Marilyn Hartman , 69, was arrested atO'Hare International Airport inChicago on Tuesday.- Hartman began boarding flights without a ticket in 2002 but was first arrested in 2014.
- Her latest arrest came soon after an interview in which she said she was retiring from the practice.
A woman who sneaked onto 30 flights without a ticket over 19 years has been arrested two days after giving a TV interview saying she was done with the illegal practice.
Marilyn Hartman, 69, was detained at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Tuesday after she left her residential facility around noon, according to CNN.
She was electronically monitored after breaking the terms of her probation for the same crime at the same airport in 2019, The New York Times noted, so the facility's staff immediately began searching for her.
Hartman announced her retirement from the illegal practice during a CBS2 interview two days earlier in which she said she had resisted an in-depth interview "until I was confident that I wouldn't take an illegal flight again," The Times of London reported.
"The thing I've got to tell you: I have never been able to board a plane by myself - I was always let through. I mean, I was able to go through the security line without a boarding pass," she said.
"I got by them ... by following someone. They would be carrying like a blue bag. And the next thing I know, I get into the TSA line and TSA lets me through, and they think I'm with the guy with the blue bag."
The serial stowaway first began boarding flights without a ticket in 2002. She told the reporter Brad Edwards: "The first time I was able to get through, I flew to Copenhagen. The second time I flew into Paris."
Hartman also flew to Seattle, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, and London free. She was first arrested in August 2014 when she was flying from San Jose, California, to Los Angeles.
Though the judge warned her not to fly free again, she returned back to court within seven months, The Times of London added.
Since Hartman's initial arrest in 2014, she has been apprehended several times and is known by name at O'Hare, where her appearance is referred to as a "Marilyn sighting," The Metro reported.
Hartman, who has bipolar disorder and was declared incompetent to proceed at court, The Times of London noted, also told CBS2 that she grew up in a household full of "violence and mental illness."
She continued: "When I took the plane ride, I wasn't happy. I wasn't, 'Oh, I'm going here or there,' I was in a depressed state of mind."
Hartman appeared in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois on Thursday and is being held at Cook County Jail. She is not able to post bond or be released, her attorney Parle Roe-Taylor told CNN.