Champion of nudity found dead in jail cell

Authorities are investigating the death as a suicide. Officials said they found Martinez, 33, of Cupertino unconscious in his cell at the Santa Clara

County main jail at 11:19 p.m. Thursday with a clear plastic bag tied around his head. The bags are given to inmates to carry their belongings.

Martinez, who was alone in his cell, had been in custody since Jan. 10 on charges of battery and assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said. Department of Corrections spokesman Mark Cursi said Martinez had seen mental health professionals in the last couple of weeks, but Cursi declined to comment on why Martinez saw them.

Martinez made national headlines in 1992 as a 19-year-old UC Berkeley undergraduate when he began strolling around campus in the buff for philosophical reasons.

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The Naked Guy, whose au naturel jaunts through Berkeley spurred a nudity revolt in the early 1990s and earned him national fame, died in a San Jose jail cell, apparently of suicide.

While many chuckled at the exploits of Andrew Martinez, friends and family of the 33-year-old talked Saturday about a troubled man who struggled for years with mental illness.

"He was a person with tremendous gifts and charisma who could have been a great asset to our society, but instead I feel like society -- me included -- failed him," said Martinez's best friend, Bryan Schwartz, a civil rights lawyer in Washington, D.C. "It's such a waste."

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