On a chill January night in 1989, members of the Experimental Plane Affiliation of Boston gathered for a particular occasion.
At 7 p.m., the group’s president launched a visitor speaker as a “grasp of the skies and area.” The thriller man marched onto the stage, carrying a powder-blue NASA flight go well with. Newbie pilots leaned ahead of their chairs to take a more in-depth have a look at U.S. Marine Capt. Robert J. Hunt, who was 27 and raffishly good-looking, with a push-broom mustache. He arrived on the podium, his area patches shining brightly, and savored the applause.
Hunt launched into tales about his improbable life as a U.S. Marine fighter pilot. He spoke of zooming off the plane provider USS Coral Sea in his F/A-18 jet fighter and showering Gaddafi’s Libya with bombs. He described hovering above Earth aboard the area shuttle Atlantis, on top-secret missions for the Division of Protection. He even introduced two blackened tiles that he mentioned had been scorched throughout his reentry. Two hours later, arms shot into the air with questions.
“What is the climb price of the F/A-18?” somebody requested.
“Categorised info,” he mentioned.
“What is the burn-fuel ratio?”
“Is determined by engine energy and altitude,” he mentioned.
“Are you conversant in the DIANE system?”
“Digital Built-in Assault and Navigation Gear?” he replied, earlier than joking that there may be Russians within the viewers.
One attendee wasn’t satisfied. “He did not sound mental sufficient to be an astronaut,” Pleasure Alexander, 22 on the time, advised Individuals Journal. She discovered it unusual that Hunt spoke in a thick New England accent and cursed like a man who labored on a building website, not NASA’s $209 billion area shuttle program. “His perspective, which was impolite, appeared all mistaken to me,” she added. Older members scolded her for questioning an American hero.
Louis Pascucci, the group’s president, advised the Related Press (by way of The Boston Herald), “He positive impressed us. Hunt was one hell of an entertainer. We had a full home. He held us spellbound for 2 and a half hours.”
When the night was over, Hunt shook arms and scribbled autographs, leaving aviation buffs with the sense that they had brushed shoulders with a legend.
However Hunt had by no means been to area. He did not have a pilot’s license, or perhaps a driver’s license. He was an imposter and, in lower than per week, he could be in custody as information of his unimaginable rip-off made headlines throughout America.
For years, Hunt had led cops and the FBI on a cat-and-mouse chase throughout the nation, posing as a U.S. Marine, baseball star, senator and different outstanding figures, at all times escaping prosecution. Solely when he turned an astronaut did he create a safety panic, embarrass politicians and captivate a nation. In March 2025, over the course of six telephone calls, he advised me his life story with a mixture of candor and grandiosity, evaluating his profession to NFL star Tom Brady’s.
“I used to be actually the very best at what I did,” he advised me. As with all story advised by a convicted con man, it accommodates components of reality, embellishment, and flat-out fabrication—however that’s precisely what makes his story so entertaining.
An early obsession with area
Hunt’s obsession with area started when he was 7 years outdated, on the night time he watched the Apollo 11 moon touchdown on his household’s tv set in Everett, Massachusetts. Afterwards, the celebs above their modest dwelling appeared to beckon him. He felt a particular connection to Neil Armstrong and Alan Shepard, who served within the Navy, identical to his grandfather. As a youngster in the course of the Vietnam Struggle, Hunt snuck into the close by Chelsea Naval Hospital, slipped on discarded uniforms, and saluted himself within the mirror. He imagined exploring distant planets someday. That picture of himself, he advised me, was “endlessly lasting.”
His father, Leo Hunt, was additionally obsessive about the Navy. He drove a jeep with a U.S. Marine Corps license plate and barked “Colonel Hunt” when he answered the phone. However he had by no means served. He was a plumber who, in accordance with the Boston Herald, was pecking away at a guide about his alleged life within the army, titled “Colonel Chameleon.”
Leo Hunt advised the Herald how his son, whom he referred to as “Roy,” began deceiving others at 14, when he offered a neighbor some canaries. “See, when the birds Roy offered him took a shower, all of the paint, or yellow chalk, or regardless of the hell it was, began to come back off. They usually had been sparrows! Sparrows!” Father and son shared extra similarities than they had been prepared to acknowledge. Leo taught his son find out how to flip wrenches and repair water heaters. “He was very disciplined about it,” Robert Hunt advised me.
Hunt mentioned that, in 1979, whereas nonetheless in highschool, he joined the Marine Corps on a delayed-entry program for recruits who had been too younger to qualify. He claims that an administrative error led to an honorable discharge and that he was despatched dwelling from the recruit depot on Parris Island, South Carolina.
“It was disappointing, as a result of that was my dream,” Hunt advised me. “I knew all the pieces there was concerning the Marine Corps and the Navy, so after I graduated, I simply carried on the dream.” He mentioned he merely bluffed his approach into the barracks. “I knew the curriculum; I knew the instructions; I knew the construction,” he advised me. However an officer reprimanded him for carrying an unstarched hat, and crestfallen, he returned to civilian life.
“In plumbing, all people begins off on the backside,” Hunt advised me. He spent his days unclogging bathrooms, sure he was destined for one thing better. Within the early Nineteen Eighties, he met his first spouse, who labored at Pease Air Power Base in New Hampshire. Not lengthy after their wedding ceremony, Hunt dressed as a second lieutenant and snuck onto the bottom. He was caught poking round Air Power 2, the vp’s aircraft. His curiosity triggered an FBI investigation and the top of the wedding. Leo Hunt later advised Massachusetts’ The Every day Merchandise newspaper that federal brokers referred to as off the investigation to keep away from embarrassing George H. W. Bush.
“Roy obtained onto his aircraft … and ended up at Bush’s dwelling,” Leo Hunt mentioned. “He even gave Bush a kind of tiles, [and] the vp mentioned, ‘How does it really feel to be up in area, Bob?'”
In 1983, Hunt married once more, telling his bride he was a university graduate with a baseball contract. Neither was true. He additionally claimed to personal a building firm, Hunt Builders Inc., which had shirts, indicators and a logo-painted truck, however no contracts. He constructed solely mannequin airplanes whereas his spouse labored two jobs. By 25, he had moved to Pennsylvania with nursing pupil Michelle Van Horn, who turned his third spouse.
They’d a son in 1986, which impressed Hunt’s subsequent scheme: a spray-on diaper cream referred to as “Love My Child.” He falsely claimed his invention was getting ready to a $2.5 million Johnson & Johnson buyout. The key ingredient, he advised me, was “shark oil.” Utilizing his spouse’s bank card, he rented limos and posed as a TV producer casting a Tremendous Bowl business. He met with modeling businesses and focused Marie Rubel as a “lovely, blue-eyed mommy kind,” in accordance with the Press Enterprise, a newspaper in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Rubel grew suspicious and contacted the police. The police chief who busted Hunt, Robert Leighow of the Montour Township Police, described him as a easy talker who may “promote a fridge to an Eskimo,” and was a liar. “That is what this yo-yo did,” Leighow added. “He went out and fantasized all the pieces.”
Leo Hunt and his spouse Scarlet Hunt had been mortified by their son’s scandals, particularly when he ended up again at dwelling. “My spouse and I want we may crawl in a gap and conceal,” Leo Hunt as soon as advised The Every day Merchandise. “However you recognize who’s going to be on the backside.”
Hunt fled again to the army. “Again in them days … in the event you had been in uniform, all you needed to do is give them your SRB, which is a Service Report Guide. That is it — ‘welcome aboard,'” he advised me. He admits including false pages to make it seem he was a helicopter pilot with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 461, and mentioned he bypassed roughly two years of required coaching at Naval Air Station Pensacola. He doctored different folks’s evaluations or solid his personal, he advised me. “It is like a rainbow,” he mentioned. “You simply comply with it and see the place it goes.”
Hunt used his pretend credentials to accumulate flight uniforms, coveralls and substitute uniforms from the requisition heart. “You simply needed to have the balls to do it,” he advised me. “I used to be strolling by headquarters, when a second lieutenant — a ‘butter bar’ — did not salute me. I jumped throughout [him].” Subsequent, he gave himself a promotion. He bought $20 Navy astronaut wings, reworking from Capt. Hunt, Marine pilot, to Capt. Hunt, America’s “youngest Marine astronaut.” When he regarded within the mirror, he felt a well-known burst of satisfaction.
In response to Hunt, he bluffed his approach into NASA astronaut coaching. “I actually put myself within the service,” he advised me, describing an alleged switch from helicopter to fixed-wing plane coaching earlier than being chosen for NASA. Hunt advised me he underwent specialised bodily evaluations at Johnson House Heart, studied in Huntsville, Alabama—referred to as “Rocket Metropolis”—and even spent “9 weeks with Morton Thiokol” studying about rocket boosters. (Morton Thiokol, later ATK Thiokol and now Northrop Grumman House Methods, construct the reusable strong rocket boosters for NASA’s area shuttles.)
There isn’t any verification for any of those claims past Hunt’s personal detailed-but-questionable narrative. He advised me his purpose was to turn into the primary imposter in area. “Consider it or not, that was my plan,” he mentioned. “I used to be really scheduled for a shuttle flight.”
In April 1988, Hunt went on a blind date with Ann Sweeney, a 21-year-old optical engineer. Hunt mentioned he was a Marine captain, an evening detective for the Cambridge Police Division, and an astronaut in coaching. “We hit it off,” he advised me. Sweeney was a reasonably brunette who had an enviable job at Polaroid’s Massachusetts headquarters.
“He advised me he was sick of groupies, girls who went out with him as a result of he was a pilot,” Sweeney later advised the Boston Herald.” Hunt whisked her to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the place he mentioned he’d graduated first in his class. Wearing a tuxedo, he whirled her across the dance ground at a Marine Corps ball. “Inside three weeks, I believed I would recognized him a lifetime,” Sweeney advised Individuals. (Sweeney didn’t reply to interview requests.)
The couple married 4 months later after which traveled first-class on numerous unique holidays. Hunt claimed his flights and $41,000 leased Jaguar got here free together with his NASA job. He additionally purchased a Kawasaki Ninja bike to match his “Prime Gun” persona and, in Miami, agreed to purchase a $1 million sport-fishing boat earlier than ghosting the dealer, who advised the Herald, “He is a liar.”
In September, the newlyweds boarded a non-public jet at Logan Airport sure for a romantic weekend in Montreal. Hunt advised the pilot he was an Atlantis area shuttle astronaut and autographed an image. He paid for the flight utilizing his spouse’s company bank card and, for some time, no one at Polaroid observed. The corporate was combating off a hostile takeover by Roy E. Disney, backed by the funding financial institution Drexel Burnham Lambert.
“My spouse … had entry to the type of inventory info the highly effective guys at Drexel wished however could not get,” Hunt later advised The Every day Merchandise. He claimed to have met with DBL workers on the Harvard Membership whereas carrying a Harvard ring he purchased on the campus retailer. “They requested for company info I didn’t have entry to,” Hunt advised me.
The takeover failed, and Hunt’s fragile double life remained intact, preserved by the unquestioning belief of these closest to him. Drew A. Curtis, a psychology professor at Angelo State College in Texas and skilled on pathological liars, advised me that is referred to as “the ostrich impact.” His spouse, like most individuals, operated underneath a “reality bias,” assuming that persons are trustworthy. She merely buried her head within the sand.
“Then it simply obtained uncontrolled”
In December 1988, Sweeney’s brother, who lived in Eire, boasted that his astronaut brother-in-law was coming to go to the Emerald Isle. Whereas boarding an Aer Lingus flight from Boston, Hunt dazzled a ticket agent together with his credentials and was upgraded to first-class. When the pilot discovered there was an astronaut aboard, they invited him into the cockpit. “And he turned to me, he mentioned, ‘You can be obtained at Dublin airport.’ And I am like, oh boy. Obtained? What the hell does this imply?” Hunt imagined the runway stuffed with police automobiles.
As a substitute, two smiling Irish authorities officers greeted him. “I did not even should undergo customs,” Hunt advised me. “They’d slightly band there … enjoying the nationwide anthem.” The reception exceeded his wildest expectations. “Earlier than I knew it, I used to be giving speeches and accepting awards. I made a decision to play together with it,” he added.
Over the subsequent two days, Dublin embraced its customer from the ultimate frontier. “We stayed on the Shelbourne resort,” Hunt advised me. He sipped tea with town’s Lord Mayor, Ben Briscoe, and smiled for photographs. Hunt advised Briscoe that the British prime minister had organized for him to be married at Westminster Abbey — a uncommon privilege reserved for members of the British royal household and a choose few others. Briscoe realized that Hunt was “not the complete shilling,” a spokesperson later advised the Related Press, however politely let him keep on.
“Every little thing was paid for by town,” Hunt advised me: from pub visits, a visit to distant Irish castles, and even a journey to Donegal to journey “a number of the most lovely using horses on the earth.”
Hunt left Eire with souvenirs of his deception: “Irish sweaters, Guinness beer mugs, hats,” and honorary Irish citizenship. “All I wished to do was go to my brother-in-law,” he advised me. “Then it simply obtained uncontrolled.”
Again within the U.S., Hunt continued his astronaut hoax with a number of lectures. He wore his Navy uniform and advised audiences how “Atlantis reaches seven Gs throughout takeoff,” and “glides in from 220,000 ft with zero energy.” Hunt advised me he additionally gave his father a army uniform for a photograph, not realizing the badges had been misplaced and the hat was mistaken. Hunt insisted that his father did not train him to be an imposter. “My father was a wierd man,” Robert’s brother, Joseph Hunt, advised the Herald, “However he isn’t answerable for Roy.” Leo Hunt was his son’s longest-serving sufferer, having suffered the implications of his painted sparrows, area fantasies and schemes.
Quickly, hassle was brewing for Robert Hunt. American Specific rejected his $5,000 cost for the personal jet journey, and alerted Polaroid. Sweeney’s household warned her one thing wasn’t proper about her husband, and New Englanders began speaking about Capt. Robert Hunt.
An extended historical past of hoaxes
So long as there was area journey, astronaut imposters have fooled harmless people, largely to promote pretend lunar souvenirs. Historical past’s first area hoaxer was Jerry G. Tees, a 28-year-old electrician who posed as an astronaut at a Houston nightclub in June 1963. After Milton Berle launched him on stage, a panicked Tees observed 4 real astronauts within the viewers.
“I used to be petrified,” he later advised the Related Press from jail, after admitting his month-long rip-off. “I do not know why I do it. I simply dwell in a dream world, I suppose.”
In 1998, a 49-year-old Texan named Jerry Whittredge allegedly claimed to be an astronaut to achieve entry to a Navy flight simulator. Boldly, Whittredge sat in NASA Mission Management as workers ready to rescue a satellite tv for pc.
“He was speaking to the astronauts in area,” mentioned Joseph Gutheinz, a former senior particular agent with NASA’s Workplace of Inspector Common who captured him. “He mentioned, ‘My secret is, I am a CIA murderer referred to as ‘Black Demise.’” Gutheinz advised me the decide suspected Whittredge was a spy till he claimed his lawyer was Invoice Clinton. “Jerry was despatched to a Federal psych ward for analysis, after which the federal authorities opted for a substitute for punishment,” Gutheinz added.
Navy imposters usually pose because the heroes of their time — Navy SEALs after the Osama bin Laden raid and, in the course of the space-race period of the Nineteen Eighties, astronauts, who loved the cultural cachet of rock stars. Nearly everybody, other than the 22-year-old skeptic at considered one of Hunt’s lectures, was blinded by his astronaut fame. Anthony Anderson, who based Guardian of Valor to show individuals who falsely declare army service, advised me astronaut imposters are uncommon as a result of “there are very, only a few astronauts.” He added that real servicemen can simply spot misplaced patches or improper salutes, however imposters are inevitably caught by whistleblowers.
Investigations start
In January 1989, Massachusetts state trooper Andrew Palombo heard a wierd criticism at Logan airport. A employee mentioned a NASA astronaut in a U.S. Marine uniform — full with sword, medals and a Purple Coronary heart — had visited her dwelling and satisfied her 18-year-old son to enlist within the Navy. When he modified his thoughts, the person demanded $4,000 to make use of his “Pentagon connections” for a discharge. She mentioned he claimed to command the area shuttle Atlantis and signed {a photograph} “Captain Robert Hunt.”
Palombo referred to as the Naval Investigative Service Command, who mentioned Hunt had been a member of the U.S. Marines Reserve for 2 months in 1979. He was “mustered out after a psychological analysis,” Palombo advised The Every day Merchandise. This enraged the state trooper, who’d earned his elite place via a grueling paramilitary choice course of; he could not tolerate an imposter claiming unearned rewards.
Palombo cherished his job a lot, he usually mentioned he’d work at no cost — the place else may he put on a ponytail and earring, carry a gun, and drive Mustangs? His 6-foot-4-inch body was sufficient to intimidate the drug sellers, gangsters and serial killers he caught.
“He may rock ‘n’ roll with the very best of them, and in the event that they wished to go a few rounds, wonderful. He may knock them out with one shot,” retired State Police Capt. Richard Downey advised The Every day Merchandise. But, like Hunt, Palombo had two sides. In 1987, when a mentally unstable man threatened to explode a passenger aircraft, Palombo gently talked him down. “It was a really low-key dialog,” he later advised the Herald.
Palombo methodically unpicked Hunt’s cons. “This man has been masquerading as a NASA astronaut, a Marine fighter pilot, a Cambridge cop, and God solely is aware of what else,” he advised the Herald. “He is a flim-flam man, and from what we will determine, he is squeezed at the least $60,000 out of individuals since September.” Palombo additionally discovered the reality about Hunt’s army wardrobe. “He obtained the stuff on credit score by posing on the telephone as an officer and a gentleman. … It was price about $1,000, and naturally, he did not pay for it.”
Sensing that his scheme was unraveling, Hunt deliberate an escape. A pal of the Hunts advised the Herald that Sweeney left her job at Polaroid as a result of her husband “claimed he was being transferred to fly fighter jets from a Marine base in Hawaii.” However they did not make it to the airport.
Cracks emerge
There was a knock on Hunt’s door on Jan. 28, 1989. When it swung open, he discovered himself staring up at a large state trooper. Throughout a search, Palombo discovered army paraphernalia, flight jumpsuits, a NASA helmet, police badges, and pictures of Hunt carrying Korean Struggle medals.
“He wasn’t even born then,” Palombo advised the Herald. A shocked Sweeney additionally surrendered two scorched area shuttle tiles. “However they’re simply strange ground tiles,” Palombo mentioned. He arrested Hunt for larceny and dragged him to the station. “Palombo had this actual hard-on for me for some cause,” Hunt advised me. “He was only a large bully kind.”
Palombo was troubled by a pretend physician’s identification card in Hunt’s identify. “If you happen to maintain it as much as the sunshine, you may see one other identify beneath his,” he advised The Every day Merchandise. Hunt advised me that when his spouse Michele labored at a Pennsylvania hospital, he stole a white coat and posed as a Harvard-trained doctor. “She did not know I used to be delivering three infants a day down there,” he mentioned.
Palombo found that Hunt’s Marine uniforms and costume swords had been fronted to him from the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, however the origin of his blue astronaut jumpsuit remained a thriller. A NASA safety specialist from Washington discovered that the tools did not match gadgets lately stolen from an area show van.
NASA and FBI officers decided that impersonating an astronaut wasn’t unlawful until different crimes had been concerned. Palombo logged Hunt’s helmets and spacesuits as proof in his case.
“This stuff don’t have anything to do with the crimes he was charged with,” he advised the Globe. “They had been taken as a result of he used them to perpetuate a fraud.” When information of the arrest broke, the president of the Experimental Plane Affiliation of Boston, which Hunt had captivated together with his lecture, advised the Herald, “It was disappointing to listen to he wasn’t an astronaut. However the gang would not have any dangerous emotions. A few of the guys mentioned let’s bail him out and see how he did it.”
Again on the police barracks, Palombo gently introduced Sweeney with the proof. “She had no concept he was doing all these things. She really thought she was married to an astronaut,” he advised The Every day Merchandise. “The folks he ripped off had been good folks, and so they really favored him.”
“I used to be actually in a state of shock,” Sweeney advised the Herald. “It was nearly like watching somebody die. Right here was this individual I believed I knew, and little by little, in the midst of an hour, he simply dissolved, simply disappeared. I cherished the individual I believed he was however that individual by no means actually existed.”
After leaving her job at Polaroid, Sweeney moved again to her mother and father’ dwelling, the place she ruminated on the pink flags she’d missed and the way she’d ruined a promising profession. “I do not know whether or not to hate him or pity him,” she advised the Herald. “The place I grew up, folks do not lie to one another. After studying of Hunt’s different wives and kids, she puzzled, “Did he ever love any considered one of us, or did he hate us?”
Hunt in contrast himself to a primary responder who grows numb to tragedy over time. “They turn into disciplined and exhausting over it, and that is me,” he advised me. Whereas the ache of every divorce diminished, he may by no means escape the struggling he inflicted on his mother and father.
They came over him throughout a depressing 90-day keep in Boston’s Charles Avenue Jail in the course of the winter of 1989. “The guards had been really saluting him,” Leo Hunt advised The Every day Merchandise. “He was a star, however he has that unimaginable reward. And I ought to know, he is taken my spouse and I for 1000’s of {dollars}, and we fall for it each time.”
“My dad was heartbroken,” Robert Hunt advised me. His mother and father hated the publicity, just like the interview he gave to The Every day Merchandise from jail about his Dublin hoax, wherein he mentioned, “The Irish aren’t very sensible.”
On the morning of Hunt’s trial, lawmakers joked about spaceships parked exterior the courthouse. He arrived carrying pink Marine Corps sweatpants, was handcuffed to a different defendant and was grinning so confidently that many confused him for the prisoner’s arresting officer. His smile light when he discovered Sweeney was divorcing him. He pleaded responsible to larceny by false pretenses for utilizing his spouse’s company bank card and for swindling $4,000 from the younger recruit’s household. He was given a two-year suspended sentence.
As quickly as Hunt walked free in Could 1989, he introduced his candidacy for mayor of Revere, Massachusetts. “I do know energy and find out how to get round it,” he advised the Herald. “After I look again, I giggle. I did issues a number of the greatest folks within the nation do.” But in every single place he turned, there was Palombo.
“He was underneath the gun to make restitution to the courts, and I used to be nervous he may be accepting marketing campaign contributions,” the state trooper advised The Every day Merchandise. “It’s important to understand that all the pieces he advised you is a lie. I do know. I’ve tracked him just about from the time he was 18 years outdated,” he advised a Massachusetts newspaper. Hunt blamed his arrest by Palombo for each ruining his political profession and destroying his area dream. “If that had by no means occurred, I’d have orbited,” Hunt advised me.
When a Herald reporter requested Palombo about Hunt’s motives, he mentioned, “Greed.” After considering for a second, he added, “He by no means even obtained that a lot. I sat down and discovered that if he had gone to work for Burger King at $5 an hour, he would have been forward of the sport.”
Hunt did not pay a single greenback in restitution to his victims and skipped city with out paying his lawyer’s $20,000 charge. Courts in Massachusetts and New Hampshire issued arrest warrants, and by July 28, 1989, Hunt was a fugitive. “He walked away laughing at all people,” Palombo advised The Every day Merchandise,” holding up Hunt’s powder-blue NASA jumpsuit, as a smile unfold throughout his face. “That is the one he claims he wore into outer area. He is a spaceman all proper.”
A tv crew from “A Present Affair” interviewed Hunt’s second, third and fourth wives, who in contrast notes on set. “They’d a variety of comparable experiences,” Michele Hunt, the nurse and Hunt’s third spouse, advised the Press Enterprise. “I can speak about it rather a lot simpler now.” Reporters staked out Leo Hunt’s dwelling, hoping to catch a glimpse of his lacking son, however he advised The Every day Merchandise his son was in New York. “We’re nervous about him, however God solely is aware of, he is in all probability the governor of New York by now,” he mentioned.
Ultimately, Hunt reentered his household’s environment. His mom begged him to alter and gave him money for a contemporary begin. He thought-about turning into an “trustworthy” plumber however as an alternative spent the cash on one other Navy uniform. “That is after I turned a commando,” he advised me. He introduced himself on the Presidio of San Francisco, a U.S. army base, as the pinnacle of SEAL Crew Six, the elite Navy counter-terrorist group. He slept in officers’ quarters and labored three weeks on the emergency operations heart, tooling round with computer systems. Hunt advised me he berated an aged man who questioned his authority, later realizing it was Eugene Cernan.
“Right here I’m, yelling at an Apollo astronaut,” he recalled. “Like, oh boy, this could’t get any f—— worse.” Nevertheless it did. After he parked in a normal’s spot, the FBI charged him with false impersonation. He was lastly captured, pleaded responsible in July 1994, and served a yr in jail.
After his launch, Hunt’s cons continued, and Palombo doggedly pursued him far past his jurisdiction. When Hunt struck up a relationship with a rich feminine French-Canadian golfer and was accused of posing as a federal medicine agent, Palombo referred to as the Canadian authorities and revealed his felony previous.
“He was fanatical,” Hunt advised me. Then, in July 1998, Palombo’s Harley-Davidson hit an oil patch and spun uncontrolled, killing him.
After the safety issues following 9/11, Hunt advised me his schemes turned “inconceivable.” Lastly, in 2005, the Stolen Valor Act made it unlawful to falsely declare army decorations. Hunt hung up his pretend uniforms and determined to rebuild his relationship together with his mother and father.
“After I obtained out of that mess, I used to be welcomed into their dwelling,” Hunt advised me. He recalled a heart-to-heart together with his father, who advised him, “You are my son. You will at all times be my son. However it’s essential pull your life collectively.”
A con to the touch the celebs
Throughout hours of interviews, Hunt insisted he tricked his method to flying actual fighter jets and spun unimaginable tales of “proper engine blowouts” and unimaginable g-forces. “I used to be doing loopy stuff like nose-overs and again tail stress ups,” he advised me. I requested Gutheinz, the NASA investigator, if it was ridiculous to consider him. Gutheinz described how his imposter, Jerry Whittredge, waltzed previous “vault protected” army safety and persuaded a army base commander to write down to the Pensacola Naval Air Station, saying he wanted “slightly flight time” — all on the power of a convincing story.
Through the years, a few of Hunt’s tales have corrupted the general public document. He satisfied Rodney Stich, creator of “Defrauding America,” a guide about CIA conspiracies, that he flew secret missions to ship missiles to Iran. A Navy admiral as soon as publicly praised Hunt for a daring fight mission over Beirut. Leo Hunt advised The Every day Merchandise, “No Marine pilots flew in Beirut, and my son actually was by no means there. However consider me, this may all come out. I do know he is a liar, however there’s 98% reality on this story.” Regardless of all the pieces, Hunt’s father nonetheless wished to consider his son.
“There’s usually some true component within the internet of fiction {that a} con artist weaves,” mentioned Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology on the College of Illinois and co-author of “No one’s Idiot” (Primary Books, 2023), a guide about scammers. But stolen-valor skilled Anderson scoffed at the concept a plumber would have gotten close to the controls of a fighter jet or survived astronaut coaching. “He would have stood out like a sore thumb,” he advised me. The Nationwide Personnel Data Heart had the ultimate phrase: The army has no document of Robert Hunt.
As we speak, Hunt lives alone in New Hampshire, the place he has held numerous building jobs. He’s 63, has few pals, and passes his time watching the Historical past Channel. He has repaired his relationship together with his father, he advised me, however Leo is 88 and “on the finish now.” (Leo Hunt couldn’t be reached for remark.)
“What I remorse is the individuals who obtained damage,” Hunt mentioned. “My ex-wives…did not deserve that, as a result of they went into it with a real coronary heart. …I went into it with the exact opposite.” He mentioned he ultimately stopped dreaming of area and “grew up.”
But Hunt’s eyes nonetheless mild up when he displays on his favourite moments as an “astronaut.” “After I’m carrying a blue flight go well with and all people else is carrying a grey or inexperienced one, you stand out,” he mentioned. “Like this man is the tremendous guru of pilots, so all of them need to be your pal.” Similar to the widespread sparrows he as soon as painted yellow, Hunt’s deceptions turned him into one thing extraordinary and, for a short second, allowed him to the touch the celebs.
