
The Balloon Boy Hoax Solved - eplanit
https://www.5280.com/2019/09/the-balloon-boy-hoax-solved
======
bArray
The Internet Historian did quite a good cover of this story:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY)

~~~
starpilot
This is at odds with the article. IH (whom I'm a big fan of) makes a good case
that it wasn't a hoax at all, but he didn't talk directly to the family like
in this article. I'm not sure which to believe.

------
gomijacogeo
This is not a well-written article and is in a style that is almost impossible
to scan.

tl;dr:

1\. Richard, the perpetual fuck-up and fame whore. 2\. The balloon-boy saga.
3\. The balloon-boy aftermath, and legal consequences. 4\. Richard whines that
his felony conviction prevented him from striking it rich on Shark Tank and
tries to turn his kids into a heavy metal version of Hanson. Fails, of course.
5\. Later, the author gets access to the wife's case file through her lawyer
and finds contemporaneous notes she wrote detailing the planning of the
balloon-boy hoax. 6\. When confronted with this evidence, Richard needs a few
days to process. 7\. When Richard finally contacts back, the wife all of a
sudden breaks down and confesses the notes were a lie made after the fact to
protect the family - Richard is simultaneously shocked at the betrayal and
urging her to speak up so the reporter can hear her. 8\. Reporter concludes
Richard is still full of shit and coaxed the wife into claiming the notes
aren't valid.

------
StavrosK
I'm a bit confused. So they really didn't know the kid wasn't in the balloon?

~~~
tjwds
The ending got really dark, really quickly, but this is what I got out of it:

It's heavily implied that the writer thinks Mayumi was telling the truth in
her written account, despite what she and Richard said when they called back:
that Richard asked Falcon to hide in the basement, and when he wasn't down
there, they were legitimately concerned that he could have actually been in
the balloon.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, you're right:

> According to Mayumi’s notes, all of that had been an elaborate ruse. Now, it
> appeared, they were doing it again, this time for an audience of one.

------
c3534l
tl;dr the kid hid in the attic instead of the basement, so they were actually
unsure where he was, but it was still a hoax

~~~
macintux
It was probably intended to be a hoax, but it sounds as though they had a
legitimate concern he actually was in the balloon, which...makes it not a
hoax?

Crazy story all around.

------
m3kw9
Didn’t get what Mayumi wrote that was a lie.

