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16 October, 2019

Police bust “Serial Stowaway” attempting to sneak onto flight, again

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A woman dubbed the “Serial Stowaway” has lived up to her name once again with yet another attempt of sneaking onto a flight.

Marilyn Hartman, 67, has a history of trying to stealthily board flights and has been arrested in or near airports dozens of times, the Associated Press reported.

Serial Stowaway

The woman has even made it onto a few flights without tickets. But her luck has run out, for now.

On Friday, Hartman was arrested for attempting to bypass security at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport without a boarding pass or identification, Chicago police say.

She was taken into custody and charged with a felony count of criminal trespass.

Hartman’s arrest marks the latest of reportedly dozens of attempts to board flights over the last decade across the United States.

Last year, she was arrested after reportedly sneaking onto a British Airways flight from O’Hare to London, The New York Post reported.

She pleaded guilty on the occasion to criminal trespassing and was sentenced in March to 18 months’ probation after agreeing to stay away from Chicago’s two commercial airports.

Before then, Hartman was allegedly arrested for fraud in 2015 at a hotel in Jacksonville, after claiming she had flown in from Minneapolis.

“She just got on a plane and flew here, but no ticket whatsoever,” Nassau County deputy sheriff Mark Murphy told reporters in 2015.

This followed a string of arrests in 2014 for attempting to board flights without a ticket by Hartman, at times successfully, on counts of fraud and trespass.

At least one security expert and reporters, at the time, said Hartman’s continued ability to evade detection was cause for concern.

“Why has the government allowed me to get past security points until I forced the issue back in February?” Hartman told reporters after her August 2014 arrest.

“We’ve got to pay more attention to these smaller layers of security so we don’t compromise bigger layers,” aviation security consultant Jeff Price told NBC News in 2015.

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british airways chicago Marilyn Hartman O'Hare International Airport serial stowaway