Dayyuuumm, Granny Doris is getting in like that!!!
She’s an international jewel thief with a five-decade career so dazzling that a Hollywood film starring Halle Berry is rumoured to be in the works.
But the law has finally caught up with 80-year-old Doris Payne – again. The West Virginia woman has been found guilty of stealing a $8,900 diamond ring from a San Diego Macy’s store on January 1, 2010.
She was found guilty on Wednesday of burglary and grand theft. Now she is facing the possibility of more than five years in prison. Prosecutors claim Payne walked away with the ring after viewing it at the Macy’s counter last year. She is then said to have sold it for just under $2,000.
But, despite her long history, her lawyer is claiming that this time, she’s innocent – and it’s a case of mistaken identity. Payne’s modus operandi is alarmingly simple – and, rather than using technology or flashy gadgets, she relies purely on her reading of human nature.
Pretty little things: A $7,500 diamond ring sold by Macy’s. Payne is accused of walking out of a San Diego store branch with a similar ring worth $8,900 in January, 2010. The elderly lady toddles in to jewellery stores and chats with their clerks, innocently asking if she can try on this piece – or that – or how about that one right there.
Eventually she decides not to buy anything and toddles back on out the store. Sometimes it is hours before the clerk realises that, when she left, she was still wearing some of the jewellery – in this latest case, the $8,900 diamond ring. Payne, who claims she has robbed stores from California to Monte Carlo, has already served prison sentences in six states. But her lawyer Gretchen von Helms is vowing that this time Payne is innocent – and it’s a case of mistaken identity.
Von Helms told ABC News that Payne’s career has been so illustrious that ‘if there’s been a jewellery theft and an African-American woman did it, everyone would say, ‘It must’ve been Doris Payne.'” Her client ‘has a certain notoriety’, she said. She also gave her own take on Payne’s modus operandi: ‘What she does is theft by beguilement. She goes in, she’s charming, she talks to folks and leaves. ‘She just happens to have a diamond with her.’
Payne has up to 20 different aliases, five social security numbers, and nine different dates of birth on record, ABCNews said. However she insisted in a 2005 interview that she has retired from a life of crime. Security footage from the Macy’s robbery last year, she says, shows another woman – not her.
The court was not buying it on Wednesday, however. She was found guilty and remanded to be sentenced at a later date.
Wow…definitely sounds like a movie for real..
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