Update
Balloon Boy Cops' Smoking Gun: Mom's Confession!
ABC
Turns out mom knew it was "for a show," too.
Balloon Boy's mother, Mayumi Heene, has admitted to investigators that the whole "my son flew away" thing was a hoax and that she and her husband, Richard, knew all along that Falcon was asleep at home.
"The motive for the fabricated story was to make the Heene family more marketable for future media interest," states the search warrant served on the family's home last week, which was obtained by the Coloradoan.
Well, no wonder the local sheriff went from being pretty sure it wasn't a hoax to being pretty damn sure it was.
According to the document, Heene told Sheriff's Investigator Robert Heffernan that she and the wishful-thinking Richard had lied to authorities Oct. 15, the day you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing a homemade silver weather balloon run amok.
But what is perhaps the worst thing of all...
Heene said that "she and Richard had instructed their three children to lie to authorities as well as the media regarding this hoax."
Falcon and his upset tummy weren't up to the task, however, and the 6-year-old pricked his dad's proverbial balloon when he said during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "You guys said that we did this for a show."
Indeed.
In fact, according to Mayumi, Richard built the flying saucer-shaped balloon expressly for this stunt, which had the world believing for a couple of fraught hours that there was a little boy trapped in a nightmare straight out of the pages of Roald Dahl.
"The fact that they're releasing an affidavit before an arrest is made—I've never seen that before," Richard Heene's attorney, David Lane, told the Coloradoan, adding that he had not yet seen the document. "It's further proof of what that sheriff will do to further his own agenda and try to make it unfair to the Heenes. The Heenes haven't even seen it."
Larimer County Sheriff James Alderden announced last Sunday that charges were imminent for the Heene parents.
(Originally published Oct. 23, 2009, at 7:09 p.m. PT)
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Once upon a time we just had the gossip-worthy Gosselin family to keep track of.
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