In Balloon World, a lie worth telling is a lie worth sticking to! In his first television interview since shortly after the Balloon Boy saga that captivated the nation last Oct., mad “storm scientist” Richard Heene tells CNN’s Larry King Live he truly believed that his 6-year-old son, Falcon, was in the homemade balloon when it took off from the family’s backyard in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“My motivation is to simply clear up my name, then do my time and get back to my family. That’s all I’m after.”
Uh-Huh…..
The aspiring reality star, who will begin serving a short jail sentence later this month, maintains that he plead guilty to a felony count of falsely influencing authorities to protect his wife, Mayumi Heene, from deportation back to her home country of Japan. Mayumi plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false reporting, and prosecutors insist they never threatened Mrs. Heene with deportation.
“We had searched the house, high and low,” the tearful father of three said in a taped interview that will air Friday. “I knew he was in the craft. … In my mind there was no other place. I’m not disputing the fact that I did have to plead guilty and when I say have to, I had to do it to save my family and my wife. The threat of deportation was imminent…”