80-year-old jewelry thief admits stealing $16,000 ring


Photo: Doris Payne is shown during her incarceration at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility. She is now being held at the Orange County Jail. Credit: Nathan W. Armes / For The Times
An 80-year-old woman who once listed her profession as "jewel thief" on an arrest report pleaded no contest Friday to stealing a $16,000 ring from a Santa Monica jewelry store.
Doris Payne, whose has been convicted of swiping jewelry around the globe, was convicted of grand theft and sentenced by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham to 16 months in prison. Payne’s sentence, however, will run concurrently with her five-year sentence for slipping out of a San Diego-area Macy's department store with another diamond ring, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Heather Steggell.
Born in 1930 in the small coal-mining town of Slab Fork, W.Va., Payne stole her first diamond in her late 20s, hoping to raise money to help her mother leave an abusive husband, she told The Times.

0 comments:

Post a Comment