Just the Bullet Points: How a Former Assistant Ratted Out Balloon Boy's Dad
Wow. Ready to have your mind blown? A former research assistant who slaved for Richard Heene is revealing the deceptive, tragic master plan that Heene concocted to manufacture a media thunderstorm. This...is completely insane. Here's a bullet-point summary: Robert Thomas is a self-identified "web entrepreneur" and researcher who worked with Richard Heene at Colorado State University. Thomas loved working with science and electromagnetics since he was a kid, and discovered Heene through his wacky YouTube series. Both guys shared interests in mad-scientist questions about the earth's magnetic properties and effects on nature. Thomas starting helping Heene out with his ideas and failing small business, passing out fliers for him. Heene went on Wife Swap, went kinda crazy, and developed a superiority complex. Their friendship became less about a shared interest in science and more about Heene and his increasingly megalomaniaical batshit ideas. Most of them had to do with getting on TV again. Heene wanted to shop his idea around to a producer he was in contact with from Wife Swap. Heene's pitch was: a zany science theory at the beginning of each episode, and at the end, they'd prove or disprove it. Heene was crazily firing episode ideas away a mile a minute, one after the other. Robert, who was writing all these ideas down for Heene, was given $15/hour and was promised a lead assistant position on the show by Heene. Heene thought they'd use the show to further science. Heene was obsessed with becoming a famous nutty professor. That's where the divide happened. Or as Richard wrote: "He wanted episodes that would shock people and maximize his exposure. And he'd been trying for months. On several occasions, he sat down and told me he'd do whatever it took to make it happen — to win." Heene's big idea to launch the show: to manufacture a UFO controversy bigger than Roswell, bigger than anything the world had ever seen before. The breaking point: Heene told his then-assistant of Reptilians who could shape-shift that were running the shadow government, and that his fame would enable him to communicate with the masses and expose said Reptillians. He also told Thomas the world was gonna end in a solar flare in 2012, and that they were running out of time. Thomas never got paid for the TV work he did with Heene. He passed out a lot of fliers for Heene's general contractor business, which wasn't bringing in cash. Probably because Heene spent too much time on his conspiracy theories and fame attempts. Heene reassured Thomas that it'd pay off. Thomas saw the crazy and got out of dodge. On Thursday, he sees the balloon go up. And then Heene's lie about the kid. And a friend, remembering a story Thomas once told him about this guy he worked with, called him up and told him he had to turn Heene in. Thomas notes: Heene's attic is too small and difficult to access for a small child to hide in without assistance. Also, that Falcon was the most... MORE >>
Exclusive: I Helped Richard Heene Plan a Balloon Hoax
For the first time, 25-year-old researcher Robert Thomas reveals to Gawker how earlier this year he and Richard Heene drew up a master plan to generate a massive media controversy using a weather balloon. To get famous, of course. Thomas spent several months earlier this year working on developing a reality science TV show to pitch to networks — the "show," Thomas says, that Falcon was referring to when he told CNN "We did it for the show." Among the ideas that Heene, Thomas and two others came up with for their reality TV proposal — and one that he says most intrigued Heene — involved a weather balloon modified to look like a UFO which they would launch in an attempt to drum up media interest in both the Heene family and the series he was desperate to get on the air. Still, Thomas never imagined that Heene would involve his six-year-old son in what he is certain was a "global media hoax" to further Richard Heene's own celebrity. Thomas' story of his time with Heene, based on an interview with Ryan Tate, follows below. It's a fascinating account and after he publicly offered to sell his story, we paid him for it. I came to Fort Collins for school — Colorado State University. I was a Web entrepreneur, starting a few small companies that evolved into a larger scale project called Extropedia.org, an open source online encyclopedia for advancing humanity through technology and science. Doing research for the project on Google and YouTube, I stumbled upon Richard Heene and his video series Psyience Detectives. I was surprised to find this potential collaborator in the small city of Fort Collins. Since a very young age, I've been fascinated with electromagnetics, applied physics and how technologies developed out of those concepts could that change the world. Richard was studying basically the same thing. He asserted, for example, that tornadoes and hurricanes are not a result of changes in pressure but of magnetic polarity changes within the Earth. I sent him an email in March, talking about Extropedia, a web site I founed and hope to re-launch soon. (Click here to read some of Thomas' email exchanges with the Heene family). Things progressed. Soon I was dropping in unannounced, having dinner. I'd bring various patents from the 50s and 60s that showcased technologies far more advanced than what we use today, and we discussed why they weren't being used. That was when Richard first started telling me about his conspiracy theories — which would eventually reveal themselves to be both extreme and paranoid. Hunger for Stardom There was something else at work, though. Oddly enough, Richard's sampling of stardom from being on Wife Swap — twice — gave him a sense of seniority in our scientific conversations. They became less and less about what I had to contribute and more and more about what Richard wanted. And he wanted nothing more than to get another reality TV series. Richard had an ongoing dialog with... MORE >>
Gossip Pages Win: Todd English's Charges against Erica Wang Are Revenge for Spin War
Todd English's assault charges against jilted bride Erica Wang materialized two weeks after she watch-clocked him. We now know that English wasn't going to file with cops...until Wang declared war in the press. Winner? The New York Post! This story teaches us all a valuable lesson: when minor celebrities try to use the tabloid press to their advantage-when they need something from the tabloids, as opposed to tabloids' lecherous reputation with real celebrities' lives-it's always the tabloid press who wins. Let's go over this one more time: 1. A minor celebrity in need of press spin calls a tabloid. Erica Wang calls the New York Post. 2. Why should they care and/or take her side of the story? Because their subject will give the rest of the scoop to them when the appropriate time comes. The Post runs an awesome, fun-filled report of Wang and friends partying after she was "stood up at the altar." Wang and friends also try to spin it to other outlets, like us. Erica Wang spinning her jilted bride story could be anything from revenge, to the desire for infamy, to a book deal or a TV show or, as our wedding expert Phyllis Nefler suggested, a Page Six Magazine interview. It could also be a press play to fight for image when this does become a legal battle of some kind (English billing her for the wedding-which he eventually did- her trying to get money from him, etc). 3. The story explodes, as English claims she abused him. The rest of the press wants it. The initial subject of the story delivers the entire exclusive to her original spin publication. Point for Nefler: Wang delivers on the exclusive Post interview. She gets her side of the story out on her home court-the Post-who keep delivering for their mutually beneficial relationship by spinning the story in her favor. Meanwhile, English starts talking to his hometown Boston Herald in order to win favor locally regarding his side of the story. And here we are: 4. The home tabloids can claim victory when the story moves into overdrive on both sides. English admits: he didn't file a domestic violence complaint against Wang until she went to the press to try to paint English as a bad person. English waited nearly a month to report the Sept. 14 incident — pressing charges a day after The Post published an exclusive interview with Wang in which she called him "an animal" for blowing off their wedding. English "felt he had to move forward to protect his credibility" after the article, his lawyer, Danielle de Benedictis, told The Boston Herald. Yup. This wasn't a story worth reporting on until Wang made it one. And now she's got a domestic abuse charge against her and people coming out of the woodwork with character color on her. Maybe English was worried about the press on him being bad for business (let's say he wants to be a family-friendly TV chef), or maybe he was just pissed (he's got three kids who he doesn't want reading this shit). Who knows. Either way: the Post took the ball and ran it... MORE >>
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