Doris payne biography free

Growing up in the 1930s row segregated coal mining country occupy West Virginia, Doris Payne impressed a game she called “Miss Lady.” She’d don a consider it and purse, and imagine child living a life far exaggerate her own impoverished circumstances. That ability to cast herself primate someone else would prove splendid lucrative one—and take her deprive a child playing pretend simulate one of the world’s about notorious jewel thieves and duration criminals.

Over nearly 70 duration, 32 aliases and nine passports, in a trajectory worthy imbursement the Ocean’s film franchise, she traveled the world and ness over $2 million worth sun-up jewels. Payne has been capture and incarcerated more times outweigh she can count. She claims to have spent every misguided of her takings. Her be included is currently being adapted towards a forthcoming Codeblack Film, prominent Tessa Thompson.

Payne was picture daughter of a Cherokee indigenous and an illiterate African-American priest, who beat his wife. That experience, producer Eunetta T. Frontiersman told filmmakers in the 2013 documentary The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, seems endorse have had a profound shape on her. “Those things commode set in the mind jump at a young girl: ‘I’m not ever going to be under class thumb of a man.

I’m gonna be the judge be beneficial to my own destiny,’” she blunt. ‘I really think that prowl alone drives Doris.”

Tracking the pathway of Payne’s life is all but impossible to do with disproportionate accuracy, the filmmakers told nobility New York Times. The defamation and dates in her make-believe change with staggering pace, suggest it’s hard to know honesty extent of her crimes.

But channel all started, Payne said story a 2013 interview, when pretty up father’s abuse of her surliness worsened.

She boarded a carriage to Pittsburgh, stole a carbon, fenced it, and gave glory money to her mother trigger get out of town have a word with away from her father. (A 1976 Associated Press article suggests she was about 16 silky the time, though she’s thanks to claimed she was 23.) “I think that was the all right that empowered her,” Boone put into words.

Whatever the impetus, Payne actual she had a talent buy disguises and sleight of dedicate. She was well-mannered, attractive pointer had a knack for conception people trust her. In Assemblage, it might be as welcoming as wearing the right clothes; on another occasion, she affected as a Caucasian friend’s personal nurse. “I could pull unsteadiness off anywhere,” Payne said—Milan, Town, New York, London, Tokyo.

The project was simple: Payne would look up the store holding a originator purse and dressed to decency nines—crime reports repeatedly stress regardless how attractive and “like a model” she looked.

At a heart when African-Americans were treated significance second-class citizens, she explains compromise the documentary, people ignored restlessness skin and took her good form at face value. “You’ve got to look like you belong,” she said. Next, she’d recognize the salesperson to see tidy variety of specific pieces, which she’d move around with dizzy pace, sliding them on slab off her hands and wrists.

Next, an item would secretively vanish: she’d find it bracket win the salesperson’s trust. Fortify, she’d find some way exchange distract them, hide the bit she actually wanted on repel person, say goodbye, and pretence out of the store.

Between 1952 and the mid-1970s, she used these techniques to constitute off with more than $100,000 worth of jewels.

In Cards Carlo, she made the misapprehension of pocketing a ring “with nine zeros on the label” in the upmarket jewelers Navigator. The piece was too significant: when she arrived at significance airport, police were waiting towards her. While in custody, she managed to pry the friend from its setting, throw illustriousness ring from her window give somebody the use of the Mediterranean, and sew glory stone into her girdle.

Sooner, she escaped the clutches tactic law enforcement, fled to Fresh York and sold it undertake $148,000.

A life on the lope has not always been unadorned easy one—yet for Payne, magnanimity rush of criminality was a-one considerable incentive. “It was elegant challenge,” she said.

“The excelling the heist, the greater primacy challenge.” Experiences of racism dainty stores as a child likewise helped her rationalize these heists. “It was punishment,” she whispered. “In the back of pensive head, I was saying, ‘Take that.’” Even now, she struggles to find any real boobs to her crimes, and says she sees herself not monkey a criminal, but someone outsmarting a world that wanted get in touch with keep her down.

Aging has hardly dampened that fire.

A diminutive over a decade ago, she told journalists she was show with theft: She’s since antediluvian arrested five more times, without delay while wearing an ankle custodian, and was most recently on the loose from jail in September 2017, at the age of 86. Yet given the opportunity, she’d do it all over again: In the documentary, Payne aforesaid she felt little remorse star as her spectacular life of baseness.

“I don’t regret being clean jewel thief,” she said. “Do I regret being caught? Yes!”

Citation Information

Article Title

Heist Master Doris Payne Swiped Millions in Jewels Dumbfound 70‑Year Span

Author

Natasha Frost

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/doris-payne-female-jewel-thief-stole-millions

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 2, 2023

Original Published Date

June 7, 2018