MEET The Charming 83-Year-Old International Jewel Thief, Who Has Ripped Off Jewellers For 60 Years

Doris Payne

When the sweet octogenarian African American lady walked into El Paseo Jewellers in Palm Desert, California, last October, staff were delighted.

White-haired and petite, not in the best of health but articulate and elegantly turned out, she told them she had just had a $25,000 insurance payout and wanted to spend the cash on a present for herself.

Salespeople fussed around her with typical Californian courtesy, helping her try on gem-encrusted necklaces and rings and, when her hip began playing up, finding her a chair to rest her legs.

After making arrangements to complete her purchase of a diamond and white gold pinkie ring the next day, they helped her hobble to the door.

What staff did not realise was that the $22,500 the ring was still on her finger.

'Diamond' Doris Payne, the world's most unlikely international jewel thief, had struck again. Within minutes she had sold on the ring for a mere $800 at a nearby pawnshop.

Unfortunately for Doris, authorities are now so familiar with her history that they were quick to catch her.

The 83-year-old has gained infamy for a six-decade criminal career during which she has travelled the world to swipe millions of dollars worth of jewels by making staff 'forget' she was carrying them.

Over time, she has been connected to 20 aliases, nine dates of birth, and five Social Security numbers, but is nevertheless so brazen about her crimes that she once gave her occupation as 'jewel thief' in court papers.

But the international lifestyle has come at a heavy price for the cunning coal-miner's daughter: she has an Interpol file dating back to the 1970s, a U.S. criminal record 20 pages long and has served a string of jail terms.

She had been free for only three months before pulling off her latest scam.

So notorious is Doris, she has even been the subject of a documentary, The Life And Crimes Of Doris Payne, and it is rumoured that a biopic is in the works with Academy Award winner Halle Berry cast in the starring role.

Born to a coal mining father and a seamstress mother in the remote and impoverished town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, in 1930, Doris Marie Payne was the youngest of six children.

A ring like the one Doris stole from El Paseo: So caught up were workers in making sure she was properly looked after, they didn't realise she had it on

Although a family move to Cleveland, Ohio, when broadened her horizons somewhat as a teenager, she still faced the injustice and suppression that was the lot of many black women in those days of American history.

Kirk Marcolina, producer of The Life And Crimes Of Doris Payne, told the Daily Mirror's Rachael Bletchly: 'She always wanted to become a ballerina but one day somebody told her she couldn't - there were no black ballerinas.

'She realised she had to find another way of getting out of that small town and seeing the world. Stealing jewels eventually became the way she did it.'

In the documentary, Doris revealed how she first learned her trademark distraction trick as a teenager when a store clerk eagerly ditched her when a white customer came in.

She walked to the door, a small gold watch still clasped around her wrist. Although she gave it back that time, she realised how easy it would have been to walk away with the prize.

From there, she worked her way up from bargain jewellery to some of the most expensive stores across the globe, hitting targets as far afield as Britain, France, Italy, Monaco and even Japan.

Well known to police: So notorious is Doris she has even been the subject of a documentary, The Life And Crimes Of Doris Payne, and it is rumoured a biopic is in the works starring Oscar-winner Halle Berry

'There’s never been a day that I went to steal that I did not get what I went to do,' she said in the documentary.

'I don’t have any regrets about stealing jewelry. I regret getting caught.'

That sentiment proves problematic for judges faced with the elderly offender.

In 2010, she asked one to be lenient because she was 'truly sorry that this went on as long as it did,' but that wasn't enough.

'You won't stop,' Judge Frank Brown said at the time, explaining his decision to sentence her to five years which was at the high end of the possible verdicts.

'That’s the problem here... She’s a thief. She’s charming. Santa Claus’s wife, that’s who she is.'

After that punitive sentence, Doris vowed to leave her life of crime. But today she is back behind bars, facing two years inside and a further two years probation.

'The judge tempered punishment with compassion about her age,' her attorney attorney Gretchen von Helms told the LA Times last week.

'He took into account the taxpayers' pocketbook. And do we really need to incarcerate a non-violent offender - yes, a repeat offender, that's true - who's ill, who has emphysema, who's elderly?'

Source: Daily Mail UK