KUSA – It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s … the fifth anniversary of the Balloon Boy incident.
Believe it or not, five years ago on Wednesday, Falcon Heene and his family gripped the nation for days as rescuers searched frantically for the boy, then 6, whose parents said had floated away in the balloon. Fears quickly turned to skepticism and then outright hostility when the boy eventually appeared at his parents’ Fort Collins home. Richard and Mayumi Heene insisted the boy had hidden in the garage.
Then their history began spilling out. The family had appeared on a reality television show. Richard Heene brought his family along when he chased tornadoes and hurricanes, with his wife serving as videographer.
Court records eventually showed the Heenes were in financial trouble and were working with a production company to create a reality television show based on their lives. Those documents said Richard Heene told a friend he planned to stage a hoax involving a UFO-shaped balloon that would grab worldwide attention.
The evening after Falcon’s reappearance, when Richard Heene during a CNN interview asked Falcon why he didn’t come out when he heard his parents calling his name during the search, the boy said, “You guys said that we did this for the show.”
Falcon’s comment fueled the skepticism, and within days, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office announced that investigators believed the whole thing was a hoax. Investigators got a confession from Mayumi Heene and persuaded Richard to take a lie-detector test during which he apparently faked low-blood sugar in an effort to avoid answering questions. Full story: http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2014/10/15/balloon-boy-anniversary/17294641/
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