W.Va. native, world-renowned jewel thief pleads guilty to stealing $22,000 diamond ring

April 30--Doris Payne has spent more than 60 years walking out of jewelry stores all over the world with things that didn't belong to her, but now a California judge has ordered her to stay away from those stores.

The daughter of a West Virginia coal miner, Payne, 83, was raised in the Raleigh County community of Slab Fork. A world-renowned jewel thief, she told the Daily Mail in a 2005 interview that it all began with a little watch from a general store in Beckley when she was just a teen.

Her latest score was a $22,500 diamond ring stolen in Palm Desert, Calif., in October.

"She's very charming and she's very beguiling," Payne's attorney, Gretchen von Helms, said in a phone interview. "She looks all the world like a sophisticated lady.

"She never forced anyone to do anything ... they just forget about her."

Payne was sentenced Monday to two years in a Riverside County jail and two years probation after pleading guilty the same day to one count each of burglary and grand theft, both felonies, said John Hall, Riverside County District Attorney's office spokesman.

Judge William Lebov also ordered Payne to pay the business $800 and any other restitution and also to stay away from all jewelry stores for the term of her sentence.

"What the judge did here was tempering punishment with compassion because of her age," von Helms said. "She's a low-level non-violent offender. This wasn't a death penalty case and he couldn't see sentencing her to a time where she could potentially die in custody."

She said Payne, who already has spent six months in jail, is ill. Von Helms said the women's dormitory at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility was pepper sprayed and that the irritating substance got into the ventilation system causing it to spread. Payne's breathing, as a result, has been labored and she's spent time in the jail's infirmary.

"He took into account the taxpayers' pocketbook," von Helms told the Los Angeles Times. "And do we really need to incarcerate a nonviolent offender -- yes, a repeat offender, that's true -- who's ill, who has emphysema, who's elderly?"

Payne, who already has served six months, could cut her jail time in half with good behavior. Depending on her health and the jail, she could be out a lot sooner. Von Helms said Payne could be released in a month or even a week, but still would have to do her two years probation.

The district attorney's office objected to the plea and sentencing, arguing for the maximum sentence of six years, he said.

"We objected to the plea and sentence, advising the court of what we believe to be numerous aggravating factors," Hall said in an email. "Those include a criminal history dating back to 1952, crimes having being committed across the United States as well as internationally, that she used her age to gain the trust of victims, a previous failure to successfully complete probation and parole, and that she was on parole when she committed the crime charged in this case."

A San Diego judge sentenced Payne to five years in 2010 after she stole a $9,000 ring from Macy's. She got out after 2 { years and was on parole for that offense when she walked into El Paseo Jewelers at 1 p.m. on Oct. 21.

She introduced herself as Audrey and then began charming the salesperson, Riverside County Deputy A. Yamaguchi wrote in a declaration filed in Riverside County Court.

She told the clerk she'd had some jewelry stolen and had a $42,000 check from her insurance company to replace it. She asked to look at necklaces and was shown more than a dozen before leaving empty-handed.

She returned an hour later and asked to see rings, telling the clerk that her granddaughter told her "If you want to leave me something, leave me a ring," according to the declaration.

The clerk helped Payne for about an hour, showing her several high-priced diamond rings that were left on the counter while they talked. Payne told her she liked several items and that she would return the next day with a cashier's check. She left and the clerk went about their business.

The next day, a $22,500 ring was discovered missing. The clerk remembered last seeing the ring on Payne's left pinkie finger. <$800, von Helms said.>>

"Due to the large amount of inventory out on the display case at once and her charming personality he must have forgotten to retrieve the ring from her before she left," Yamaguchi wrote in the declaration.

It's a game she's been perfecting for more than 60 years.

Doris Marie Payne, also known as Dorothy Marie Payne, Louise Davis and 20 or so other aliases, was born in Slab Fork in October 1930. The tiny unincorporated coal town southwest of Beckley is also the birthplace of singer-songwriter &lt;person>Bill Withers.

Payne told the Daily Mail in 2005 that she did not regret her "career" which she regarded as a fun adventure. She also said her modus operandi was nearly the same for every job.

She dressed in a classy outfit and would go to a nice shop and chat up the clerk while asking to see different pieces. She'd try them on while chatting, and when the clerk was distracted she'd leave the store, jewels in hand.

She was polite and mannerly, just like she learned as a child from the Amy Vanderbilt etiquette book her mother kept around the house.

"There's not much difference between selling dope or jewelry," Payne said during the interview. "There's no guarantee of value. But once I learned, I never went to any other place than the finest -- Cartier, Tiffany's, Van Cleef & Arpels.

"None were out of my reach. I'd go back two or three times to the same store, to the same saleslady."

She said she realized she could make people forget her as a young teen. She was 13 and her mother told her she would get her a watch if she brought home A's from school. On an outing to Beckley, Payne went into the general store to pay $2 on the family tab and to look at watches.

She asked the shopkeeper to let her try on a watch. Minutes later, a man came in and got the shopkeeper's attention. He told her to "run along" and left her at the counter angry but still wearing the watch. She went to the door and shouted at him about the watch, which he promptly and angrily removed from her wrist.

"Going out the door never entered my mind," she told the Daily Mail.

But she learned from that experience that she could taunt a man into a rage and that she could "cause a white man to forget."

She moved with her mother, a seamstress, to Ohio years later to get away from her abusive father. She was married for a time. In 1952, she left their two children, a son and a daughter, with her estranged husband and his new wife.

That year, at age 22, she started stealing jewelry in Cleveland. She then took a bus to Pittsburgh to go for bigger gems -- a $22,000 square-cut diamond ring caught her eye. She pawned it for $7,500.

"I thought I was smart," she recalled then. "I hurried home and told Mom, 'I can do this.' She looked at me like I was a snake. I said 'That's not stealing.'

"I always took from a white man. I never gave a thought to it that it was stealing. I only keep what they let me keep."

Payne has been running most of her life from the FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol.

She told the Daily Mail her most memorable heist was a $100,000 diamond ring stolen from Cartier in Monte Carlo in Monaco. She was arrested at an airport in Nice, France, and put up in a halfway house because there was no jail nearby.

She told the Denver Post that she used a pair of nail clippers at the halfway house to remove the diamond from the setting, and then stitched the stone into her girdle. It remained there through her three years in a French prison.

She's had more than 35 stints in jails in six states, and two European countries.

Two weeks after her 2005 Daily Mail interview she was arrested in Nevada for stealing a $8,500 ring. She did the interview after getting out of a Colorado prison. She'd been convicted in 1999 of stealing a ring from a Neiman Marcus store in Denver.

She was the subject of a 2013 documentary called "The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne." The website for the film claims Payne stole more than $2 million in jewels in her 60-year run as an international jewel thief.

She almost always sold the jewelry she stole, she told the Daily Mail. She never kept the stolen jewelry, preferring costume glitz to the real thing.

Deputies arrested Payne on Oct. 29 as she was out "running errands," according to the Desert Sun.

"She understood the charge and that she'll have her day in court," Lt. Roy Grace told the newspaper. "She was not defensive by any means."

He described her as a "very coherent 80-year-old lady. Not fragile, very sharp."

A major motion picture is reportedly in the works about Payne, with Academy Award winning actress Halle Berry "loosely attached," according to the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs, Calif.

Los Angeles filmmaker Eunetta Boone, who is co-producing the film, told the Desert Sun that Payne isn't dangerous but is "extremely smart."

"She's not a threat to your person; she's a threat to your business," Boone said. "It's her own addiction. She just likes to see if she can do it."

Contact writer Ashley B. Craig at [email protected] or 304-348-4850.

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