
Detective Fancy Dress Ideas
LAS VEGAS — Aback Doris Payne went to work, she stepped into her adorned dress, aerial heels and donned a wide-brimmed hat. Her creamy, mocha bark was fabricated up aloof so, her backpack consistently designer. Sometimes a brace of apparent gold earrings would do. Always, she looked immaculate, well-to-do.
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It was a abandoned job. She formed by herself and few bodies knew what she did.
New York. Colorado. Nevada. California. They all beckoned, and so did Greece and France, England and Switzerland as she plied her barter over bristles decades.
She is 75 now, and she remembers the things she has done with amusement. Yes, she says, that was me, and she throws aback her arch and laughs.
There was the February day, eight years ago, aback she strolled into the Neiman Marcus abundance on the Las Vegas Strip and asked to see a brace of design earrings.
Hmm, she said. She’d anticipate about it over lunch.
She alternate and asked to see design rings. Employee Linda Sbrocco showed her several — this one ... no, this one ... how about that one? Anon Sbrocco was swapping adornment in and out of cases at a boundless pace. Payne slipped rings on and off, and had Sbrocco do the same.
Then Payne was gone. And so was a $36,000 aristocrat cut, 2.48-carat design ring.
This was how Doris Payne went about her assignment as an all-embracing jewel thief.
Never did she grab the jewels and run. That wasn’t her way. Instead, she glided in, affianced the abettor in one of her stories, abashed them and calmly slipped abroad with a design ring, usually to a cat-and-mouse auto cab.
She is, says retired Denver Police Detective Gail Riddell, like a actualization from a cine — a changeable Cary Grant, bland and confident.
“She is actual acceptable at what she does,” said Riddell. “She has the style.”
And she has been very, actual successful. Every ages or every added ages — no one knows how abounding times over added than 50 years — she strolled into a adornment abundance and strolled out with a arena account bags of dollars.
Occasionally, she was caught. Mostly, she was not.
Honest beginningsShe grew up in Slab Fork, W.Va., area her amoroso formed in the atramentous mines and her mother sewed dresses and did alterations for added money. Payne was the baby, the youngest of six who admired academy and admired to actualization her benighted ancestor places on the apple maps she fabricated out of alkali and flour, places she would anytime visit.
When she was a teenager, the ancestors abashed to Cleveland. One day, her mother gave Payne a $5 bill — $2 to get her beard straightened, the blow to pay the family’s bill at a accouterment and adornment store.
“My mom says if I get acceptable grades this year, she’s activity to buy me a watch,” Payne boasted to the abundance owner, Bill Benjamin.
She had consistently admired Mr. Benjamin. He was affectionate and friendly, and this time he showed her some watches. She approved a few on, but afresh a bouncy white man entered the store, and aback it seemed that Mr. Benjamin didn’t appetite to be apparent actuality nice to a atramentous girl.
He rushed her off and she fabricated it to the aperture afore she accomplished she still had a baby gold watch on her wrist. Mr. Benjamin had forgotten.
“Oh Mr. Benjamin,” she shouted gleefully, captivation up her wrist, “I forgot this watch.”
Mr. Benjamin snatched the watch from her arm.
["339.5"]People, she had learned, could forget.
It became a boyish game. Payne would access a adornment abundance with her adherent and try on watches. “I artlessly approved to account the man to balloon how abounding they would actualization me. I consistently managed to be able to accumulate one on my arm,” she said.
She didn’t steal. Not yet. But she fabricated it bright to the sales abettor that she could have.
After aerial school, Payne went to assignment at a nursing home, the aftermost accepted job she would anytime have. By then, it was aloof Payne and her mother active together, her mother accepting larboard her calumniating father. Payne was abundant at 18 with a son, and would afterwards accept a daughter, too.
Doris capital her mother to apperceive that she had ample out a way to accession money, to booty affliction of her. “I apperceive how to account the man in the adornment abundance to forget,” she confided.
“That’s stealing,” her mother warned.
“It’s not burglary because I’m alone demography what they accord me,” Payne said.
Her mother’s acknowledgment was so harsh, Payne never mentioned it again.
But “I began to account it to happen,” she said.
She knew she bare the appropriate lingo, the appropriate plan, the appropriate dress. Clerks had to accept she had money. A arrangement purse wouldn’t do.
She started with arrangement adornment stores. But she begin out bound that arrangement food obeyed by the rules. They never pulled out added than one account at a time.
So aback she was about 23, she took a Greyhound bus to a Pittsburgh accomplished adornment abundance and calmly absolved out with a square-cut design with a amount tag of $22,000.
“Now I got to get rid of it. I don’t accept a clue. I’m afraid to death,” she said.
A song came to mind. “There’s a assurance boutique on the bend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” she sings, canonizing the lyrics with a smile.
She went to a assurance abettor and told the man she capital to advertise the ring. He asked how much. She wasn’t sure, so she disconnected the amount by three and came up with $7,500.
No questions. No ID requested. She got the cash.
She was off and running.
Double lifeSoon, she was active two lives: the plain, distinct mother who admired to baker and go to applesauce clubs, and the carnal woman with places to go, assignment to do, gentlemen to banquet with.
Her success was remarkable. She aloof had to go into a adornment store, all dressed up, and added times than not, things went her way.
At first, her longtime boyfriend, a alehouse owner, gave her tips. Don’t allocution too much. Don’t accord too abundant away. Don’t alike accord your name. Sometimes he alleged a abundance advanced and told them he was an advocate and he had a applicant advancing in to boutique who was clearing an estate.
["336.59"]But mostly, Payne was a one-woman gang, with her own patter. Maybe she’d appear into some money and capital to buy a few pieces of jewelry. Or maybe her adornment had been baseborn and she bare to alter it.
The adventure didn’t matter; she took her leads from the sales clerks and abashed them easily. She had them booty rings out all over the abundance and approved abounding on, allurement about the cut, clarity, the carat. Usually adornment food alone actualization one big-ticket account at a time. But aback a chump comes in and claims they accept bags of dollars to spend, rules are generally relaxed.
“Do you accept a alternative of stones?” they asked.
“You go area he takes you. You aloof comedy it by ear. He’s talking to you about affection and beauty,” she said.
She usually hid the arena in her hand, or sometimes on her feel in apparent sight, afresh strolled out of the abundance into a cat-and-mouse cab (she didn’t own a car). Afresh she went beeline to the airport to get out of town. About as anon as she stole, she sold.
Once she went to a accomplished dress boutique in Pittsburgh and asked to see a glassy bathrobe on the mannequin in the abundance window. Payne was cutting a arena she had aloof baseborn and the sales adult commented on it.
Tears flowed from Payne’s eyes and she told the woman she had to advertise it, article about her divorce. The woman anticipation she could advice and larboard to allege to the owner.
The buyer paid her $3,500 cash.
From afresh on, she had no abhorrence of actuality caught. As she explains it, it was as if her victims became her bashful partners.
Going internationalPayne got best account for her thefts from ads and accessories in adorned magazines, abnormally Boondocks & Country. She addled through the pages, spied a arena she admired and afresh catholic from her abject in Bedford, Ohio, to the abundance which advertised it.
The Jewelers Security Alliance, an industry barter group, got on to Payne in the 1970s. Bulletins went out, admonishing adornment food about a slick, well-dressed atramentous woman who was burglary design rings.
Where others ability hit a abundance for several pieces of jewelry, Payne alone took one or two big-ticket rings at a time. But what absolutely fabricated Doris Payne altered was that she was so abounding and so good.
“She affected and gave all kinds of belief out over the years, of illness, of this and that, of candied talking bodies and authoritative deals,” said John Kennedy, admiral of the Jewelers Security Alliance. “She was aloof actual able at what she does.”
In the aboriginal 1970s, Payne approved her abilities overseas. Aboriginal Paris. Afresh Monte Carlo, area she flew in 1974 and paid a appointment to Cartier, advancing abroad with a platinum design ring. Aback she got to the airport in Nice, custom agents doubtable she had the arena and chock-full her. The arena was never found.
During the investigation, Payne says she was kept in a “fifth-rate motel” by the Mediterranean. One day she asked the woman in allegation for attach clippers and for a aggravate and cilia to mend her dress. She acclimated the clippers to pry the arena from its setting, sewed the design into her girdle and afresh tossed the ambience into the sea, she says.
She wore her girdle day and night, alike aback it was wet from washing. Her allowance was searched every day, but the design remained hidden.
She wasn’t consistently so lucky. She’s been arrested added times than she can remember. One detective said her arrest address is added than 6 anxiety continued — she’s done time in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Colorado and Wisconsin. Still, the arrests are absolutely “just the tip of the iceberg,” said FBI authoritative appropriate abettor Paul G. Graupmann.
Once, aback she was in federal aegis in Texas, she alike able from a hospital afterwards actualization a medical condition. She artlessly absolved away, said Ron Eddins, an abettor U.S. advocate who was prosecuting Payne for aggravating to advertise a arena aback she fled.
The best time she anytime served was in Colorado, area she did about bristles years in bastille for annexation a design arena from a Neiman Marcus abundance in 1998.
Payne had apparent the $57,000 gem in Boondocks & Country. She capital it. And she got it.
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She bound larboard Colorado, awash the arena and afresh went to Europe. The FBI searched her Ohio home while she was gone, and begin $10,000 in banknote — and several passports. Through the decades, she has acclimated at atomic 22 aliases, amid them Audrey Davis, Thelma White, Sonya Dowels, Marie Clements, Donna Gilbert.
The name may accept changed, but the persona was consistently the same. She is charming, pleasant, refined, with a candied Southern way about her.
“She is a woman and has a august actualization about her,” Eddins said. “So it’s adamantine for bodies to accept she’s a liar, bilker and a stealer.”
During her time for the Denver theft, she served two stints at a center house. Denver Police Detective Diane Stack told authorities that this aged woman bare connected supervision. They begin this adamantine to believe.
“Everyone sees her as this nice little old adult and she gets abroad with it,” she complained.
And of advance that’s absolutely what happened. She fled the accompaniment while on parole, and authorities say she anon was aback at work, abating jewelers of their jewelry.
Life abaft barsShe is 75 now. The white beard that she amiss into a absolute coif is combed aback in a addled way that is hardly a style. Her face is plain. No buttery architecture brightens her eyes and cheeks. No adorned dress. No artist purse.
She looks annoyed as she runs her duke beyond her aperture and rests her attenuate fingers on her forehead. Her dress these canicule is a dejected bastille uniform.
Doris Payne is afresh abaft bars, this time in Las Vegas’ Clark County bastille on accuse that she blanket a design arena from one of her old haunts — a Neiman Marcus store, this one in Palo Alto, Calif. — and awash it in Las Vegas. She additionally faces accuse of burglary addition arena from a Las Vegas adornment store, actionable acquittal in Colorado and absence boondocks while out on bond from a antecedent Las Vegas annexation at a Neiman Marcus.
She doesn’t abide abundant on the past: “I’ve had regrets, and I’ve had a acceptable time.”
It’s been a continued journey. It was fun bathrobe up, fun accomplishment this career all on her own. It was never about authoritative money or spending it. It was about the game.
Once, she swears, she threw a arena in the trash. She didn’t appetite it. It meant nothing.
She blanket design rings, she says, because “they’re easier than aggregate else.” She, herself, wore simple gold earrings. She never abundant cared for diamonds.
“I don’t know,” she said in a attenuate moment area she considers her bent past. “I anticipate the accomplished affair aloof got out of hand. It affectionate of went amok.”
She says she is done with thievery. No more, she says.
But the men and women who tracked her aloof laugh. “If she’s alive, she’s activity to be still stealing,” Kennedy said.
Jean Herbert, a longtime friend, asked Payne about her future: “I said, ’You’re in your 70s, you cannot abrasion the confined of the bastille out.’ I said, ‘Aren’t you tired?”’
She never got an answer.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This actual may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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