A woman notorious for evading airport security and sneaking on planes without a ticket was arrested in Chicago this week, days after she was heard in a brand new TV news report in which she promised that such escapades are behind her.
The woman, Marilyn Hartman, known to local news media as “the serial getaway,” was arrested at O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday on charges of trespassing and escaping, the Sheriff’s Office in Cook County said. Her presence at O’Hare violates the conditions of her probation period set in 2019 when she was arrested at the same airport for trying to circumvent security without a passport or boarding pass.
Hartman, 69, has been involved in at least 22 similar episodes over the years – some successfully – at airports across the country. In 2014, she was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after sneaking aboard a flight from San Jose, California, reports The Chicago Tribune. She was left with a warning several times, including twice at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
In 2018, she successfully boarded a flight to London without a ticket or a passport.
In an exclusive report that appeared on CBS2 Chicago this week, Ms. Hartman said she has boarded at least 30 events without a ticket. “The first time I could get through, I flew to Copenhagen,” she told the station. “The second time I fly into Paris.”
Mrs. Hartman said she only agreed to be questioned once she was “confident I would not take an illegal flight again.” Two days after the report was released, she was arrested in O’Hare.
Andrea Lubelfeld, a lawyer for Hartman, said in a hearing in the mortgage court on Thursday that her client became extremely upset after seeing the CBS2 report, which led her to appear in more than one years to travel to O’Hare. according to The Tribune.
“She has a mental illness caused by something beyond her control,” she said. Lubelfeld quoted.
According to the Sheriff’s Office of Cook County, Mrs. Hartman, who was electronically monitored, left the transitional housing facility around 12:00 on Tuesday where she was staying.
Authorities realized she was on her way to O’Hare. About an hour later, they notified Chicago police that she was near Terminal 1.
“An alarm siren was activated on Hartman’s device and she was arrested in Chicago,” the sheriff said in a statement. “Hartman has not entered any safe areas.”
R. Carter Langston, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, stressed that Hartman was spotted at the airport – before she could approach a security checkpoint – by a vigilant TSA officer ‘who warned law enforcement at the airport of her attention has.’
“When a passenger bypasses one of the many security layers in an airport checkpoint, TSA takes it very seriously,” he said in a statement.
The Chicago Department of Aviation, which manages O’Hare, did not immediately respond to inquiries on Thursday.
The sheriff sought approval to charge Ms. Hartman for an escape, he said in the statement. Hartman is being held in the Cook County Jail without the release of the bond, said Parle Roe-Taylor, another Hartman lawyer.
Before the latest arrest, Mrs. Hartman ‘well placed, actively engaged in her treatment, making progress and looking forward to a positive resolution’, Ms. Roe-Taylor said in a statement.
‘The penal system is poorly equipped to protect clients such as Mrs. Hartman to treat or help, ‘said me. Roe-Taylor said, adding: ‘We need to do better than put people with mental health issues in jail. Our criminal justice system is not an institution for mental health treatment. ”
Hartman has been on the law enforcement radar for years.
In 2015, she told investigators she boarded a plane in Minnesota without a ticket and flew to Jacksonville, Florida, according to an arrest report obtained by NBC News.
Hartman’s first O’Hare arrest came in 2015, according to The Chicago Tribune, when she was charged with misconduct and criminal misconduct. She has since been involved in eight other incidents at Chicago airports.
In 2018, Mrs. Hartman sneaked on a British Airways flight and traveled to Heathrow Airport, where she was apprehended by Chicago Police Department customs officials. said in a news release at that point.
In that episode, O’Hare cameras captured her by moving around the airport without a boarding pass or a passport. She hid her face with her hair as she walked through two TSA officers while checking on the passengers, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state attorney at the time said.
On her return to the United States, she was charged with one theft and the felony.
She was still on probation from the London flight when she was stopped in O’Hare in October 2019 for trying to pass a security post without proper documentation. She was booked into Cook County Jail, where she remained until a year ago, when she was released as part of an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, reports The Tribune. In April, Cook County Jail was the country’s best-known source of coronavirus infections, according to data compiled by The New York Times.
In the CBS2 report, Hartman says she was “in a depressed state of mind” when she undertook the flights.
She explained that she would evade safety by “following someone – like a blue bag.”
“And the next thing I know, comes in the TSA line and TSA lets me through,” she said. “They think I’m with the guy with the blue bag.”