The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.

The Thief Lady: The Story of a Diamond Swindler Who Couldn't Be Caught for 60 Years

'05.12.2020'

Source: Big Picture

Yes, she stole, but not from the poor - she only stole in elite stores, brilliantly playing the role of a rich wife or a noble lady, says Big Picture.

Photo: Shutterstock

Doris Payne is a real celebrity, about whom more than one book has been written and a documentary has been shot. For a long 60 years, the police of America, Europe and Asia hunted for her. She was caught, imprisoned, but she was incorrigible. The last time a thief was arrested for theft at the age of 87, an old woman stole $ 86 worth of food and equipment from a Walmart supermarket.

During her life, Doris Payne changed 32 pseudonyms and nine passports, the amount of jewelry stolen by her was more than $ 2 million, but she claims that she spent all the money. The creators of the documentary about Doris Payne argue that it is almost impossible to restore the exact picture and the scale of her crimes.

Doris Payne was born in West Virginia in 1930. She was the sixth child in the family and dreamed of running away from home, where her father-miner got drunk all the time and beat her mother and children. Doris studied well at school, and by the age of 16 she had become a real beauty.

She committed her first crime by accident. Once the mother sent the girl to the local shop of Bill Benjamin, where the girl looked at the jewelry with admiration, and then asked the seller to let her try on a pretty watch. He let him take the watch from the window, but then a white customer entered the shop. The seller was embarrassed that he let a black girl into the store, and Doris ran out of the store in fear, forgetting to take off her watch. She later returned, but she remembered this incident.

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She realized that in this way she could "save up" some money, leave home and take her mother with her. Doris came up with something like a game: she came to the store with her friend, and the girls, chatting non-stop, began to try on everything: bracelets, watches and other accessories. The seller, confused, began to get confused and forgot what he had put in the hands of the girls and what had not, so that something always remained with Doris. She then returned it, but made it clear that she could steal if she wanted.

Over time, Payne realized that she had talent. She was brought up, attractive and knew how to lead people around her finger. Doris committed her first major theft in the late 1960s, when black and white Americans were equalized in the United States, and she could easily enter the most expensive boutiques and high-end stores.

At 23, Payne started playing for high stakes. She came to a jewelry store with an expensive designer handbag, in an elegant outfit, and asked the seller to show her several pieces of jewelry that she twisted in her hands, put on and took off from her fingers and wrists. Then one of the decorations mysteriously disappeared. Doris found it and returned it to the seller, thereby gaining trust, and then hiding what she really needed.

Screenshot: ProducerMichael / YouTube

With the money raised from the sale of stolen jewelry, Doris supported her aging mother and her two children born of casual relationships.

For the family, she came up with different legends about how she got a promotion at work and how quickly her career took off. And Doris also felt like a real Hollywood star and could no longer stop. She spent a lot of money to dress in the best stores, bought expensive perfumes and accessories. Looking through catalogs of jewelry brands and fashion magazines, Doris noted the thing she liked, bought a plane ticket and went to get the jewelry.

In the early 1970s, she went on a real world tour, but three years later in Monte Carlo she made her first mistake. Inspired by watching Alfred Hitchcock's romantic comedy To Catch a Thief, starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, Doris pocketed a Cartier 10-carat diamond ring worth over $ 500. The decoration was too valuable and the police were waiting at the airport for Doris.

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She was placed in custody in a hotel room, but the thief managed to remove the stone from the frame, hide it in the belt of her dress and escape from justice. The woman then sold the stone for $ 148.

Doris did not always manage to escape, sometimes she came across, and the case went to court, but she never received a long sentence, because she did not take more than one or two items. Doris served her longest five-year sentence when she was released in 1998.

She told reporters 12 years ago that she had done away with the theft, but she has been arrested five more times since then.

Doris Payne. Screenshot: Movieclips Indie / YouTube

Now 90 years old, Doris Payne has no regrets about becoming a criminal. According to rumors, in the US alone, her indictment was 20 pages long.

“I don’t regret stealing jewelry. I'm sorry I got caught, ”Doris admits in the documentary.

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