NORTH CAROLINA, USA — A North Carolina flight attendant will spend the next 18 years in prison for secretly recording young girls in airplane bathrooms.
Federal prosecutors said Estes Thompson III, who worked for a major airline, was caught after he placed a hidden phone camera inside a lavatory during a 2023 flight from Charlotte to Boston. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Thompson taped the phone to the toilet seat and tried to cover it with “inoperative equipment” stickers to avoid detection.
Investigators later uncovered videos from four other instances where Thompson recorded minors in airplane bathrooms. Authorities also discovered more than 50 images of a 9-year-old child who had traveled alone as an unaccompanied minor on one of his flights. Prosecutors say Thompson also possessed AI-generated images depicting child sexual abuse…