Marilyn Hartman covered the left side of her face and walked past two TSA agents as if she were invisible.
It was January 14, 2018, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. That afternoon, she tried to board a flight to Hartford and was turned away at the gate. She didn’t give up: she spent the night hiding in Terminal 5 and the next day, without a ticket or passport, waited for the agents at Gate M12 to become distracted by other passengers. She went around a pillar to evade a customs officer and stepped onto the jet bridge for a British Airways flight bound for London.
The police report obtained by CBS Chicago through a FOIA request reconstructs minute by minute how this 66-year-old woman, already known as ‘the serial stowaway,’ managed to get through three security checkpoints at one of the most heavily guarded airports in the United States. She was detained upon arriving at Heathrow and sent back to Chicago, where she was released on bail with the express order not to go near any airport. Three days later, she was arrested again at O’Hare.