The ‘lovely and mischievous’ 83-year-old career jewel thief

Doris Payne in a Las Vegas courtroom in 2005.AP

To steal a diamond worth nine figures from Cartier in Monte Carlo, you’d think you would need an “Ocean’s Eleven”-caliber team with big funding, a sleek cat-burglar wardrobe and at least one team member who can do parkour through a laser security force field.

But Doris Payne, then in her 40s, did it all on her own with just simple sleight of hand.

Payne, now 83, has been a jewel thief for 60 years, having stolen more than $2 million in goods. She is the subject of the new documentary, “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne,” which begins a two-week run at Film Forum on Wednesday.

Raised in West Virginia and Ohio, Payne spent her childhood watching her father beat her mother. When she was 23, she finally did something about it. She had been preparing for some time.

“When [Payne] was a teenager, a store owner showed her some watches. She put one on her wrist, and when a white man walked in, the store owner asked her to leave because he didn’t want to be seen serving a black girl,” says Kirk Marcolina, who co-directed the film.

“She walked out of the store, but realized she still had the watch on. She gave it back, then spent her teenage years perfecting that art.”

Now, Payne walked out of a store in Pittsburgh wearing a diamond ring. For the first time ever, she didn’t give it back, and gave it to her mother to pay for her to escape the abuse.

Payne poses in this undated photo provided by her family.AP

But while Payne may have had noble motives the first time, she found herself addicted to the rush.

Payne’s blend of charm and smarts has led to shocking successes, including her greatest heist — the Monte Carlo job in the early 1970s.

Payne took a taxi to Cartier and asked the driver to wait. She entered the store, dropped a ring in her pocket and left. When she got back in the cab, she looked at what she had taken and almost fainted.

“I looked at that ring and saw nine zeros,” said Payne, who had unknowingly stolen a 10-carat diamond. “The first thing I said to myself was, ‘You should not have done this.’ ”

Police caught her at the airport, and she had to think fast. So she put the ring in her mouth.

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The cops came up empty. Payne put a tissue up to her face, as if to blow her nose. With her mouth covered, she spit the ring into the tissue and dropped it into her boot.

Still, police were sure of her guilt. Monte Carlo did not have a facility for female criminals, so they booked her into a four-star hotel, where she requested a nail clipper, needle and thread. She used the clipper to pry the diamond from its mount and sewed the gem into her girdle.

Authorities never found it, but Payne was sentenced to three years. Shortly after, nuns brought her to a health clinic, where they asked if she needed to use the bathroom.

She went in, snuck back out and hailed a cab. Payne flew to New York, and within two hours of landing sold the jewel in the Diamond District for $148,000 ($746,000 today).

The film also covers the trial she was embroiled in at the time of filming, for stealing a $9,000 ring from a San Diego Macy’s. Throughout the film she claims innocence, despite the fact that she’s been convicted more times than she remembers — nine times before 1999, plus several since — and has escaped from jail almost as many. In the end, one of her smallest heists earns her one of her longest sentences.

Payne in her cell at Clark County jail in 2005 after she was convicted of stealing a $9,000 diamond ring from a San Diego Macy’s.AP

Most recently, on April 28, Payne pleaded guilty to stealing a $22,500 ring from a jeweler in Palm Desert, Calif. She was sentenced to two years in prison and two on house arrest. Due to her age, Marcolina expects Payne to be out before she completes her sentence. Still, it’s hard to imagine her not stealing.

“She has such a lovely and mischievous way about her,” says co-director Matthew Pond, “and yet she’s proud of what she did.

“One of the reasons she wanted to make the movie is that she’s proud of how smart she’s been.”

How she stole it all

1. Payne never dresses too fancy when stealing in America, lest she stand out, although the appearance of status means more in Europe.

2. At a store, she requests several pieces to look at, then creates chaos: trying things on, taking them off, shuffling them around the top of the case.

3. She distracts a salesperson by asking for yet another item, then grabs a jewel — though not the one she’s hoping to steal.

4. Payne asks for the jewel she took, and when the distressed salesperson can’t find it, the piece suddenly turns up. This is how Payne earns their trust.

5. Having tempered suspicion, she waits for an opportune moment, takes the jewel she wants, and walks casually out of the store.