'Balloon boy' Falcon Heene finally reveals how he remembers parents' hoax that shocked America in new Netflix documentary

The child who was at the center of the 'balloon boy' hoax that gripped America nearly 16 years ago has now revealed how he relished in the chaos during the ordeal.
Falcon Heene, now 22, was just six years old when he captivated the nation after his weatherman father, Richard, set off a weather balloon and then claimed it was carrying his son.
For two difficult hours on October 15, 2009, the silver helium balloon, resembling a flying saucer, drifted to heights of up to 7,000 feet across the skies of Colorado.
Falcon's parents claimed that the boy sneaked into the balloon and a frantic search began that grounded planes and involved the National Guard. However, Falcon was found hiding in the attic at the family's Fort Collins home.
Richard and his wife, Mayumi, were later sentenced to prison for what was declared a hoax.
Nearly 16 years later, the Heene family is speaking out in a new Netflix documentary called 'Trainwreck: Balloon Boy' that airs on July 15.
In the new trailer, Falcon confessed that thinks it's 'crazy' how much chaos he stirred.
'I think it was crazy how I was six years old and I was able to affect the whole state of the country,' he said.
The Heene parents defended their actions in the trailer with Mayumi crying, 'You don't get it!'
'All I wanted to do was make a really fantastic project for the kids,' Richard said. 'Everybody starts criticizing us. I'm like, "You've got to be s******g me!"'
At the time of the incident, the family had pitched for a science-based reality TV show, but it had been rejected.
Mayumi later told investigators that her husband wanted attention to secure the show, and a runaway balloon with a child inside could be just the thing to clinch a TV deal.
Richard and Mayumi eventually pleaded guilty to their crimes. Mayumi was charged with false reporting and Richard was charged with a felony count of attempting to influence a public servant.
Richard served 90 days in jail, and the family was ordered to pay $42,000 in restitution for the emergency rescue efforts. The judge also barred them from profiting off of the incident for four years.
The couple has maintained that the incident wasn't a hoax, and they pleaded guilty out of fear that Mayumi would be deported.
In 2020, Richard and Mayumi were finally forgiven for their crimes when Colorado Governor Jared Polis pardoned them.
'In the case of Richard and Mayumi Heene, the 'Balloon Boy' parents, we are all ready to move past the spectacle from a decade ago that wasted the precious time and resources of law enforcement officials and the general public,' Polis said in a statement.
'Richard and Mayumi have paid the price in the eyes of the public, served their sentences, and it's time for all of us to move on.'
The family has since moved to Florida, and a now grown-up Falcon has shared on his Instagram that he builds tiny homes for a living.
Falcon owns Craftsman Tiny Homes, a family-run business in Archer, Florida, constructing several different models available for purchase. The tiny homes range from $25,000 to $79,000.
He shared a video documenting the process of building a tiny home from start to finish.

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The Guardian

44 minutes ago

• The Guardian

America is showing us football in its final dictator form – we can't afford to look away

Should we give it a miss? Is it best to stay away from next summer's Trump-Infantino US World Cup? Depending on your politics the answer may be a resounding no or a bemused shrug. Some will see pure drive-by entertainment. Why would anyone want to boycott a month-long end-of-days Grand Soccer Parade staged by two of the world's most cinematic egomaniacs? But it is a question that has been asked, and will be asked a lot more in the next year. Those who intend to travel will need to answer it by action or omission. Would it be better for dissenting media and discomfited football fans to simply no-platform this event? The picture is at least clearer now. After a week of the new steroid-fed Club World Cup we know what this thing will feel like and who it will benefit. There is no mystery with these events now, no sense of politics lurking coyly out of sight. Under Gianni Infantino Fifa has become a kind of mobile propaganda agency for indulgent regimes, right out in front twirling its pompoms, hitching its leotard, twerking along at the front of the parade like an unholy Uncle Sam. So we had the grisly sight this week of Donald Trump not just borrowing football's light, but wrestling it on to his lap and ruffling its hair, burbling like a random hot-button word generator about women and trans people, while Juventus players gawped in the background. We have the spectacle of both club and international football hijacked as a personal vanity platform for Infantino, the dictator's fluffer, the man who sold the world not once but twice. Infantino's status as a wildly over-promoted administrator has always had an operatic quality. But there is something far more sinister in his political over-reach, out there nodding along at the latest Oval Office freak-off, helping to legitimise each divisive statement, each casual erasure of process. Nobody gave Fifa a mandate to behave like this. Its mission is to promote and regulate. And yet here is it acting as a commercial disruptor in its own sport and as a lickspittle to the powerful, disregarding the human rights fluff and political neutrality enshrined in its 'statutes', offering zero transparency or accountability. To date Infantino's only public interface in the US is a 'fireside chat', AKA approved PR interview, at the Dick's Sporting Goods stage in New York. There he is, up there on the Stage of Dick's, mouthing platitudes to pre-programmed questions, high on his own power supply, the newly acquired Gianni glow-up eyebrows arched in a patina of inauthenticity. They say celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. Take a look at what football can do to you. And so far this tournament has presented the full grotesquery in store. What is the Club World Cup like on the ground? Pretty much the same as it is on the screen given this event is invisible in physical form beyond the stadiums. The key takeaway is confirmation of the weirdly jackboot, cult-like nature of the Infantino-shaped universe. Even the optics are trying to tell you something, all black holes, hard surfaces, gold, power-flash. Why does Fifa have its own vast lighted branding on the pitch like a global super-corporation or a military dictatorship? What is the Club World Cup logo supposed to represent, with its weird angular lines, the void at its heart? An obscure Stalinist plug socket? Darth Vader's space fighter? Not to mention the bizarre obsession with that shapeless and indefinable trophy, present on the big screen in every ground in weird scrolling closeup, one minute a Sauron's eye, the next some kind of finger-snapping torture instrument, with its secret draws full of ectoplasm, a dead crow, the personal effects of Pol Pot. Mainly there is the very openly manipulative nature of the spectacle, football in its final dictator form, with a sense of utter disdain for its captive consumer-subjects. Yes, they will literally put up with anything if we pipe it into their smartphones. So here is beauty, love, colour, connection, the things you're hard-wired to respond to, cattle-prodded into your nervous system for the benefit of assorted interests. Here is football reimagined as a kind of mass online pornography. Fifa even calls its media website Fifahub. With all this in mind some have suggested a World Cup and US boycott is the correct and logical response, not least in two recent articles published in these pages. The organisation Human Rights Watch has carried a warning about the implications of staging the tournament under the Trump regime. Guardian readers and social media voices have asked the same question from all sides of discourse. The hostile versions of this: if you don't like it then just don't come, we don't want you anyway [expletives deleted]. If you were worried about us in Qatar, western imperialist, why are you going to the US? And from the liberal left a concern that to report on sport is also to condone a regime that sends deportation officers to games, imposes travel bans on Fifa members and is edging towards another remote war. And all the while marches football around in a headlock, snapping its underwear elastic, saying thanks, Gianni, for the distracting firework show. This is not a normal situation. So why normalise it? Why give it legitimising light and heat? And yet, one week into the World Cup's rehearsal dinner, the only logical response is: you just have to go. Not only would a boycott serve no practical purpose; it would be counterproductive, an act of compliance for a regime that will happily operate without an opposing voice on the stage. There are two structural reasons for this. And a third that relates to the United States itself, or at least to the idea of the United States, to its possibilities, which are not defined by Trump, by the latest military action, or by Infantino. Most obviously, if you leave the stage you abandon the argument to the other person. Dissent remains a useful commodity. However pointless, ineffective and landlocked the process of pointing out the flaws and contradictions may have become, it is necessary to keep doing so. Qatar 2022 was a dictator show that simply sailed above the criticisms. But someone, however minor, has to make them, to offer at least some kind of counter-view. No-platforming an autocrat's show makes no sense on a basic level. These people would prefer you weren't there in any case. Whereas in reality the people platforming and enabling Trump and Infantino are not journalists trying to give another version of events, but the people who keep voting them into power, friendly dictators, subservient football associations and client media who will be present whatever happens. Fifa and its Saudi-backed broadcast partner Dazn are glossing up an army of in-house influencers and content-wanglers to generate a wall of approving noise. Is it healthy if these are the only voices at the show? Shouting into a void may have little effect. But you still have to shout. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Second, football does still have a value that steps outside the normal rules of show and spectacle. This is why it is coveted, courted and used like a weapon. Last week these pages carnied a logical, entirely legitimate wider view, written by two academics from City University New York, which concluded that a boycott was not just an option but 'necessary'. At the same time, the article defined the football World Cup as something that basically has no value, 'spectacles of recreation designed to distract people from their day-to-day lives, cultural and political branding opportunities for their hosts. For authoritarians, they have long been used as a tool to distract from or launder stains of human rights violations and corruption.' Which is definitely true. But it also reads like a vision of sport defined by the most joyless version of AI invented. Under this version of events no World Cup or Olympics would have taken place, because they are essentially worthless, home only to malevolent actors, lacking any notion of colour, human spirt, joy, art, beauty or connection. Who knows, maybe this is accurate now. It is undeniably true that the idea of football as a collective people's game is fairly absurd. Fans of football clubs struggle with this state of cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, the contrast of legacy identity and hard commercial reality. Liverpool are a community club owned by a US hedge fund. Manchester City see themselves as outsiders and underdogs, and are also owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family. Football is the enemy these days. But both sides of this are important, because without that emotional connection, without the act of faith that enables the warm, human part, everything becomes diminished, all our institutions toxic shells. To give up is to abandon sport for ever to the dictators and the sales people, to say, yeah, this just belongs to you now. No-platforming something that still means connection and culture and history. Are we ready for that yet? There will be another version of the present at some point. The final point is about the US, a deeply divided and unhappy place right now, and a much-derided host nation, not least by members of its own populace. What has it been like here? The evidence is that an actual World Cup is going to be very hard to negotiate, spread over vast spaces, with baffling travel times, unreliable infrastructure, and a 24-hour attention industry that is already busy gorging on every other spectacle available to the human race. The US has a reputation for peerless razzmatazz around public events. And while this is undeniably true with cultural spectacles it invented – rock'n'roll, presidential races, galactic shopping malls, enormous food, rural tornadoes, its own continental-scale sports – the US's version of other people's specialities, from cheese to professional football, can seem a little mannered. But the fact remains the actual games have been quite good. There has been a European-flavoured focus on tickets and empty seats. But 25,000 people on a weekday to watch Chelsea in an ill-defined game is decent evidence of willingness to stage this thing and develop the market. The dismay at 3,500 turning up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando overlooks the upside, the fact that 3,500 people actually turned up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando. Sundowns get 9,000-odd even at home. How many of their South African fans can afford to travel for this? Fifa, which uses its faux-benevolence cleverly, will point out an African team received $2m (£1.7m) for winning that game. Do we want to develop something or not? A wider point is that football here is a game beloved of immigrant populations. There is a different kind of warmth, often among people without a platform or the means to make it to the matches so far. The waiter who adores Cristiano Ronaldo. The taxi driver who wants to talk for 40 minutes about Chelsea's wastefulness with academy players. The cop who loves the Colombian national team and is desperate for his son to see them in the flesh. As for the US itself, it still feels like false equivalence to state that this is now an actual dictatorship, a lost land, a place that doesn't deserve this show because of its flaws and structural violence. This has always been a pretty brutal nation, human life as a constant pressure wave, mainlining heat and light into your veins, but also always taking a bite. The opening week in Miami captured this feeling, football's most hungrily transactional event staged on a sunken green peninsula, a place where the sea seems to be punching holes in the land, but which is still constantly throbbing with life and warmth and beautiful things. There is a nostalgic attachment to the idea of the US for people of a certain age, 20th-century holdovers, brought up on its flaws and imperialism, but also its culture and brilliance. But for the visitor America does seem in a worse state than it did 20 years ago. There is an unhappiness, a more obvious underclass, a sense of neglected parts and surfaces. All the things that were supposed to be good – cars, plenitude, markets, voting, empowerment, civil rights, cultural unity, all the Cokes being good and all the Cokes being the same – seem to have gone bad. But this is also a democracy with an elected leader, albeit one with a lust for executive power and some sinister tendencies. Mainly the US seems to have a massive self-loathing problem. Perhaps you can say it is correct in this, that Trump is enacting actual harms. But Trump is also a symptom of that alienation and perceived decline. He's an algorithm-driven apparition. Say his name enough times and this cartoon will appear. America remains a great, messy, dangerous, flawed idea of a place. What else is the world currently offering? This is in any case where football will now live for the next year, an unquestioning supplicant in the form of its own autocratic leader. The game is not an indestructible product. It can be stretched thin and ruined by greed, is already at war with itself in many key places. It will at some point be necessary to pay the ferryman, even as the US is packed away a year from now and the sails set at Fifa House for all corners of the globe and then Saudi Arabia. However stormy the prospects, it is not quite the moment to abandon this ship for good.

Daily Mail​

an hour ago

• Daily Mail​

Naomi Watts and daughter Kai Schreiber pose up a storm at Armani Beauty event after model teen came out as transgender

Naomi Watts and her daughter Kai Schreiber posed up a storm as they attended a Armani Beauty celebrating Luminous Silk Foundation and Concealer. The King Kong actress, 56, and her model daughter, 16, who she shares with actor Liev Schreiber, were among the stars at Wednesday's event, held at Twenty Three Grand in New York City. Naomi looked effortlessly chic as she donned a navy sparkly smock dress, featuring a boat neckline and draping fabric with stilettos. She was joined by her daughter Kai, who had her modelling debut at Paris Fashion Week for Valentino earlier this year. For the occasion, Kai wore a black high-neck sweater covered in multicoloured polka dots with a matching skirt. Naomi was seen helping her daughter with her make-up in sweet snaps from the event. Kai, who is transgender, recently spoke in-depth about how she had struggled 'with gender identity from a young age' and 'always wanted to grow up and be a beautiful, glamorous, influential woman, like Marilyn ' Monroe. She told Interview Magazine she has studied how people in the transgender community navigated stormy waters in the past. The daughter of the Ray Donovan star, 57, and two-time Oscar nominee, 56, named figures she found inspirational 'as a young trans girl' navigating life through turbulent times for the community. 'I'm always going to look up to the older generation of transgender people, especially in fashion,' Kai told the magazine. 'People like Alex Consani, Hunter Schafer, Hari Nef, Dara, Richie Shazam, Colin Jones, and so many more,' Kai said. 'It's so great that there's a strong community of us in the fashion world; it's really a doll takeover.' The nepo baby said that she had a breakthrough earlier this year when working for the fashion house Valentino. 'That job made me realise, 'OK, this is what I want to do,' Kai said. ' I want to be a supermodel. Period.' Kai opened up to the publication about what she's been doing in terms of honing her craft as a regular presence on the catwalk. Naomi looked effortlessly chic as she donned a navy sparkly smock dress, featuring a boat neckline and draping fabric with stilettos 'I've been practising my walks in the kitchen for years; my mom can show you all the videos I forced her to film,' Kai said. Kai also opened up about her fashion preferences in the wide-ranging chat with the publication - joking she's 'basic, but in a chic way.' Kai said of her couture choices: ' I love my low-rise jeans and black cardigan. That's my go-to outfit. I love when people have their own personal style. 'If you're presenting yourself in a unique, cool way, people are immediately drawn in and want to know more. If every person was walking around in the same outfit, fashion wouldn't be a thing.' Kai said that 'the world [is] more fun' with fashion in the mix. She took to Instagram to thank those involved with the feature as she said: 'I can't put into words how excited & grateful I am for this project. Thank you to the Interview team for the opportunity, and thank you Dara & everyone for making it such a fun and comfortable experience for me on set.' Naomi said on her Instagram that Kai was 'continuing to kill it' and that she was 'proud' of her. Kai has received public support from both of her famed folks, as Liev told Variety last month about what he felt was the most impactful moment as the parent of a trans child. 'Kai was always who Kai is,' The Manchurian Candidate actor said. 'But I suppose the most profound moment was her asking us to change her pronouns. 'To be honest with you, it didn't feel like that big of a deal to me only because Kai had been so feminine for so long.' The Perfect Couple star continued: 'Kai is such a fighter. It's important that she goes, "Hey, I am trans," and, "Look at me."'

Daily Mail​

2 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Was this divorced American diva the original Meghan Markle? The REAL story of the most divisive person to ever marry into the royal family...

An American divorcee. A dazzling wardrobe. A royal romance that ends in exile. Denied the use of her HRH title, accused of corrupting a prince, cast as a threat to the very survival of the British monarchy and relentlessly vilified by the press. No, not Meghan Markle - but you'd be forgiven for thinking so.