Sheriff: Charges likely to be filed against balloon boy’s parents

I had to blog it. We need closure.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office announced Saturday night that it expects to seek charges in the “balloon boy” saga, and later deputies began executing search warrants.

Sheriff Jim Alderden made the announcement after Richard Heene and his wife voluntarily met with officials at the Larimer County sheriff’s headquarters for several hours.

The sheriff did not give specifics, but he said the charges would probably be a Class 3 misdemeanor. False reporting is a Class 3 misdemeanor.

Alderden said that the misdemeanor charges “hardly seem serious enough in the circumstances” and that he would talk to the district attorney and federal officials, including the Federal Aviation Administration, to see what other charges could be considered.

The sheriff’s office is holding a presser at 11 a.m. MT, presumably to explain how they got suckered so badly. Meanwhile, Gawker’s posted an account (which they paid for) by a guy who says he worked with Heene earlier this year to develop a science-oriented reality show that just so happened to involve — well, read the proposal:

Can we attract UFO’s with a homemade flying saucer? We will modify a weather balloon, so that it resembles a UFO and will electrically charge the skin of the craft (Biefield-Brown Effect). We will capture the footage on film, and will utilize the media as a means with which to make our presence known to the masses. This will not only provide us with incredible footage, but will also generate a tremendous amount of controversy among the public, as well as publicity within the mainstream media. This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general.

Case closed? Not exactly. If you believe Gawker’s source, Heene wasn’t after celebrity for celebrity’s sake. He was … out to save the world:

But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government. Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.

How Gawker’s sure that their source even knows Heene is unclear to me, but since they paid for the story, I’m assuming they demanded and received some proof. Exit question: What other sorts of evidence might the sheriff have found when he searched the house? Hmmm.

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