American Airlines flight attendant who admitted to secretly filming young girls in plane bathroom learns fate
Estes Carter Thompson III pleaded guilty earlier this year to recording five underage girls over a nine-month period — as well as amassing a trove of AI-generated child pornography.
The 37-year-old now-fired flight attendant apologized at his sentencing Wednesday, conceding that his depraved actions were 'selfish, perverse and wrong.'
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3 Perv Estes Carter Thompson admitted to secretly recording underage girls in airplane lavatories.
Lynchburg Jail
Boston U.S. District Court Judge Julia Kobick called Thompson's behavior 'appalling' and said the filmed kids' 'innocence has been lost' because of it.
Federal prosecutors noted that Thompson had been 'recording videos of the children's bodies in one of their most private moments, and then storing, editing, and revisiting those videos, all for his own sexual gratification,' according to a sentencing memorandum obtained by Boston.com.
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3 One of Thompson's makeshift hidden camera setups, spotted by a 14-year-old victim.
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Thompson 'robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and the people they would encounter in it, instead leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity, and sadness,' prosecutors said.
The North Carolina native was arrested in September 2023 on a Boston-bound flight after he escorted a 14-year-old passenger to the lavatory — but asked to enter first to wash his hands, mentioning that the toilet seat was not working, prosecutors told the US District Court in Boston.
3 Two of the victims' families are suing American Airlines for allowing the recordings to happen on its watch.
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The girl then found an iPhone crudely concealed under red maintenance stickers that said 'seat broken' on the underside of the toilet seat.
The teen snapped photos of the hidden camera, returned to her seat, and showed them to her parents.
The girls' father confronted Thompson, who hid himself in the bathroom for the remainder of the flight and deleted all of his phone's data.
Investigators discovered more red stickers in his suitcase, and a search of his iCloud account revealed more recordings of four other underage girls — ages 7, 9, 11 and 14 — as well as photos of an unaccompanied 9-year-old asleep in her seat, and a hoard of sexual AI-generated images involving children.
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He pleaded guilty in March to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.
Thompson will serve his sentence at FMC Butner in North Carolina and intends to undergo treatment for sex offenders.
In addition to the 18-plus years behind bars, he must also serve five years of supervised release.
Thompson was immediately fired by American Airlines after the incident, but the company is still facing a civil lawsuit from one of the victims.
Paul Llewellyn, whose Texas-based law firm Lewis & Llewellyn is representing the child's family, told Boston.com it's 'deeply troubling' Thompson was able to exploit his position 'in such a calculated and invasive way.'
'American Airlines owes these families — and the public — answers and meaningful reforms to ensure this can never happen again,' he said.
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