Dorris Payne | Out With a Bang | 4

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It's the middle of a warm summer night in 1975.

45-year-old Doris Payne shuts the window of her fleabag hotel room to block out the noisy streets below.

On any other trip to Paris, she'd be outside with the rest of the tourists, enjoying the city's bustling nightlife.

But tonight, she's got problems.

Doris sits on the bed and picks up the phone.

Her hand hovers over the buttons for a moment, unsure who she should call.

Eventually, she dials one of the few numbers she knows by heart.

It rings once, twice, and then the line goes dead.

Doris sighs and twists the stolen Cartier ring on her finger.

She shouldn't be surprised.

She's been gone for nine months, and maybe he's moved, gotten a new number to go with the new house.

Still, she'd been counting on her boyfriend, Kenneth, to know what to do.

Without him, the list of people Doris can count on is very short.

And yet she can't bring herself to call her mother just yet.

Clemmie will be so disappointed to know that Doris spent the better part of a year locked up in Monaco over a stolen ring.

There is another mother Doris can call, though.

As a final Hail Mary, she phones Kenneth's mom instead.

Doris is surprised first when the woman picks up, then overjoyed when she readily passes along Kenneth's new number.

It turns out he's been looking for Doris for months in New York.

Though he's still an ocean away, Doris has never felt so close to a man.

With trembling hands, she calls Kenneth and briefly explains her situation.

She's on the run from the French police.

She needs money and clothes as soon as possible so she can get back to the States.

She can hear Kenneth gritting his teeth when he answers her.

He wants to know more and he's probably eager to let her have it after nine months of silence.

But he bites his tongue and agrees to help without asking too many questions.

His adult daughter Linda has a passport.

She can be in Paris within a couple of days.

Doris puts the phone down and breathes a sigh of relief.

She's cast out a lifeline and that's all she can do for the moment.

She lies down on the squeaky bed and closes her eyes, but sleep doesn't come easy.

A million what ifs and worst case scenarios whirl through her mind.

Besides Kenneth, the only person who knows where she is right now is the driver she hired to flee for Monaco.

He's still waiting for his money and if she doesn't give it to him soon, he'll probably go to the police.

Thinking about that, Doris tosses and turns, pulling the rough sheets over her head, then kicking them to the foot of the bed.

Sudden paranoia flings her back to her feet and she paces across the room.

Maybe she should leave the hotel right now and find somewhere else to hide out.

Of course, that's not really an option.

It might be if she had some cash.

That's what it always comes down to in the end.

With money, Doris could do anything.

Without it, she feels utterly, helplessly alone.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

In 1975, Doris Payne snatched a 10-carat diamond ring from Cartier in Monte Carlo and then raced for the airport.

Unfortunately for her, the audacious heist didn't go unnoticed, and she was hauled off by the French authorities, who kept her under lock and key for months, waiting for her to confess.

But Doris Payne was never one to admit wrongdoing.

To her, a corrupt society justified breaking any rule.

And rather than copping to a theft and accepting her punishment, Doris set out to stage a daring escape from custody.

But breaking out of the comfortable Monaco prison was only step one of Doris' plan.

Once she made it to Paris, she had to find a way back to the United States using nothing but her wits and a little help from her loved ones.

The problem was, not everyone in Doris' life was on board with her career choices.

So even if she managed to get home to her family, she was going to have to face her mother's disappointment, her own shortcomings as a parent, and stay two steps ahead of the authorities.

It also helped that she had plenty of money in the bank back in America, which meant she'd be able to keep herself in the luxurious comfort she'd grown accustomed to.

But as she got older, Doris Payne would learn that not every problem in her life could be solved with money.

And as the harsh realities of the world caught up to her one by one, Doris would try desperately to maintain her sense of control with the one thing she could count on, her ability to steal jewels and get away with it.

And even that couldn't last forever.

This is episode four in our four part series on Doris Payne, Out With a Bang.

It's 1975, a few days after Doris Payne placed the panic nighttime call to her boyfriend.

Yesterday, Kenneth's daughter Linda showed up at Doris' motel carrying a suitcase full of high-end clothing, with cash tucked into each and every pocket.

In all, it was about $5,000, which would be closer to 30 grand today.

Now, in a fresh outfit with a purse full of money, Doris feels like a brand-new woman.

She immediately takes charge of the situation.

There's one sizable obstacle remaining to her escape.

The police have her ID.

Soon enough, the driver who helped Doris escape prison comes to check in on her.

She pays him handsomely for his help and asks for another favor.

She wants him to get her out of France without a passport.

He thinks for a moment, then nods.

The next day, he gives Doris and Linda a ride to the small town of Lille, close to the Belgian border.

There they get a motel.

When the clerk asks for her passport, Doris tells him that she has it locked up for safekeeping and asks if she can read him the ID number instead.

He agrees and she gives him a random string of numbers.

Good enough.

The following morning, they head into Belgium.

The border guard lets Doris cross without a passport and directs them to the US.

Embassy in Brussels, where she gets a temporary passport under a fake name.

A couple of days later, she lands safe and sound in New York.

The stolen Cartier ring is still on her finger, but that's not all that's hot.

Kenneth picks her up at the airport, ready to have a shouting match.

Doris doesn't take the bait.

She just kisses Kenneth and holds his hand until he loses steam.

And just like always, all is forgiven.

Getting locked up for nine months in a foreign country probably wouldn't count as success to most people, but Doris is overjoyed.

Regardless of the setbacks, she made it home with her biggest score yet, a diamond that she sells for almost $150,000.

That much money would be close to 900 grand in 2024.

Even with that much money in hand, Doris Payne never rests on her laurels for long.

In fact, the recent success inspires her to take her operation to the next level.

She wants to return to Europe, this time to get more than one measly ring.

She plans an entire continental tour, targeting the finest jewelers in the Northern Hemisphere.

So, in September of 1975, just a few months after she escaped France, Doris struts into the first class cabin of a plane bound for London.

Soon enough, the ground beneath her gives way to the sapphire waters of the Atlantic.

The white woman next to her strikes up a conversation, boasting about her daughter going off to college.

Doris barely registers the empty nester's words.

She's more focused on all of the woman's jewelry.

She pretends to listen until the woman gets tired of yammering, then lies back and drifts off to sleep.

When she wakes, she's on the other side of the ocean.

Once she's through customs in London, she smooths her navy dress, adjusts the scoop neck, and calls a limo to take her to a five-star hotel.

Tonight is about relaxing, about feeling like a queen.

The next day, however, duty calls.

Doris waits until the afternoon to leave her hotel.

She's not being lazy.

She just knows that coming into a shop late in the day means the employees will be tired and less attentive.

Doris' first target is the House of Gerard.

Jewelers to the British Crown.

Elegant piano greets her as she steps through the dark wooden door.

Behind the instrument sits a musician in a full tuxedo.

This place is no joke.

Doris smiles at a nearby server who guides her towards a cabinet full of diamonds and emeralds.

His big eyes drink her in, and she can tell he finds her attractive.

Perfect.

The second he turns his back, Doris palms a pair of earrings along with a small ring and shuts the cabinet.

Moments later, she has the jewels tucked away in her purse.

The server leads her to a seat and starts bringing her pieces one after another.

He's sharper than she'd hoped, and she has trouble distracting him.

After an hour, it's nearing closing time.

The lights dim and the piano shifts to a sultry jazz number.

This is the longest Doris has ever stayed in a store, but she wants more than the small pieces she's already swiped.

So she turns the charm up a notch, asking the man personal questions and matching his gentle flirtation.

He even offers to bring a selection of jewelry to her suite that night, making Doris blush.

Finally, just minutes before the store is due to close, the server loses count and breaks protocol by placing too many trays in front of her.

That's Doris' cue.

She asked to try on one more emerald and diamond ring.

And while the server is busy putting a tray back in its proper place, Doris walks out the door with the ring.

On the streets, the chattering English crowd swallow her up and she disappears.

Two hours later, she's on a plane to Paris, back to the country she barely escaped just a few months ago.

Not bad for a single day of work.

The next morning, Doris is back at it.

Target number two is Van Cleef in Arpoult, known for serving not only the French upper crust, but also Iranian royalty.

Conveniently, there's a flagship store right outside her hotel, the five-star Ritz-Perry.

In a break from her usual routine, Doris lets the clerk steer the conversation.

She's curious to see what he wants to sell a woman like her.

She tries to hide her disappointment when he suggests that she try on some watches.

Doris prefers rings, and honestly she's insulted that he doesn't see how emeralds would pop so well against her skin tone.

What's the point of dressing her best if her fashion sense goes unappreciated?

Even so, she decides to give the watches a whirl.

Like in London, it's a longer con than she's used to, but she finally manages to confuse her server by inviting another customer, a friendly American woman to try on pieces alongside her.

Once she has a sparkling timepiece concealed underneath her glove, Doris leaves, boarding a plane to Italy within 90 minutes.

Tucked in her purse is a $55,000 watch.

With the payout from that piece alone, she could buy a house and still have around 10 grand left over.

Rome is the final stop on her whirlwind European tour.

She takes a casual stroll to her next target, the luxury fashion house Bvlgari.

Inside the store, a charming man leads Doris to the back room and pours her a glass of wine, which she refuses.

Doris isn't a drinker.

Without her even trying the usual tactic, the man's already brought her multiple trays full of pieces.

It seems Bvlgari doesn't follow the protocol she's used to.

Instead, they ply their customers with wine and overwhelm them with jewels, hoping to court sales through pure spectacle.

Doris has to try on several rings and leaves them scattered haphazardly on the table.

It doesn't take her long to slip a yellow diamond on her finger and saunt her out back onto the rainy cobblestone streets.

Her heart pounds in her ears as she flags down a taxi and rushes to the airport.

All told, her purse is stuffed with jewelry that would be worth over a million dollars today.

Having all that contraband makes Doris more nervous than usual.

But a few days later, after a long trip back to the US, Doris touches down to New York, where she sells the jewels to her black market contacts.

She makes it back to Cleveland richer than she's ever been.

But the moment she comes up the driveway, her excitement evaporates.

Her mom, Clemmie, is sitting on the porch, glaring at her with cold eyes.

Doris goes in for a hug, but her mother backs away and heads into the house, letting the door slam shut behind her.

After a moment's hesitation, Doris follows and finds Clemmie furiously wiping the countertop.

She tells Doris the police phoned her.

They're investigating her in connection to a string of jewel thefts.

Considering her recent escapes, Doris doesn't know if it's the FBI or possibly the International Police Organization Interpol.

Either way, the call has clearly rattled Clemmie.

She tells Doris to find some honest work.

For years, she took care of Doris' kids at the drop of a hat, whenever she decided to disappear and she was happy to do it.

But lying to the police is a bridge too far.

Doris is used to this conversation.

It's familiar ground for her and her mom.

So she deploys her usual rebuttals.

Because society is unequal, because black women are treated as inferior, she feels fully justified in taking what she can.

She points out that the shops she steals from have ripped their jewels from African minds.

As far as she's concerned, she's only evening the score.

Clemmie shakes her head and not for the first time recites the Eighth Commandment, Thou shalt not steal.

Doris stands in silence for a moment trying to look contrite.

Then she reaches out for another hug.

But Clemmie just backs away and leaves the house without saying goodbye.

It's the first time her mom is left like this, without at least saying I love you.

Doris is heartsick.

She's driven a wedge between herself and the person she loves most in the world.

For the next few weeks, Doris tries hard to get back on Clemmie's good side.

She tags along to church every Sunday, even though she's not a believer.

Over time, her mom's icy demeanor thaws, but she continues to insist Doris find another line of work.

Or at least, she begs Doris to be more respectable with her lifestyle.

She should marry her long-time boyfriend, Kenneth.

Doris listens to her mother's every word, but she's got no intention of changing her mind.

Kenneth would likely be open to it, but he's never pressured her to tie the knot.

And for Doris, it's always been a hard line.

As for her mother's other plea, the truth is Doris doesn't need honest work.

She owns her home and has enough in the bank to last most people a lifetime.

Her kids are grown up and have jobs of their own.

She could quit stealing and be fine if she spent her money a little more modestly.

But Doris doesn't want to stop.

She's living the life she's dreamed of ever since she saw Gone With The Wind as a little girl.

She has everything that made Scarlett O'Hara so glamorous, the fancy house, the beautiful clothes, and most importantly, the respect that's due to a high-class woman.

But it's not just about the money.

Stealing has become more than a job.

It's her identity.

It's what she's good at.

It makes her feel smart, sexy and dangerous to fly around the world breaking the rules.

That's the part that no one else seems to understand.

The risk makes her feel alive.

Even so, Doris tries her hardest to be careful.

To mend fences with her mother and avoid fanning the flames of police investigations, she stays on the straight and narrow for five long years.

She enjoys being so close to Kenneth and her family, but in all that time, her ambition never cools.

She's always looking forward to the next opportunity to slip back into character, to prove that she's still the same Doris Payne, no matter how old she is, or what obstacles stand in her way.

That's the reason she plans her next campaign in October of 1980, in complete defiance of her mother's requests.

Now 50 years old, Doris Payne tells herself she's still got it, she's still a star, and she's going to prove it to herself one more time.

It's a reckless decision.

Usually she spends weeks rehearsing her character and picking her targets, but this time, she takes to the skies on a whim.

She flies to Switzerland without telling her mom goodbye, taking a childish pleasure in imagining Clemmie worrying about her.

In Zurich, emotion wells up in Doris as the cold night air raises goosebumps on her skin.

Thoughts of her mom, of getting older, and of losing what makes her special put her in a sour mood.

Loneliness cuts her cool exterior.

She makes her way to a rooftop bar in Zurich, and it isn't long before an attractive man offers to buy her a drink.

Though Doris has smoked cannabis before and has been to her fair share of parties, she's never had alcohol in her life.

The thought of losing control or becoming angry and selfish like her father has always kept her away.

But tonight, with fears of disappointing her mother swirling through her head, losing herself doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

She has a Kir Royale, champagne and blackcurrant liqueur with a twist of lemon.

Then she has another and another.

Once they've each downed a few drinks, her companion invites her to a club he's DJing that night.

It's in Davos, which is a 90-minute drive away, but Doris is still interested.

Slurring her words slightly, she tells the man she'll meet him there.

First, she's got some business to attend to.

With her vision fogging over, she hops back in her car and directs her driver to the shopping district.

She wants to see Zurich's famed Rolex store.

Spilling out of the cab, Doris staggers into the shop.

She's so drunk, she thinks one of the employees is a mannequin at first.

She chuckles to herself and follows a clerk to the counter.

Diamonds and gold glitter under the glass countertop.

She has no memory of what happens next.

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It's October 1980, and Doris Payne's world is spinning.

Light bounces off of a disco ball, dusting the nightclub with sparkles, and making Doris feel like she's dancing inside a diamond.

She has another drink, and parties until the early morning.

When the fatigue finally catches up with her, Doris wobbles out to the club's front desk, where she checked her coat.

She's so wasted, she forgets her usual caution, and gives the employee her real name.

Moments later, while Doris is still getting ready to leave, a horde of Swiss police officers burst in and place her under arrest.

They yell at her in punchy, accented English.

But Doris is too drunk to listen.

The cops deposit her onto a late night train that's scheduled to go directly past the nearest US.

Embassy.

Her only escort is a young French policewoman, who seems excited to catch an infamous jewel thief.

She lets Doris, who's babbling and singing to herself, wander the train car without handcuffs.

Doris is still not really aware of what's going on, but she does know that she's got to get off the train.

So she pulls the same trick she did in the Monaco prison years earlier.

She starts holding her stomach and demands a bathroom.

The officer lets her go and doesn't check in on her.

When the train stops briefly for water, Doris bails.

She runs away from the tracks into the darkness of rural Switzerland.

In the distance, she makes out the pointy shadows of a massive cornfield.

She keeps on running until she finds another road, then follows that back to the nearest train station.

Her pantyhose are ripped and her hair is out of control, and she's fighting off her first ever hangover.

Still, somehow, she convinces a cab driver to take her back to Zurich.

There, she mandages to slip back into her hotel, changes her clothes and makes it to another station.

She takes the first train out of the city without really knowing where she's headed.

All she cares about is getting some shut eye.

When she wakes up, she's a little more clear headed, and she realizes she's near Luzern, only an hour away from Zurich.

Not as far as she'd like, but it'll do while she works out what's going on.

She knows that the cops are after her, but can't really recall why.

That's when she takes a peek in her purse and almost faints.

A gold Rolex glints in the low light.

Dorris puts her face in her hands and takes a deep breath, berating herself for getting into this mess.

She drunkenly stole a watch, and now she's stranded alone in a foreign country.

Fear clutches at her guts.

She still can't think straight, so she hops off the train in Luzerne and gets a room at the first hotel she can find.

The next day, she's still trying to piece together what happened the day before.

Snatches of memory come back to her, out of order and discolored by all that liquor.

But how she ended up here isn't as important as how she's going to get home.

Doris has her passport, but she's certain that the police will be waiting for her at the airport.

So she spends the next few days wandering around the small town, trying and failing to come up with a plan.

Just like the last time she got caught in Europe, she eventually decides she needs help.

She phones Kenneth's daughter again.

The very next day, Linda comes to Doris' rescue a second time, bringing along a disguise and some much-needed moral support.

The two of them lay low in the small Swiss town for a couple of weeks, formulating a plan.

It's November by the time the two of them finally make a break for it.

Snow blankets the Swiss countryside, pummeling the roads worse than the West Virginia blizzards Doris is used to.

She and Linda hire a driver to take them across the border back into France.

The border guard has no desire to leave his booth in the middle of a snowstorm, so he just shines his flashlight into the car to check their passports.

Doris pulls out the temporary one she used to get out of France.

He doesn't even give it a second look before waving her back in.

Once they make it to France, Doris and Linda board a plane back to the States as soon as they can.

Just like that, Doris Payne flees Europe a second time.

But unlike her last caper, she arrives home in Cleveland down in the dumps.

She goes to her mother for comfort and only finds sorrow.

A few weeks after she gets back, her mom starts complaining of persistent chest pains.

Doris takes Clemmie to the doctor where she's diagnosed with late stage lung cancer.

The physician suspects it's a form of black lung caused by living in a mining town for so long, but the troubles don't end there.

Not long afterward, an FBI agent visits Clemmie to tell her that they know all about Doris' fake passport, and it's enough to take her in.

They're ready to make an arrest as soon as they find Doris.

But Doris is determined to stay a step ahead of them.

As far as she knows, the only crime they've got her on is passport fraud.

There's no telling if that's all though.

Maybe they've got more they're holding back to spring on her.

She won't miss Clemmie's final years.

But she can't stay in Cleveland either.

She's got to go into hiding, and all her money has to sit in the bank, lest the FBI use it to track her whereabouts.

She's up a creek, but she still has a paddle.

Despite her disapproval of her daughter's crimes, Clemmie told the investigator that Dorris is still overseas.

So as far as the authorities know, Dorris hasn't left Switzerland.

That gives Dorris a couple of days to put her affairs in order.

She tells her daughter Rhonda to take care of Clemmie.

Then she sells what she can from her house and flees to Chicago with a trusted friend named Shirley.

It's further away from her mother than Dorris would like, but it's this or jail.

The two of them stay in a condo and try to fly under the radar, to live an ordinary life.

It only takes a couple of weeks for Dorris to give up on that.

She wants to be able to visit her mom every now and then and help cover the medical bills.

That means she needs to start making money, fast.

Shirley has only one idea and it's not pleasant.

She's got some old drug dealer friends in Chicago who need some strange work done.

They'll pay Dorris to scrape the insides of empty cocaine baggies with a razor blade and gather up the spare product left behind.

It isn't exactly the glamorous work she's used to doing, but she starts scraping and sends her new earnings to her mom.

She also starts taking a bus to see her mother every weekend.

Clemmie's a fighter and far outlasts her doctor's prognosis, which means things hum along like that for a while.

Over the next couple of years, Dorris hides out in Chicago with Shirley, dealing drugs and worrying sick about her mom.

She brings in enough money to get by, but can no longer play the character that shielded her for so long.

She can't walk the streets in dazzling jewels, wearing the latest designer outfits.

She doesn't get the royal treatment in five-star hotels, doesn't get the respect she used to when she'd walk into a store.

The fantasy that's kept her motivated for decades has dried up.

She's lost it all.

But none of that matters to Dorris as much as her family.

She does what she can for Clemmie and renews her connection with her daughter Rhonda.

It's a bittersweet reunion, though.

The day after Rhonda's 33rd birthday, Clemmie passes away.

Dorris is devastated.

She's been living for her mother most of her life.

So much of who she's become was out of a desire to protect Clemmie, to make her proud.

But Dorris knows there's only one thing her mother wanted in the end.

So after taking care of the funeral arrangements, Dorris cleans herself up, dresses in her finest outfit and reports to the FBI.

She's ready to turn herself in.

By this point, Dorris is in her late 50s and has been stealing jewelry for over 30 years.

Yet despite her suspicions otherwise, the FBI still only has definitive proof of her passport fraud.

It's all from that one time she gave a false name at the US.

Embassy in Brussels after she escaped the Monaco jail.

When Dorris makes it to court, a judge sentences her to just 45 days in prison.

Though it's a far cry from the maximum sentence of a year, Dorris is still nervous and afraid.

She's never spent more than a day or two in American prison.

And just as she expected, she finds the experience unbearable.

In her lowest moments, she even finds herself wishing she'd given up her principles and married Kenneth.

At least then he'd be allowed to visit.

But there's nothing now.

So she grits her teeth and makes it through the month and a half sentence.

When she gets out, Dorris finds herself at a crossroads once again.

When they arrested her, the FBI confiscated all the jewelry in Dorris' house, and she's barred from getting a passport and leaving the country.

Her once hefty bank account balance is looking pretty sad, too.

She just feels like she's back at square one, further than ever from the life of luxury she once enjoyed.

She's bitter, but she's still the same old Dorris.

She could start from scratch.

No, really, she can do this.

To bolster her savings account, Dorris returns to Chicago and goes back to scraping cocaine baggies.

It takes her two years to put together a new wardrobe and a modest jewelry collection.

But that's only the beginning.

After that, she gets in touch with a document forger and buys a passport under a fake name.

In October 1990, the day after her 60th birthday, she's back on an airplane.

This time, she heads to Tokyo.

Happy to be in another fancy international hotel, Dorris gets her groove back.

She sachets down to the bar, picks up a Japanese business executive and gets him drunk.

In the morning, he orders a limo to take her to the shopping district.

Stepping out of the sleek car, Dorris walks into the Cartier store, grinning from ear to ear.

Though she's the only customer in the place, she's less self-conscious than usual.

Going back to her routine feels natural, and perhaps even easier now that she can pose as a kindly old woman.

She steals three diamond rings within 15 minutes.

A couple of hours later, she's back on a plane to New York.

Without stopping to rest, she reaches out to her old buyer, who's overjoyed to see her again.

She leaves the meeting with $300,000 in cash.

Just like riding a bike.

When she shares the story with Kenneth, he's wounded that she left the country again without telling him.

Despite how close they become in recent years, she still doesn't consult him on anything related to her work.

She has no qualms about going in communicado whenever it suits her.

Kenneth is in the drug trade, so he knows the value of discretion.

But he still wants Dorris to settle down.

He sits close to her one night and asks her to stay in the US.

He wants her around.

But Dorris has never been able to shake her instinct to pull away.

By this stage, Kenneth has been in her life for over two decades, and still Dorris can't face the idea of being tied down.

A week later, she leaves for Greece.

With her confidence back and her new passport field tested, she plans to make her European stay a long one.

She sets herself up at an elegant hotel in Athens and makes herself at home.

On work days, she travels to the Plaka shopping district and takes what she can get.

To unload the jewels, she hops on a flight to Amsterdam, where she finds a regular buyer.

In between jobs, she enjoys the sun and glamour of Athens.

For nine months, she lives like a queen.

Then, once she starts getting home sick, she packs up and moves out.

When she gets back to Chicago, reality hits Doris like a truck once again.

Her best friend Shirley has cancer.

Doris stays with her for the last two months of Shirley's life, cooking, cleaning and saying goodbye.

After the funeral, just when she started grieving for her friend, Kenneth sits Doris down and tells her he's sick too.

Stomach cancer, he passes on only a month later.

Doris is heartbroken.

Late at night, she lies awake in bed.

She's never been religious, but now she can't help wondering if she's being punished for her sins.

Regardless, her reaction is the same as it's always been.

Breaking the rules has always brought her conflict.

So is taking what she wants.

She might be nearing the age when plenty of people retire, but Doris isn't ready to slow down.

If anything, she's looking to turn things up a notch.

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It's 2007, 16 years after Doris Payne lost her best friend Shirley and her longtime boyfriend Kenneth.

On a crisp spring day, she steps onto the tarmac at an airport in Denver, Colorado.

She's flown out to take a diamond she spotted in the most recent issue of Harper's Bazaar.

It's an enormous square cut piece that's the pride of a local mall's jewelry store.

Since Kenneth has died, Doris has returned to her old habits, hitting jewelry stores in nearly every state in the Union.

She tells herself she's striking back at God, who she blames for taking her loved ones.

But after a lifetime of stealing and taking refuge in her fantasy, she just doesn't know any other way to live.

Though she's 77 years old now, Doris is as energetic as ever.

And in her mind, the job is as easy as it ever was.

She gets out of the Denver jeweler with the ring still on her finger.

She thinks she's safe, that the hard part's done.

But times have changed.

Unbeknownst to Doris, she's been caught red-handed on the security cameras.

Later that day, she makes it to Philadelphia.

She's there to visit one of her brothers.

On her way, she stops by another mall.

For once, she's actually not there to steal anything.

But for some reason, a man calls the police on her.

The authorities are about to release her until they look into Doris' past and realize who they've caught.

Over the years, Interpol has amassed a 25-page file on Doris, naming her one of the most prolific jewel thieves in the world.

Checking her recent air travel, the Philly cops get in touch with the Denver Police, who confirm that Doris is wanted for a brazen jewel heist in a busy mall.

The diamond in question seems to be long gone, but the security footage doesn't lie.

After that, the authorities in Philly put her back on a plane to Colorado to stand trial.

Eventually, because of her age, the state sends Doris to a halfway house instead of prison.

She's there for 10 months, then released.

Compared to the time she could have gotten for the crime, it's a slap on the wrist.

But as always, Doris likes to push her luck.

In 2011, at age 81, Doris returns to one of her old haunts, Southern California.

There, she poses as a retired grandmother at an extended stay hotel.

Most days, she lounges by the pool and reminisces about her youth with a few of the other residents.

And whenever she gets the itch, she takes a day trip to Palm Springs or San Diego and swipes some diamonds.

On one of these trips, she gets a little too confident and swipes a three and a half carat ring.

It doesn't take long for the police to pick up her trail.

A couple of days later, Doris is woken up by the sound of cops pounding on her hotel door.

They haul her to jail, and there's no getting out of it this time.

A psychologist is even sent in to evaluate Doris before her court date.

She tells him what she used to tell Clemmie, slaves mine jewels from the heart of Africa.

By stealing them, she's only repaying one crime with another.

Unfortunately, that argument doesn't sway the judge any more than it convinced her mother.

Doris is sentenced to four years in prison.

In the end, overcrowding means she only serves three months, but she still has another charge on the docket for a different robbery.

So even after she's released, she has to spend the next two years at a halfway house while she's in and out of court.

Finally, in 2013, she's sentenced to five years in the central California women's prison facility.

This is hard time, worse than Dorris has ever done.

Every night, she plugs her ears with tissues to drown out the sounds of women being beaten.

The pained moans and dry breathless gasps remind her of her childhood, of her mother being kicked in the ribs by her father.

Even though she's in her 80s, Dorris still wakes up from nightmares, screaming for her mom.

The only way she gets through it is by withdrawing.

Trying to numb herself, she stays quiet and hopes her age exempts her from the beatings.

Still, the stress and terror gives her stomach pains.

After 18 months, she only weighs 80 pounds.

With consideration for her age and worrying health, Dorris is released early once again.

After that, she comes back home to Ohio to find her house has been foreclosed on.

She sells what little she has, moves to Atlanta and rents an apartment there.

Slowly but surely, she feels herself recovering.

She starts to readjust to life on the outside, but after only two weeks in Atlanta, she lands in the hospital, where doctors tell her she has an intestinal infection.

At this point, Dorris is 84.

She's in a bad way, but she's proud and values her independence.

With some help from a compassionate nurse, she recovers and returns to her apartment in Atlanta until she runs out of funds.

Over the next couple of years, she's arrested twice more.

First for a minor jewel heist, then for shoplifting less than a hundred bucks worth of stuff from Walmart.

But according to Dorris, she wanted to get caught, both times.

In 2022, she tells a reporter that she's been trying to drum up publicity so she can get a movie deal.

Since then, though, she's kept a pretty low profile.

Gone is the money, the jewels, the fabulous clothes.

All that's left are the memories of the globe-trotting glamour and a few daring escapes.

And there's surely a little pride in there somewhere.

Dorris Payne pulled her family out of poverty at a time when black women were afforded few opportunities.

But, even after she proved herself a success, she never figured out how to quit.

The unshakable confidence that allowed her to rip off the world's finest jewelers had led her to believe she was untouchable.

She ignored her mother's warnings, and she pushed away some of the people who loved her the most, all for the thrill of the steel.

And if that's left her somewhat alone in her later years, so be it.

It's always been Doris Payne vs.

The World, and always will be.

From Airship, this is Episode 4 in our series on Doris Payne.

On the next series, a man searching for a place to call home finds it in a city with an identity crisis.

But his desire to make a mark on the world will lead to a shocking political assassination.

If you'd like to learn more about Dorris Payne, we recommend Diamond Dorris, the true story of the world's most notorious jewel thief by Zelda Lockhart, and reporting by Channel 2 in Atlanta.

This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details.

And while in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohamed Shazi.

Sound design by Matthew Fillon.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Terrell Wells.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham for Airship.