A 70-year-old woman with a history of passing security at airports and stealing flights was sentenced on Thursday to more than three years in prison for breaking into ChicagoO’Hare International Airport in 2019
After Marilyn Hartmann pleaded guilty to charges of criminal misconduct and evasion of electronic surveillance, Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas sentenced her to 18 months on charges of violating the border and two years on charges of absconding.
She must serve three consecutive years and six months in a row, the judge said.
However, she received a two-year, five-month loan for the time she had already been in custody, and will thus be eligible for release in about a year, Chicago Sun Times reported.
In response to her request, prosecutors agreed to drop other similar charges against her – including those stemming from an incident last March in which she allegedly left a facility where she was staying under electronic surveillance and went to O ‘ Hare with the obvious hope of sneaking another flight.
The hearing marks the latest chapter in a long-running odyssey of a woman called the “serial no-passenger” who sneaked into airports in Chicago, Hawaii, San Francisco, Florida and Europe and tried – sometimes successfully – to board passenger planes without ticket.
“Serial Homeless” Marilyn Hartmann was sentenced to 3.5 years behind bars
Hartmann is seen above in her indictment in March 2021 after her last arrest
Her arrest in 2019 is in violation of a suspended sentence she received for her sentence on charges of sneaking past O’Hare’s bodyguards in January 2018, boarding a plane and flying to London’s Heathrow Airport without a ticket. .
Hartmann had apologized before, and on Thursday she apologized for leaving the facility where she received mental health treatment and housing.
“I’ve been battling depression and drug treatment all my life,” Hartmann said.
The story of a woman who has been boarding illegally for years or trying to board airplanes at airports in the United States captivates the nation.
Hartmann in an interview with WBBM TV previously told in detail her stunning history of illegal travel around the country and around the world, estimating that she had managed to board at least 30 flights illegally since 2002.
Asked how she managed to get to the TSA checkpoints, Hartmann’s explanation was astonishingly simple.
Hartmann, an unpretentious elderly woman, said she escaped through checkpoints, pretending to accompany other groups.
“I understood them – this is the thing that is so crazy – by following someone who will be carried like a blue bag,” she said. “And the next thing I know, I’m on the TSA line and TSA lets me go and they think I’m with the man with the blue bag.”
Hartmann estimates that she has been able to board at least 30 flights illegally since 2002. She is pictured from airport surveillance from one of her many arrests in 2018.
Once at the checkpoint, she often looked for a boarding pass that had been dropped off by another passenger, or boarded a plane and waited in the toilet until she could fill an empty seat.
Airports where “serial no-passenger” has been caught boarding passenger flights
San Francisco International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
St. Paul’s (Minneapolis) International Airport
Jacksonville International Airport
Chicago O’Hare International Airport
Chicago Midway International Airport
London Heathrow Airport
A WBBM review of court records and police reports showed that Hartmann was repeatedly caught carrying a boarding pass from another passenger or arriving in another country without documents to pass through customs.
But these stories tell only part of Hartmann’s story, as she claims to have flown under the radar for 12 years before authorities first embarked on her scheme.
Records show that Hartmann was arrested in at least 20 incidents at the airport between 2014 and 2019. During that period, TSA agents became well acquainted with her face and eventually began calling for reinforcements as soon as they spotted her.
Her fame was illustrated in an audio recording obtained from CBS2 in which a TSA agent was heard saying, “Marilyn is being watched here.”
Hartman said she flew illegally long before 2014, but no one noticed.
“The first time I managed to cross, I flew to Copenhagen,” she said. The second time I flew to Paris.
The first few times she was caught at airports without a ticket, she was questioned by police and released. Her first arrest was on August 14, 2014, when she flew from San Jose, California, to Los Angeles without a ticket.
Hartmann’s name was later added to the TSA’s “crime list,” and a judge warned her never to do so again, but she disobeyed.
She was arrested again seven months later in Jacksonville, Florida, after arriving from Minnesota without a ticket.
Hartman, 69, was arrested at the O’Hare CTA station (pictured in a file) in 2021 when an ankle bracelet following her house arrest stopped ringing.
The trial court ruled that she was not mentally competent to face prosecution.
But Hartmann insisted that fears about her mental state were exaggerated.
“I know they continue to emphasize mental illness. Law enforcement would like to have that. But um, no, I’m pretty good, “she told CBS2 with a laugh.
“I don’t mind people saying, ‘She’s crazy.’ Because when I look at it objectively, that’s how I see it, it’s crazy. I deliberately remained a mystery because of the crazy factor. It was like something out of a movie.
In the four years since his arrest in Jacksonville, Hartman had at least seven other contacts with law enforcement at Chicago’s main airports, O’Hare and Midway.
The last time she successfully boarded a plane without a ticket was in January 2018, when she slipped past security at O’Hare and took a seat on a British Airways flight to London Heathrow.
But her plan was thwarted on arrival in the UK, where border guards found she did not have proper documents.
Hartmann was then transported back to Chicago, where she was charged with theft and crime.
She was released from custody and ordered to wear an ankle monitor and undergo a psychiatric examination. She later pleaded guilty to illegal entry and was sentenced to 18 months probation.
Hartmann’s next trip to O’Hare came in October 2019, when officers spotted her trying to cross a checkpoint without a boarding pass.
Following this arrest, Hartmann befriended CBS2 investigator Brad Edwards, who conducted a series of telephone interviews with her behind bars.
Hartmann said he wanted to apologize to law enforcement and the TSA, saying: “I did not intend to hinder their work.”
She said her bipolar disorder was behind her relentless desire to travel, explaining that she took flights every time she had a depressive episode.
“When I was on the plane, I wasn’t happy,” she said. It wasn’t “Oh, I’m going here or there” – I was actually depressed.
“I am bipolar. And that’s something I’ve been rejecting for years, “she added.
She vowed in interviews never to do so again – but days later, in March 2021, she slipped out of a house halfway and was arrested again in O’Hare.