The Heene family built this helium balloon in two weeks. Credit – Courtesy of Netflix
On July 15, the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Balloon Boy takes flight, chronicling the saga of the Heene family in Colorado, who sparked wall-to-wall cable news coverage in October 2009 when they reported that their homemade helium balloon, shaped like a flying saucer, got untethered with their six-year-old son Falcon inside.
Turns out Falcon—nicknamed “Balloon Boy”—was in his family’s house the entire time, nestled in a space above the garage that police missed in their search. When asked why he didn’t come out of the house when it was being searched during an interview with Larry King, Falcon said, “You guys said that we did it for the show.”
That comment started a whole new news cycle about whether the Heene family had staged a hoax. Falcon’s father Richard Heene, an amateur scientist, pleaded guilty to attempting to influence a public servant, and his wife Mayumi pleaded guilty to filing a false report to authorities. Richard received a 90-day prison sentence, and Mayumi received a 20-day prison sentence. In 2020, the Governor of Colorado pardoned the Heenes, arguing that the state needed to move on from the episode.
In Netflix’s latest Trainwreck documentary, Falcon and his parents speak out about this traumatizing period. Here’s how they respond to the claims that they staged a hoax.
Balloon Boy’s side of the story
The helium balloon came to exist because Richard Heene liked to conduct science experiments and film them—often taking his kids out to chase tornadoes. But he claims he never intended for it to come untethered, only hover about over 20 feet over his yard in Fort Collins, Colorado. Built like a flying saucer, it was a tempting attraction for a kid.
“There’s a little compartment there that’s perfect for my size, you know,” Falcon, now 22, says in the doc. “I wanted to live in there.”
On the day of the infamous search, Falcon says he had tried to climb into the balloon a few times but got yelled at by his dad. Feeling “scared,” he decided to go back into the house to his favorite hiding place, the garage attic, where he “got bored and fell asleep.” He remembers waking up to a lot of commotion in the house, and says he went and found a large number of people in the house, but no one recognized him.
Reflecting on the entire incident and the viral Larry King interview, Falcon says he feels like his words got blown out of proportion. “I remember feeling bad that I did something wrong. But just looking back on it now, I was six-years-old and all these adults took whatever I said they were able to string together what they thought was something else and make it so, so big. It’s baffling.”
How the family responded to hoax claims
After Falcon’s comment went viral, the public and law enforcement focused on why the family would have made up the story. Richard and Mayumi Heene had been contestants on the show Wife Swap in 2008, and some wondered whether the “Balloon Boy” incident was an effort to land a reality TV show of their own.
Bob Heffernan, investigator with the Larimer County Sheriff’s office, says in the doc: “I also learned that the Heenes had been working very hard to try to get themselves a TV show. It would be helpful if they ended up in the news or got their name out there somewhere. I think that’s what their motivation was for this whole hoax.”
Despite serving time on charges related to the hoax, Richard and Mayumi Heene maintain in Trainwreck that they were not trying to seek attention with the balloon.
When those comments are played back to Richard Heene in Trainwreck, he says “that makes no sense. Why would I even consider doing something that’s going to turn on me, potentially sending me to jail. Like how am I going to get a TV show doing that?”
As far as those who cite his stint Wife Swap as proof that he was capable of pulling off the “Balloon Boy” hoax to get attention, “People were accusing us of being fame hungry because we were on Wife Swap, which is completely not true. I would have never done Wife Swap in a million years. It sounded gross to me. But they offered to pay us, and we needed money.”
He argues the footage of him and his wife hysterical when they realize the flying saucer is drifting away shows genuine emotion. They’re screaming and visibly upset.
In terms of Falcon’s implication that the family did it for a show, he argued that “he’s only 6,” meaning viewers have to take what a six-year-old says with a grain of salt.
The Heene family moved from Colorado to Florida to start new lives with more anonymity. The incident does not appear to have deterred Richard from doing more experiments. The documentary ends with him teasing a mystery invention: “I’m working on something new, and it’s going to be really big.”
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at [email protected].
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