No Retirement for a Jewel Thief With a Seven-Decade Career
For Doris Payne, an international jewel thief whose criminal career spans seven decades, old habits are hard to kick, if police records are any indication.
Ms. Payne, 86, was arrested on Tuesdayby the police in Dunwoody, an affluent suburb north of Atlanta, after she slipped a Lagos diamond necklace worth nearly $2,000 in her pocket and was stopped by a security guard, according to the Dunwoody police.
Noting her “colorful past,” a police news release acknowledged that the media had shown “significant interest” in the arrest.
Ms. Payne’s alleged attempt to steal the necklace was only the latest in a long string of similar crimes, many of them successful, that have made her something of a legend in international criminal circles.
A website for a 2013 documentary film, “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne,” estimates that she has stolen $2 million in jewels during her 70 or so years of crime. She has been tied to thefts in many states, including California, Colorado, New York and Ohio, and in cities including Paris, Milan, Tokyo and Monaco.
Ms. Payne, who is being held at the DeKalb County jail, is to appear in court on Friday at 1:30 p.m., where she will be read her latest criminal charges, according to a clerk at the DeKalb County Courthouse.
Born in West Virginia in October 1930, the child of a father who regularly abused her mother, Ms. Payne began her criminal career at an early age, according to the documentary.
She said in the film that as a little girl, she went to shop for a watch but was interrupted when another customer entered the store. The store’s owner, who she said did not want to be seen talking with a black person, asked her to leave. He did not notice that she still had the watch on. Though it is unclear in the film whether she stole that watch, Ms. Payne suggests that she first realized in that moment how easy theft could be.
In the film, Ms. Payne said she began to steal only out of necessity, as her father’s abuse of her mother worsened.
Ms. Payne traveled to Pittsburgh by bus, where she stole a diamond and sold it for cash, giving her mother money to leave her father’s house, she said.
Soon after, Ms. Payne’s criminal career took off. An article by The Associated Press in 1976 suggested that her documented crime spree began when she was 16.
Though a complete criminal record was unavailable on Thursday, Ms. Payne has spent several years behind bars.
Kirk Marcolina, a co-director of the documentary, said it was difficult to pin down specifics about Ms. Payne’s criminal history, particularly since she was fundamentally untrustworthy.
“We spent a lot of time getting all her records from the F.B.I. Tried to piece it all together,” he said. “Often times she would say things that didn’t necessarily match.”
Speaking to The Los Angeles Times in October 2013, John Kennedy, the president of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, which informs and alerts jewelers of major criminals, said that the organization had sent “innumerable bulletins” to business and law enforcement officials about Ms. Payne’s behavior.
In the film, Ms. Payne, who has been arrested many times, refers to her crimes as “campaigns” and alludes to taking on another identity when she stakes out a target.
“I’m preparing to play the part of somebody else,” she said. “I’m camouflaging myself.”
Despite Ms. Payne’s crimes, some jewelers feel a degree of sympathy for her. Alfredo Molina, the chairman and owner of the Black, Starr and Frost, a luxury jeweler, appeared in the documentary, for which he met Ms. Payne several times. He found her to be charming, he said in a phone interview on Thursday.
“I found her to basically have an open heart and to share her life with everyone,” he said. “She’s not a threat to society. I don’t agree with what she has done, but I see her as a product that was created by us.”
Mr. Molina confirmed that Ms. Payne had never stolen from one of his stores, that he was aware of. But even if she had, he said, that would not have changed the way he felt about her even “one degree.”
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us/doris-payne-thief.html
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