Serial stowaway Marilyn Hartman released on electronic monitoring

Marilyn Hartman, the 70-year-old Chicago woman who has risen to international fame for her habit of sneaking aboard planes without a ticket, was released from custody pending trial on her latest charges.

The ruling on her freedom came after Cook County Judge Maura Slattery-Boyle on Wednesday concluded that Hartman was fit to stand trial following months of therapy and medication while in the custody of the state Department of Human Services.

Slattery Boyle, in March, had ruled that Hartman was unfit to stand trial, after county mental health examiners found that Hartman suffered from depression and delusional beliefs.

Hartman will go free, but will wear an electronic monitoring device and a GPS locating device, and will live at A Safe Haven –– which is similar to a halfway house. Her conditions of bond bar her from visiting an airport, Assistant State’s Attorney Kimellen Chamberlain said.

Prosecutors had protested to her release, noting that she had been free on bond when she was arrested in January at O’Hare Airport just days after she had been arrested for boarding a British Airways flight to London. In that incident, she made it all the way to Heathrow Airport before she was taken into custody and returned to the U.S.

Hartman has been arrested dozens of times at airports in Chicago, California, Florida and Hawaii, having apparently evaded airport security and sneaked aboard planes without a ticket. In February 2016, while on probation for trespassing at O’Hare, Hartman was arrested for violating probation when her monitoring anklet “pinged” as she made her way, again, to the airport.

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