1 case tagged “Appalachian origins”
Convicted: Doris Marie Payne
She was 86 years old, wearing an electronic ankle monitor from her previous arrest, and she was shoplifting $86 worth of merchandise from a Walmart near Atlanta. That is the last chapter, so far, in the seven-decade criminal career of Doris Marie Payne, a woman who once walked out of a Monte Carlo Cartier boutique with a half-million-dollar diamond hidden in the seam of her girdle. Born in the coal-scarred poverty of Slab Fork, West Virginia, in 1930, Payne became the most prolific jewel thief in American history: over $2 million stolen, 32 aliases, nine passports, ten Social Security numbers, and an FBI file reportedly six feet long. She wore designer clothes into the finest jewelry stores in Paris, Rome, Geneva, and Tokyo, charmed the clerks with a smile, and walked out richer. Judges called her "the Terminator." Interpol tracked her for decades. She expressed no remorse, ever. Now approaching 95, she lives as a free woman in Atlanta. A documentary about her life won an Audience Award at Tribeca. Halle Berry is reportedly attached to play her in a biopic. And through it all, Doris Payne has remained exactly what she always was: the best-dressed thief in the room.
