A former American Airlines flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, has been sentenced to 18.5 years in federal prison for secretly recording young girls inside an airplane lavatory.
The sentence was handed down on Wednesday in Boston by U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who described Thompson’s actions as “appalling” and said they caused lasting harm to his child victims. After serving his prison term, Thompson will be under supervised release for five years.
Thompson was arrested in January 2024 in Lynchburg, Virginia, after a 14-year-old girl discovered a hidden phone taped to the lid of an airplane toilet seat. Investigators later found that he had used the same method to record at least five girls—ages 7 to 14—over a nine-month period.
He was charged with attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child sexual abuse material involving a prepubescent child.
In court, Thompson expressed remorse, calling his behavior “selfish, perverse, and wrong.” Prosecutors, however, emphasized the severe emotional impact on the victims. In their sentencing memo, they wrote that he “robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world, leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity, and sadness.”
Thompson will serve his sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, where his legal team says he plans to undergo specialized treatment for sex offenders. His attorneys declined to comment further.
