Authorities are not amused by Richard Heene's media blitz, and legal experts say he should be careful about thumbing his nose at the system.
Heene now says there was no balloon hoax, even though he pleaded guilty and agreed to be sentenced to 90 days in jail. He says he truly believed his son was inside the runaway balloon when it floated away in October, and that he only pleaded guilty to appease authorities and save his wife from being deported to Japan.
The interviews are also pushing the boundaries of the strict conditions of his probation that he not profit in any way from his newfound fame for four years. Interviews on CNN and NBC do not violate the probation, but he's clearly tempting fate by basking in the spotlight of a national TV audience.
"Talk about waving a red cape in front of a bull," said Stan Goldman, a criminal law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Heene reports to jail Monday after pleading guilty to a felony count of attempting to influence a public servant. He reported that his 6-year-old son, Falcon, may have been aboard the balloon, setting off a frantic and costly chase for the boy.
Heene now says authorities lied, and the sheriff unfairly targeted him to advance his political ambitions.
In an argumentative interview on NBC's "Today Show," Heene said "the sheriff is a liar."
Heene told The Associated Press he wants his name cleared.
"Now folks out there will probably be saying, ah this is a bunch of crap, but there are lies, after lies, after lies that have been told to persecute me," Heene told the AP on Friday, less than three weeks after choking back tears at his sentencing and apologizing for the stunt.
"I plead guilty because I got to salvage my family, I got to keep them together. First off, how would I afford the attorney's fees for two to three years if I went to trial? How am I going to find 12 jurors whose opinions were not swayed by the media?"
Heene's attorney, David Lane, didn't return telephone messages for comment.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden brushed aside Heene's claims. He said there is overwhelming evidence of a hoax
- much of it provided by Heene's wife, Mayumi, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and faces a 20-day jail term.
"She gave us the details of the plan, how long they have been planning it, who was in on it, you know, and there's evidence that we have documented beyond just her statement," Alderden said. "They knew that he wasn't in the balloon and had orchestrated this thing and coached the children as to what to say, to say that Falcon was in the balloon."
Authorities claim the publicity-hungry Heenes wanted to launch a reality TV show and hoped the stunt would generate publicity.
"To now try to go back and say that it didn't happen, it wasn't a hoax? It's almost incomprehensible," said Alderden.
