Balloon Boy's Mom Comes Clean

CNN.com:

The wife of a Colorado father at the center of the "balloon boy" saga told authorities that the giant helium balloon was specifically created for a hoax to draw media attention, according to court documents released Friday.

Mayumi Heene told Larimer County investigators that she and her husband, Richard Heene, knew that their 6-year-old son Falcon was hiding at their Fort Collins home the entire time, even as police and military scrambled to search for the boy, according to the documents.

The admission by Mayumi Heene was made October 17, just two days after the balloon was released, according to the documents.

The Heenes initially told authorities that they believed their child had flown away on the balloon, and when the balloon landed without him, they expressed concern that he may have fallen out of the device.

The couple hatched the plan about two weeks before the incident and "instructed their three children to lie to authorities as well as the media regarding this hoax," according to the documents.

Their motive? To "make the Heene family more marketable for future media interests."

The irony here is that Mr. & Mrs. Heene have different lawyers, so it looks to me like Mrs. Henne sold her husband out....possibly for the good of the kids, possibly because she doesn't want to get in trouble with child custody laws. Who knows. Either way, it still says a lot about the state of our media that they fell for this crazy hoax to begin with.