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Who is Marilyn Hartman? 'Serial stowaway', 69, arrested for 22nd time with no ticket at Chicago airport

Hartman, who suffers from bipolar disorder, had claimed to be the victim of a Barack Obama-led worldwide conspiracy to harass her

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Some people never learn. Like Marilyn Hartman. The 69-year-old American woman with a history of stowing away on airliners was arrested for the 22nd time on Tuesday, March 16 for attempting to sneak onto a flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where she was being electronically monitored.

The "Serial Stowaway” with a bizarre habit of sneaking ticketless onto commercial planes is said to have fooled the Transportation Security Administration at least 30 times. Hartman's arrest came two weeks after a judge rejected a plea deal that would have given her probation for a previous attempt to stow away on a flight. The sexagenarian is currently being held on a trespassing charge.

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Who is Marilyn Hartman?

Marilyn Jean Hartman, who has reportedly long been homeless, had once even made it all the way to London before being sent back to America by British immigration officials for not having a passport. Although it is unclear what exactly drives her, the inveterate sneaker-on-to-planes has given a series of iffy reasons for her high-flying exploits over the years.

Hartman has claimed to be the victim of a worldwide conspiracy to harass her, apparently led by former President Barack Obama, The Guardian reported in 2018. “For 25 years, Barack Obama knew about my case and all that went wrong when the ruling came down against me, but chose not to do the right thing,” she said in an email. Her monologues described a conspiratorial worldview in which each passing glance from a stranger indicated of a vast shadow army dedicated to a decades-long mission of harassing her.

'Whistleblower Trauma Syndrome'

She had earlier told the newspaper that she suffers from a self-diagnosed mental illness she calls “whistleblower trauma syndrome” that induces her with a very literal “fight or flight” reaction, wherein she feels “the need to get on a plane to go away.” The illness is, of course, not found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

However, in a recent interview with CBS2 in Chicago, Hartman stated that she suffers from bipolar disorder, a diagnosis she has resisted for a long time, adding that she was depressed when she made her stowaway attempts. Her exploits began in 2002, she said. “The first time I was able to get through I flew to Copenhagen,” she told the outlet. “The second time I flew into Paris.”

Flighty exploits

In 2009, she told cops in Hawaii that she tried to masquerade as another woman and gate-crash a plane “she really wanted to get off the island”. And yet, in 2014, she told San Francisco police that she needed to get herself on to a plane to Hawaii, since she was worried she had cancer and “wanted to go to a warm place and die”. She did not have cancer, though. The same year, Hartman was nabbed at Los Angeles International Airport, having flown from San Jose sans ticket, and was charged with trespassing.

Six months later, she was caught checking into an upscale hotel under a different person’s name, after getting to Florida from Minnesota. She was charged with fraud by impersonation and other crimes. In January 2018, Hartman made it across the pond from Chicago, for which she was sentenced to 18 months probation, mental health counseling, and was barred from being on any airport property without holding an existing airline ticket.

Hartman is a grandmotherly white woman who blends into crowds and does not make airport security nervous, which might be the reason why she managed to make a lot of people look foolish and took a $2,400 flight for free. In state after state, she’s released and sent to homeless services she finds filthy and unacceptable, and bounces back quickly, to do what she does. “The thing I’ve got to tell you. I have never been able to board a plane by myself. I was always let through,” she told CBS2. “I mean I was able to go through the security line without a boarding pass.”

Hartman will be returned to the Cook County jail. The sheriff's office said it is seeking approval to charge Hartman with felony escape.