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Weather Balloon Boy father quite possibly a nut -- better on reality show COPS than Wife Swap
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Balloon Boy's father Richard Heene is about to get a healthy dose of reality. The wannabe reality TV star who built a giant weather balloon and concocted a publicity scheme involving a high flying drama that made America think his young son Falcon Heene had floated up into the sky and was soaring aboove the great state of Colorado.
The New York Post reports,
Wacky scientist wannabe Richard Heene -- who convinced the world his 6-year-old son, Falcon, was trapped on a balloon soaring over Colorado and allegedly hoped to parlay the hoax into a reality show -- has come crashing back to Earth.
Friends and associates are tripping over one another, rushing to law enforcement with stories about his months-long planning to set the stunt in motion, suggestions of domestic abuse, information about his long-buried criminal past, and details of his bizarre theories about space aliens and Armageddon.
Among revelations about Richard Heene disclosed to the media by friends and associates:
* Robert Thomas, a 25-year-old researcher who shares some of Heene's strange ideas on weather and had worked with him, provided authorities with evidence that Heene "intended to perpetuate a hoax intended to drum up interest in a reality show," according to Thomas' lawyer.
"He [Thomas] thinks it went off prematurely," lawyer Linda Lee said of the balloon launch. Thomas said Heene began planning the stunt months ago.
* Cops visited Heene's home twice in the past year for domestic disturbances and offered to put his wife, Mayumi, 45, in a safe house after the alleged fraud was exposed.
* Heene, 48, whose temper tantrums were documented on his two appearances on the ABC reality show "Wife Swap," served jail time in 1997 in Los Angeles, court records show. He was charged with misdemeanor vandalism, vehicle tampering and disturbing the peace. He pleaded no contest to vandalism and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, two years' probation and $100 restitution, said an LA prosecutor's spokesman.
* Heene believes he was once kidnapped by extraterrestrials who run a shadow government and that Armageddon will come in 2012.
Entertainment Tonight quoted Heene's mother saying, "Richard told me he firmly believed Falcon was in the aircraft, so I support him until proven otherwise."
Yesterday, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that criminal charges would be most likely be filed next week. He also said little Falcoln Heene's parents "could probably avoid prison" even if convicted of conspiracy and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, but did not say how.
In addition to possible jail terms, the Heene family adults could be fined up to $2 million dollars by the Federal Aviation Administration for their fraud.
Heene's lawyer, David Lane, has now made an official request to the authorities on behalf of his client Richard (father) and wife Mayumi (mother).
Regarding his pleas for mercy made on behalf of his clients, Lane told NBC reporters,
"I've said, 'Look, these folks are willing to turn themselves in the minute that you give me the phone call,'
The lawyer then asked,
"Do not do the perp walk for media consumption . . . That's traumatic for kids."
However, as the Heene family did this all for publicity, the plea to be out of the media focus and limelight comes across as one more sad reason to have the family name in the press.
It's not likely Richard Heene's family will be traumitized by being on camera while arrested, children or adult, as to be on television and enjoy the fame was the whole point of the publicity scam to begin with; to that end, we hope the family enjoys their five minutes of fame and goes down handcuffed for the permanent record in Hollywood style pop culture history.
Instead of pretending they are on the reality TV program "Wife Swap", the couple and kids can simply overact for the cameras and pretend they are the weekly stars of a Colorado based taping of the show "COPS".
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