85-Year-Old Doris Payne, a Career Jewelry Thief, Reveals Her Secret for Pulling Off Countless Heists

Doris Payne has been pilfering jewelry around the world for more than six decades, but there’s only one trick she uses to make a clean getaway, she tells the Associated Press. It all comes down to inspiring trust. “I don’t dictate what happens when I walk in the store. The people in charge dictate what happens with me when I walk in the store,” the 85-year-old career thief told the AP, who notes her calm and deliberate manner of speaking. “I don’t tell a person in the store I want to see something that costs $10,000. They make those decisions based on how I present myself and how I look.” She claims that she has never had to conceal the merchandise before walking out of the store.

But her tactics aren’t perfect. The report says that she has done prison time repeatedly, and there are pending charges against her stemming from an October arrest in which she was accused of pocketing a $690 pair of earrings from a Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Atlanta. Authorities, however, believe that she has gotten away with far more crimes than ones for which she was caught.

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