FORT COLLINS: The Colorado man who admitted orchestrating the balloon boy hoax reported to jail Monday to begin a 90-day jail sentence.
Richard Heene pleaded guilty to attempting to influence a public servant after the Oct. 15 saga that captivated a national television audience.
But Heene now says he truly believed his 6-year-old son Falcon was inside the balloon and that he pleaded guilty only to appease authorities and save his wife from being deported to Japan.
Mayumi Heene confessed to deputies, authorities said, and she pleaded guilty to filing a false report. She faces a 20-day jail term.
Richard Heene wore a dark knit cap, sunglasses and a heavy jacket as he drove himself to the Larimer County jail in a red minivan. He said nothing as got out of the vehicle and ran into the building. He later returned to the minivan to retrieve his driver's license and went back inside.
After Richard Heene turned himself in, Mayumi Heene drove away by herself. District Judge Stephen Schapanski said she could report to jail after her husband finishes his sentence so she could care for the couple's three boys.
Richard Heene said last week that his wife misunderstood the meaning of the word "hoax" when she purportedly confessed.
"My wife's first language is Japanese, not English," he said. "My wife came home in tears wondering what she might have said. She opened this Japanese-to-English dictionary, and she walks up to me crying her head off, and she says to me, 'I thought hoax meant an exhibition.'"
Sheriff Jim Alderden said Mayumi Heene understands English better than her husband says she does.
"The interview was much more than, 'Mayumi, is this a hoax?' and she admitted to it. She went into the details of it," Alderden said last week.
Mayumi Heene's statement to sheriff's investigators — in which she detailed the couple's efforts to pitch a television show, their financial difficulties, and their actions in the weeks leading up to the event — that make up the bulk of the case against the couple.
