot tied by Bodreau when he packed the chute. While one of the shroud lines was supposed to contain a slip knot, he had allegedly tied an inside-out knot by mistake. When he later pulled on the line, the knot tightened when it needed to loosen, leaving Bodreau to freefall over a thousand feet into the water below. 

Bodreau was buried in Springvale Cemetery in East Providence, where his sister and both of his parents lay. During his funeral, a plane flying over the cemetery at a height of about 500 feet dropped three bouquets of roses and daisies in his memory.