Serial stowaway gets 6 months of house arrest
Marilyn Hartman seems compelled to sneak around airports, and when she can, slip onto planes. But the 64-year-old will spend the next six months on house arrest at a mental health facility and risks a year in jail if she turns up at an airport without a ticket during the next two years, a Cook County Judge has ruled.
Judge William Raines scolded Hartman on Thursday as he handed down her sentence for trespassing charges from Feb. 17, when she slipped away from a mental health facility for a clandestine visit to O’Hare airport. That trip also earned her charges for violating her probation after she was charged in attempts to sneak onto planes at O’Hare and Midway on consecutive days in July.
Hartman will spend the next six months confined to the Margaret Manor mental health facility and two years on mental health probation. If she violates her probation, Raines said she would land in jail for up to a year and pay a $2,500 fine.
“This the end of the line here. . . . This is a going to basically be a jail sentence,” Raines said as Hartman stood placidly in her blue jail jumpsuit, with half a dozen reporters seated in the misdemeanor courtroom gallery behind her.
“You cannot leave Margaret Manor. If you walk out on the street, you’re going to jail.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations (about) you. . . . At this point, I’m thinking about punishment,” the judge said.
Raines’ ruling came after a 30-minute conference in chambers with her public defender, prosecutors and mental health officials who have dealt with Hartman since her first arrest in Chicago in 2014.
Prosecutors said Thursday that Hartman has been arrested and stopped by police on airport property a dozen times in four states. In August 2014, Hartman successfully boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from San Jose to Los Angeles by slipping past TSA agents checking a family’s boarding passes, then past the gate agent.
Hartman already has spent several months at Margaret Manor during her probation for attempting to board planes last summer, and briefly earned her way to the lessrestrictive Sacred Heart facility in December. Once there, officials say she attempted to slip away at least seven times in the weeks before her February arrest.