- Marilyn Hartman, 69, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday.
- It emerged after she announced that she was retiring from the illegal practice during an interview with CBS2.
- Hartman started boarding flights without a ticket in 2002, but was arrested for the first time in 2014.
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A woman who entered 30 different flights without a ticket for a period of 19 years was arrested after giving an interview on TV.
Marilyn Hartman, 69, was detained at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Tuesday after leaving her residential facility around noon to board another plane without a ticket, according to CNN.
She was monitored electronically, so the team immediately started looking for her while she violated the terms of her probation for the same crime at the same airport in 2019, The New York Times noted.
This is after Hartman announced his retirement from the illegal practice during an interview with CBS2 two days earlier, in which she said she resisted an in-depth interview “until I was confident I wouldn’t take an illegal flight again,” The Times of London reported.
She explained: “What I have to say: I was never able to board a plane by myself – I was always let through. I mean, I was able to get through the security line without a boarding pass.
“I managed to get past them … following someone. They would be carrying it like a blue bag. And the next thing I know, I get on the TSA line and TSA lets me through, and they think I’m with the guy with the blue purse. “
The serial stowaway started boarding non-stop flights in 2002. She told reporter Brad Edwards: “The first time I made it, I flew to Copenhagen. The second time, I flew to Paris.”
Hartman also flew to Seattle, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and London for free. She was first arrested in August 2014, when flying from San Jose to Los Angeles, California.
Although the judge warned her not to fly for free again, she returned to court in seven months, added The Times of London.
Since Hartman’s initial arrest in 2014, she has been arrested several times and is known by name at O’Hare Airport, where her appearance is referred to as a ‘Marilyn sighting’, Metro reported.
Hartman, who has bipolar disorder and was declared incompetent to go to court, noted The Times of London, also told CBS2 that she grew up in a house full of “violence and mental illness”.
She continued: “When I got on the plane, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m going here or there’, I was depressed.”
Marilyn Hartman appeared at the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois on Thursday and is being held at Cook County Jail. She cannot pay bail or be released, her lawyer, Parle Roe-Taylor, told CNN.