Police say Payne, now 85, is at it again: She was recently arrested and charged with pocketing a $690 pair of earrings from a Saks Fifth Avenue department store at a mall in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood.
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An elderly woman who is widely known as an worldwide jewel thief was arrested in an Atlanta store.
Police say a store security guard saw Payne on surveillance video, and she was caught shortly after leaving the store. Payne was apprehended at an adjoining shopping mall, and the earrings were found in her pocket, according to the police report.
“I think these officers just thought it was a run of the mill shoplifting”, Atlanta police spokesman Warren Pickard told Channel 2 Action News.
Doris Payne – who, according to Sgt. Pickard, started committing crimes in her 20’s – has been tied to thefts in multiple states including California, Nevada, New York, and Colorado, as well as internationally, in Greece, England, Switzerland, and France, reports the Desert Sunday.
She developed a winning strategy – dressing nicely, carrying a designer handbag and arming herself with a detailed story – that she used to charm jewelry store employees. She stole diamonds because they were easiest, she said, and she was in it for the game, not the money. She is very good. After her arrest, a judge initially refused to release her on bond, noting that Payne previously listed her occupation on court records as “jewelry thief”, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“There’s never been a day, that I went to steal that I did not get what I went to do”, Payne said in a trailer for a documentary about her life.
“I don’t have any regrets about stealing jewelery”. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her share of supporters as dozens of people have taken to Twitter demanding that Atlanta police “free Doris Payne”.
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Police say she has made a lifelong career out of jewel theft. According to Pickard’s research, Payne’s criminal history, the basis of the 2013 documentary “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne”, began when she was in her 20s.
