Netflix’s Trainwreck series has returned with another set of jaw-dropping disaster documentaries – and the latest might be the most bizarre yet. Balloon Boy revisits a media circus that gripped (and confused) the world in 2009.
Trainwreck is the gift that keeps on giving. With a fresh batch of weekly episodes, each documentary focuses on a scandal that dominated the headlines, from Travis Scott’s Astroworld tragedy to the infamous Poop Cruise.
The latest, Balloon Boy, is truly stranger than fiction. It unfolded on October 15, 2009, when Richard and Mayumi Heene told authorities their six-year-old son Falcon had floated away in a homemade helium balloon. For hours, TV networks tracked the silver UFO drifting across Colorado skies.
But when the balloon finally touched down, Falcon wasn’t inside – he was hiding in the attic the whole time. What followed was a frenzy of media interviews, police investigations, and one unforgettable live TV confession. So… was it all a hoax?
Was Balloon Boy really a hoax?
The general consensus is that the Balloon Boy incident was all a hoax, but Richard and Mayumi Heene now insist that it wasn’t a publicity stunt after all.
Let’s first examine what happened. As is revealed in the Netflix documentary, Richard and Mayumi Heene raised their three children – Bradford, Ryo, and Falcon – with a sense of adventure.
As well as taking them out storm chasing, Richard is an inventor and has always inspired his kids to be curious. Bradford says, “We like to chase a thrill. Dad was always making us look at science experiments on YouTube. We were super interested in UFOs.”
This is what led Richard to come up with the idea of making his own flying saucer. The prototype was constructed from plastic tarps taped together and covered with an aluminum foil.
October 15, 2009, was test day. As they filled it with helium, the tethers holding it down snapped, leaving it drifting into the air. Richard was angry about losing hundreds of dollars worth of material, but Bradford – who was 10 years old at the time – was more worried about his baby brother.
“As I was recording, I remember looking around and not seeing Falcon, and I kept trying to tell him [Richard] that Falcon was in the flying saucer. I was super f**king scared,” he says.
They called the authorities, and what followed was a media storm. National Guard helicopters and local police pursued the balloon as it reached 7,000 feet, with live national and international coverage dubbing Falcon the “Balloon Boy.”
Meanwhile, Bob Heffernan, an investigator at Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, visited the Heene family, searching their home for Falcon three times – but he was nowhere to be seen.
Finally, 90 minutes after takeoff, the UFO landed not far from Denver International Airport. However, as first responders raced to find the little boy, they realized the balloon was empty.
As panic set in, Falcon appeared… in the family’s kitchen. Turns out, he’d been in the attic that whole time.
“On that day I was trying to sneak into the flying saucer. I wanted to live in that little compartment,” Falcon says in the new documentary.
“After dad yelled at me a few times for being in there I was scared and thought, ‘You know what? I’m just not going to be here.’ So, I made my way up to my new hiding spot in the garage attic and just chilled there for a while and fell asleep.
“It wasn’t until I woke up later that I started hearing weird noises, people, and cars. I walked down and there are a lot of people there. It’s crazy.”
This should have been the end of the story, but it was only the beginning. Understandably, the world wanted to know how this could have happened. The Heenes agreed to appear on live TV and speak with news anchor Wolf Blitzer.
Wolf asked Falcon if he heard his parents shouting for him when he was hiding, to which he said yes. Richard then asked his son why he didn’t come out, with Falcon replying, “You guys said we did this for the show.”
This was the turning point. Richard tried to explain that he had no idea what his son was talking about, adding, “I think he was talking about the media asking him a lot of questions.” But the public had made their minds up: Falcon had accidentally confessed to his parents’ hoax.
Things went from bad to worse for the Heene family when they took part in another news interview. The plan was to clear their names, but Falcon was sick live on air, with one spectator saying it played out “like a circus sideshow.”
As questions swirled around the parents’ intentions, news outlets discovered that Richard and Mayumi had appeared on Wife Swap the year prior, sparking even more speculation that the Balloon Boy incident was just a publicity stunt to gain fame.
Richard decided to release the home video footage of the moment his flying saucer was released, believing this would prove to the public that it wasn’t a hoax, but this also went against him.
The clip shows Richard growing angry as his family run around in a panic, with viewers saying it came across as inauthentic and “reality TV show acting.”
The polygraph tests
Another twist arrived on the Saturday, two days after the incident, when Heffernan gave Richard a call saying that he could come and pick up his balloon. But this was all a ruse to get him into the police station to take a polygraph test.
Heffernan and Larimer County Sheriff information officer Jim Alderden soon noticed some strange behavior.
“It was obvious Mr Heene was employing countermeasures by tensing up, not answering questions directly, and doing some mind exercises, as well as almost comically pretending to fall asleep,” says Alderden.
“These are published techniques of things that you can do to try to defeat a polygraph.”
The results were inconclusive, so they tried Mayumi instead. After she failed the polygraph test, she all but confessed to the hoax, simply nodding when they asked her.
“Did you tell the boys what you were doing?” they asked, to which she replied, “We told them. Yes.”
Mayumi, who was born and raised in Japan, now says that there was a language barrier and that she didn’t understand the word hoax at the time.
However, Alderden claims, “She had a degree in English from Japan, went to three more years of college in the United States. There was not a language barrier.”
Thanks to her confession, the detectives were able to pursue criminal charges, including conspiracy, contributing to delinquency of a minor, false reporting to authorities, and attempting to influence a public servant.
Did Richard Heene go to prison?
Yes, Richard entered a plea deal and spent 30 days in prison. Mayumi was sentenced to 20 days whereby she had to sign in each day before carrying out community service.
According to the Heenes’ attorney, the District Attorney’s office came to him with a deal that left them fearing Mayumi could be deported back to Japan. Richard says he didn’t want to plead guilty, but he ultimately did it to protect his family.
Since then, they’ve moved on with their lives, with the whole family relocating to Florida. A new twist in the case unfolded in December 2020 when they were pardoned by Governor Jared Polis, who stated, “It’s time for us to move on.”
Although a pardon doesn’t necessarily signify innocence, Richard takes it that way. “To get pardoned makes a statement in that, you know, I’m a good person. Everything that you said about me before is not true.”
The most important takeaway from the pardon is that it means Mayumi has earned US citizenship.
As for what the family are up to now, they continue to build their “fortress” in Florida, with Richard saying he’s working on something new. He doesn’t give any details away, but he promises “it’s going to be really big.”
Where to watch the Heene Wife Swap episode
Richard and Mayumi appeared in Season 5 Episode 1 of Wife Swap, where they starred alongside their polar opposites: the straight-laced Martell family. Right now, the only (official) way to stream that episode is on Hulu.
As per the synopsis for the episode, “A woman from Colorado who chases tornadoes with her family swaps lives with a woman from Connecticut who is very safety conscious.”
Richard drew criticism for his actions on the reality TV show, with one clip showing him throwing a tantrum about having to wash the dishes.
Taking to Reddit three years ago, one viewer wrote, “I’ve never been angry at a reality show but hooooooooly f**k. They made this dude really friggin unlikable. I was about to fight the TV.”
Another said, “They didn’t make him unlikable, he is unlikable. And a convicted criminal, until the CO Governor pardoned him last year.”
“I just watched this episode! This family would be the family to be involved in that kind of hoax. Overall I liked the episode but damn this dude is so unlikable,” added a third.
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