How I Helped Plan the Balloon Boy Hoax

Scheme was a campaign to return to reality TV: researcher
By Marie Morris,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 18, 2009 3:12 PM CDT

Balloon boy Falcon Heene's father, Richard, planned the hoax because he wanted to return to reality TV, claims a former research assistant. Heene "was often driven by ego and fame," Robert Thomas says in an interview with Gawker, which the website acknowledges it paid him for. "He was all about controversy, hoping to whip up something significant enough to eliminate our reality TV competitors."

"Richard had an ongoing dialog with someone at ABC who helped  produce Wife Swap," on which the family had appeared twice, Thomas says. Heene apparently believed that shape-shifting aliens were controlling the government, "and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses."
(More Richard Heene stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X