A thief, yes, but far from common

DENVER — Doris Payne never carried a gun. She never smashed a window or broke into a safe to take what she wanted. She just crossed her pantyhosed legs and murmured about the filigree ring under the glass. She wondered aloud about matching earrings. She would promise to return in 45 minutes, and only after Payne wafted away in her flowered dress would the clerk count the rings and come up short.

But the decades passed, and the job grew more difficult. Her face became familiar. Information about her raced through the Internet and over fax machines. On the last day of Payne's career, security guards quietly watched her every move on television screens as she walked through Neiman Marcus. When she made her move, they made theirs.

"Thirty or forty years ago, she could get away with it a little more," said FBI supervisory special agent Paul Graupmann, who dealt with Payne in the 1980s.

At 77 and serving out a sentence in Denver after two years in a Nevada prison, Payne now must settle for sharing the story of how she managed her prolific career for five decades.

"I had lots of fun," Payne said. "I did." She was a rarity in a business known for its thuggery, in which criminals smash store windows or slice the tires of traveling salespeople carrying gems so they can attack them on deserted roads. Payne used her wits and smooth tongue.

"We don't see a lot of criminals like Doris Payne," said John Kennedy, president of the Jewelers' Security Alliance.

Payne grew up in the coal-mining town of Slab Fork, W.Va., her imagination fueled by "Gone With the Wind" and its depictions of women she would impersonate for the rest of her life. In her mother's dresses and hats, she would roam the house, clicking her heels, talking to Rhett Butler.

"I think that movie contributed as much to what I became as anything else in my life," Payne said.

When she was 13, she was trying on watches at a local store when a white customer entered. The owner dismissed Payne, who is black, and she realized she could walk out with the merchandise. "I could cause this man, the white man, to forget."

For the next several years, Payne said, she practiced lifting jewelry but never stole anything, though her son, Ronald, said in an interview that his mother did keep the goods during that time.

Payne said she stole her first diamond at age 27, hoping to raise money to help her mother leave an abusive husband. She remembers her mother's reaction: "She said, 'Doris, don't you know that's stealing?' "