The TSA is no match for Marilyn Hartman.
The 66-year-old “serial stowaway” was caught yet again after sneaking through security at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last week without a ticket or passport — but not before she made it all the way to London.
Hartman, who lives in Grayslake, Ill., has made a hobby of ducking the TSA. Her arrest last week was at least the 10th time she’s been caught trying to slip past airport security without a plane ticket.
She was busted for the stunt at least eight times in 2014. In 2015, she was arrested twice in two months at O’Hare and Chicago’s Midway Airport, and she’s also been nabbed in California and Arizona.
Hartman spent a year in a Chicago-area jail for the repeated episodes and was released on probation to a nursing home in December 2015.
Sources told CBS Chicago that the most recent security footage shows Hartman wandering around O’Hare for two days last week before boarding a British Airways flight Monday. She managed to evade the gate attendant by “blending in with the passengers,” Chicago police told the Chicago Sun-Times. Sources did not address how she made it past TSA checkpoints to get to the gate.
Once on the aircraft, she hid in the bathroom, then found an empty seat. The airline warned Heathrow airport officials that they had a stowaway on the incoming flight. The pesky passenger was sent back to the US when she couldn’t produce a passport and was arrested Thursday upon arrival at O’Hare.
A TSA spokesman said Hartman was screened at the security checkpoint, but managed to get by without a ticket. It’s unclear how she evaded federal authorities.
“Upon learning of the incident, TSA and its aviation partners took immediate action to review security practices throughout the airport,” the agency said in a statement Friday. “This matter is subject to an ongoing investigation and TSA is working closely with our law enforcement and airline partners in that effort.”
After Hartman was sentenced in 2014 for sneaking aboard a flight from San Jose to Los Angeles, she told reporters she was remorseful.
“It was stupid, and it’s something I don’t want to repeat,” she said.
With Wires