“I’ll Take That!”: The Diamond Doris Payne Story

She is America’s Greatest Living Jewel Thief. Her career criminal exploits date back to black and white movies. Only Diamond Doris never let racism get in the way of her living the high life as an international bon vivant. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello Elizabeth Dutton, zaren.
I've been looking for you, have you? Yes, I'm elusive.
I know. I have a question. Do you know what's ridiculous? Yes?
I knew you'd know. I know. So we got a
message or a comment, apparently some messages that we can't
find from someone on Instagram. They showed me it was

(00:23):
my shooting Star zero three eight. That's the person. Yeah,
and she was very very excited about this, and I
guess she left us a message about a mashup that
was passed along to me. You and your army of
people sign have no idea. You have no idea of
my standing army of rude dudes to go out scouring

(00:46):
the world finding media. I was so happy in my
bliss of ignorance. But now you guys got to throw
these mashups at me. All right, what do you got
for me? What do you what mashup do you have? Well?
With its blend of twenty three flavors, doctor Pepper has
long been a secret ingredient among top barbecue pit masters.
That actually is true. I know the twenty three original

(01:07):
flavors of doctor Pepper. Give this Batchett's name, and it's
amazing flavor, sweet and sassy success. It's the serious bean company,
which I didn't know existed, makes Doctor Pepper sweet and
a bit sassy. Baked beans. Baked beans, yeah, doctor Pepper,
baked doctor. I mean, I've had barbecue with Coca cola
and it cocacola, they say, And I've had it with

(01:30):
doctor Pepper. Oh yeah, And I bet you've had sprite cake.
Oh yeah, seven up. And for sevenths did you know
where I was living in the rural South and South Carolina,
they had a recipe for peach enchiladas. Now I thought
it would be peaches wrapped in tortillas. No, No, it's
peaches laid down. And I think there's like some sort

(01:51):
of like biscuits, those biscuit tents. Oh yeah, but then
you pour mountain dew over it and bake it. Yeah,
like how much? I don't know, I don't know. Yeah
it was. It was a gruesome mixture. It was like,
imagine super sweet. But is it like crystalline? Like is
it like? Um, So, there are reviews for these, you know.

(02:14):
It got some good reviews, some not so hot reviews.
It made me think of a long time ago, I
mixed diet Doctor Pepper and Jack Daniels and it tasted
like sawdust. I don't know if that was a one off,
but I think it always does. So Yeah. Some of
the people thought this stuff was too sweet. Doctor Pepper
baked beans were a little too sweet for my taste,

(02:36):
said Red Sox twenty six. Flavors didn't seem cohesive seven
months ago. I would trust a Red Sox fan on
baked beans. Very true. Seven months ago Anderson said, very
interesting taste. I would have never thought of Doctor Pepper
and beans. And then a Spittle three. A Spittle three
said not a can of soda. These beans are really good.

(02:58):
They do not taste much like the soda at although
that's not a bad thing. This flavor is sweet, not salty,
but still very savory. I prefer a good black pepper kick,
so I just added some after a few bites. Personally,
I think that's all these beans are missing to be great.
I love all these foodies leaving reviews on the Doctor
Pepper Baked Beans is like a website or whatever. This

(03:19):
is a serious bean company website. Trying some Himalayan salt.
I find it really brings out the beans. I'm very
particular though. If I'm going to make something like this,
I'd want to add my own huh. I don't know,
not that there's food like I can brew my own
doctor pepper. Oh geez, then grow the beans. I like
to control the ingredients. I like to know you. Well,

(03:44):
he got a second. I got a story for you.
That's really ridiculous. I'm just sitting here eating a canna
be no cold too. I think that's so good. Well,
you know, I got a clean spoon. If you want, please, okay,
thank you one second. But in the meantime, how about
a story? Yes, please, Okay. This is the story of
a woman who was a white collar criminal. Okay, kind
of buy that? I mean she well, you know I

(04:04):
always say, if you're gonna steal, steal big yeah. Okay,
well she listened. Well, she actually preceded me all but well.
Over her career. She's still somewhere in the neighborhood of
three million dollars in jewelry. Oh yeah, She's known as
America's greatest living jewel thief. Her crime career lasted seventy years.
She kept a fistful of fake passports she had at

(04:26):
least nine identities eleven different social Security numbers. Her FBI
file is reported to be six feet long. What. Yes,
she also has an intropol file and a Scotland yardfile
because she international like that. Oh my gosh, I'm still
stuck on six feet of paper, I know, right, Yeah,
that's what that's like, you know, Congress printing styles anyway,

(04:47):
international jewel thief without equal. Her name is Diamond Doris pain.
What a great name. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast

(05:16):
about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always
ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Elizabeth Sarah, I bring to you today story. And this
story begins in the tiny forgotten hamlet of slab Fork,
West Virginia. Slab FORKHA population two hundred. Yeah. Have you

(05:40):
ever been to a slab Fork? No, I can't say
I've graced their travels, have never taken you there. Well,
if you had been there, you would have learned that
it is the hometown of our anti hero of today,
Diamond Doris Paine. She was born in slab Fork, West Virginia,
in October tenth, nineteen thirty. Surprisingly, despite its tiny side.
Old Diamond Doris is not the most famous person from

(06:03):
slab Fork, West Virginia. Really, you'd care to take a
guess at who might also be a famous slab for
son or daughter of slab Pork make this into twenty questions,
but that would drag this out. Okay, I'll give you him.
It's a singer, okay, and he sings songs that he
you know him, John Denver, No, good, guess Bill Withers.

(06:24):
Oh wow. Bill Withers is apparently from this town. So
it's a tiny town in Raleigh County, right there along
Route fifty four. As if I know where that is. Now,
what I do know is it's kind of place that
people like the locals struggle to escape, right And Diamond
Doris Pain, she was like, I'm not about this life,
because this is the kind of place currently has like
a median income about twenty percent below the US national average.

(06:45):
Church's very West Virginia coal Mine County community. Yes, exactly,
So little has changed since Diamond Doris Pain grew up
in slab Pork, Right, but she managed to get out,
and the way she managed to do this was a
life of crime. Nice, So she didn't choose crime though,
because she felt like, Oh, I'm less stan and I
would just like to strike back at the world. Or
I'm some poor girl who needs to steal her way

(07:07):
out of slab fork, and I would just want to
grab finer things. No, none of that was her stuff,
because luckily we have for us in our entertainment diamond
Doris Payne has written a memoir as well as in
the focus of a documentary. She's done numerous interviews. She
likes pressed, I like that she wrote a book. We
rely on that, Yes, exactly, so I got plenty of

(07:28):
things in her own words. So in the words of
Doris Payne, she said, I had all the things every
little girl had. I was not raised to believe anyone
was better than me because of skin color, or that
there was anything that I could not have. It turns
out what it was was she just really likes stealing diamonds.
That was her emma, and as she grew up this
became more and more self evident. The more she was

(07:49):
around diamonds, the more she was like, Hey, you can't
keep these sticky paws off these things. So, like Lauretta Lynn,
she was, I said, raised as a coal miner's daughter. Now,
her father was a black man, David Payne. Her mother
was a Cherokee woman named Clemmy Paine. And while she
was still a little girl, Diamond Doris relocated with her
parents from West Virginia to neighboring Ohio. And she was

(08:11):
about a teen at this time. So when she gets
so higoh, she decides, I'm going to reinvent myself. Yeah right, So,
being you know, a teenager, she turns to the imitation
of adults, right right, She's like, quote from a little girl,
I like to dress up. I had my purse in
my hat. I played a game by myself called Miss Lady,
Miss Lady. Yes, so cute. But her Miss Lady was
based on careful study of the actress Vivian Ley, you know,

(08:34):
Scarlett O'Hara and gone with the win. So she projects
onto her all of her dreams of adult femininity. And
so this is where she also first learned to carry
herself in a way that made nervous Jewel Story employees
relax her suspicions because she was Miss Lady. I next
time I have to like get dressed and go out somewhere,

(08:55):
I'm going to call myself. Miss I'm going to do,
Miss lady. You're look in the mirror. You're looking good,
miss lady. Exactly. Now her crime career, it starts informally.
She pulls off her first job when she was just
thirteen years old. Thirteen. It wasn't a diamond though when
she started thirteen, So her mother made her promise, you know,
she'd get her a new watches. She got good grades,
which Doris did. She was good to her word, and
her mother took her to her jewelry store because she

(09:16):
was also good to her word, and she said, let's
go pick you out a watch. So they get there
and remember this is you know, basically parts of Ohio
and parts of Indiana are a lot like the south, right,
the southern parts of those states in particular, if you're
outside of her major city, you're going to, especially at
this time, encounter a lot of racism essentially. So this
is what happens. Right, the store owner is waiting on

(09:37):
her and her mother, and they're surprised because the store
owner is friendly, he is attentive, He shows them numerous watches.
This is not at all with the expective when they
went into the store. Right, a second customer comes into
the store, a white man, and all of a sudden,
the store owner he leaves a mother and the daughter
to go wait on this white man. Right, but first
he had to make it clear to them that he

(09:57):
is not cool with black people. He had made it
clear to the new cus right, so he ordered Doris
and her mother to leave the store right now. This
is his big mistake because he has forgotten that Doris
has tried on a watch, so his racism makes him stupid,
and he then just sends her out of the store
to cost him. Because Doris and her mother do as instructed,
they leave the store and down the block, Doris notices

(10:18):
that she still has the watch on. She did not
intentionally walk out of the store with the watch, and
her mother didn't think she'd watch. She still had the
watch on. It's just a harmless mistake. So she stops.
And Doris is about to go back to the store
and return the watch and do the good thing, and
all of a sudden, she's like, you know what to
hell with that racist? Yeah no, it's the racism text. Yeah.
He's like, you told me to get out. I listened
to you, So if your dumb head wants me out

(10:38):
of your store for your reasons. Well, your biggot's gonna
cost you. And so she let him, and she decides
to keep the watch. And Diamond Doris put it, it
was punishment. In the back of my head, I was saying,
take that. So this little girl realizes that crime can
be a way for her to balance the scales of
injustice in her society. Well, and the guy, he was
gonna make money on them, and they came in to
purchase and they were doing all this stuff that you

(10:59):
want people to ye, parents, rewarding children for achievement, all
the stuff. And then they're like, oh, I gotta show
out for this other guy. So I need to get
out here. What a small, pitiful life that I had exactly,
but you know whatever, pity the man. So but anyway,
Diamond Doris pay. Yeah, she learns a vital lesson, one
that would stay with her for the rest of her days.
And the lesson was this, Elizabeth, if she wanted to

(11:19):
walk out with an expensive item, all she apparently needed
was a distraction. Yeah, right, So this is when she
begins to practice her life, her future life as a
master criminal. So, at age sixteen, she and her girlfriend
would go and they'd hop on a bus and they'd
take the three hour trip over to the big city
of Cleveland, and then they would go down to the
jewelry stores and they'd pull off the old five finger

(11:40):
discount like at a place like wool Worse, and then
you know, then they would get back on the bus.
And now this isn't Doris's words. She was basically talking
about how these other folks on the bus would see
her and her girlfriend. She said, quote some black woman
who rode in the back of the bus like ever,
they are other black Cleveland woman headed to her subservient job.
So she knows people are looking past her, right, Yeah,
but this is not at all how she sees herself,

(12:01):
all right, she said, quote on weekend, I was Doris Paine,
jewel thief in training. So everyone else's a subservient black
woman in the back of the bus. She's like, I
am a cat criminal. Do not know? Now? Sixteen year
old Doris pain She and her girlfriend, as I told you,
they've been taking their trips to practice stealing watches from Woolworth.
She eventually gets good at this. She graduates from high

(12:21):
school without getting caught as a young thief. She starts
to life as a nurse in a nursing home where
she you know, she's wanted to get out of her house.
So she gets a job. So things are going well.
Her father was an abusive drunk, so he basically pushed
her out and decided, you know, I just need to
get some stable job, right. So while she's doing this,
she's also worried back leaving her mother behind with this
man who's violent. So she plans, and you know, if

(12:42):
I'm gonna make a life for myself, I need to
square away moms before I bounce. Yeah. Yeah. So while
she's working at the nursing home in Cleveland, she would
then travel to Pittsburgh. You know neighboring Pittsburgh, do you
know the western Pennsylvania Ohio border. And she go over
to Pittsburgh on her days off, and there she started
pulling off her first jobs, like her first real job.
Smart to go out of town, oh definitely, right. Yeah.
So she used to call them campaigns, So she's like, campaign, Yeah,

(13:05):
I'm gonna go on a campaign to Pittsburgh. So she
she'd go on a campaign for the weekend and Doris
would walk into a jewelry store and then walk out
with like, for instance, of the first time, a twenty
two thousand dollar diamond ring. What and that's in that
day's dollars or today, Shazam, that's a lot of money.
He's like her biggest score to date, right, even today,
that's a lot of money. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, it's
it's a sizeable chunk chaine, especially for like a young woman. Right.

(13:28):
So she she's terrified she's gonna get caught. She's actually
pulled off like what she's practiced at Woolworth, right, And
she's convinced someone's following her from the jewelry store. So
she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know where
to hide out. She's new to Pittsburgh, so she goes
to the Greyhound bus terminal. Yeah, and she hides out
in the woman's bathroom in a stall, and she spends
the entire night there. She's like, quote, I fell asleep

(13:48):
with the stolen ring pinching my left breast. Can you
think of a worse place than a greyhound bus station
bathroom stall to spend the night? Oh? No. So she
wakes up after her night in the Greyhound bathrooms and
she's all ready to return the stolen rings. She's had
time to think about it. She's like, well, was I thinking.
I can't believe I'm trying to get away with this?
And then she she's headed back to the store, just
like with the watch. She's like, I'm gonna go be

(14:09):
the you know, good girl that I know I am.
Her guilt hounding her. But then while she's walking, her
resolve starts to soften, right, and then all of a
sudden it wilted, and then it disappeared entirely, all resolved gone.
She spots a pawn shop and she's like, oh, she
changes her mind about returning the ring. She hits up
the pawn shop and she hawks the twenty two thousand
dollars ring for about a third of its value, walks

(14:30):
out with seven grand goes home and goes, mom, here's
a new light. Wow. So and she says, mom, get
a house, get away from dad, And her mother does
exactly that. She goes and gets herself a new house.
She leaves her husband. We don't know what comes with
her father, but these two are now safe in the way,
so crime has freed them, right, That's that was her
only option in order to get money like that time frame,

(14:53):
do you want to make a big move like you
had to basically turn to crime. So she's like, look
before jay Z, I'm going to jay Z this moment.
I have been dreams and I'm not going to let
my position in society squelch them, right right. So she's like,
I'm about this life and she imagines as I'll backtrack
for a second. I told you that she was the
focus of a couple of documentaries. One was by Netflix,

(15:13):
and the producer of that is a woman named Unetta Boone,
and she was talking into the twenty thirteen film about
Diamond Doris Pain, explaining how she was at this time,
and she said, quote those things that can set in
the mind of a young girl. I'm never going to
be under the thumb of a man. I'm going to
be the judge of my own destiny. I really think
that alone drove Doris. I think that was the day
that empowered her, the day that she freed her mother.

(15:36):
So crime empowers her. Not only does allow her to
escape these forced identities cast on her, but now also
she's able to do things for other people in her life.
So she's like, this is I'm doing this, she's getting
a thrill from it. Of course there's that too. They're
a big part of why a person turns to crime
as it feels good. But she also is at this
point pretty much set in her life. She's like, you
know what, I am probably not going to couple off.

(15:57):
I'm gonna be diamond Doris Pain soloing through the world.
In her words, she said that marriage quote ties you
to brutality. Oh wow, we had a dark view of marriage, right.
But once she gets her mother free of her abusive father,
Doris makes her mother and offers. She's like, hey, you know,
I'm gonna keep doing this. I'm really good at this.
Do you want to be my fence? And her mom's like, oh,
baby girl, UM, I love what you did for me.

(16:17):
I love the new house. But no, but no, so
she's like, you know, I can't help you with that.
She's like, are you sure because I'm moving hot rocks
here get kidions. She's like, no, I'm not down. Some
mother's like okay, fine, uh you know, baby girl, you
just do your thing and U I won't tell anyone.
And she's like, okay, but occasionally if I send you
money that quote, of course that'll be cool. So she

(16:37):
accepted the pros take the cash. She doesn't want to
risk take in the heat exactly. But I wouldn't need it. Also,
she doesn't. I don't think she trusts herself to go
in and be the fence, like, you know, going into
the like the like pawn shops, the Hawk jewelry or whatever.
I don't think she'd much of herself, yeah, in that regard.
So she's like, look, I'll take the four bedroom house
in Shaker Heights and we're cool. I I couldn't do
any of this. One time I was at a store

(16:59):
like a bit old navy, I admit it. And I
was like years and years ago, and I bought two
shirts and I walked out looking at the receipt and
I thought, man, that was cheap, and I realized they'd
only rung up one of them, and I had two
in the bag. And I went back and I said,
she didn't charge me for this other shirt, and the
lady looked at me and then she goes, just get
out of here. She's like, come on, I mean like

(17:23):
she rolled her eyes at me. How far did you
walk back from? Yeah? Basically, once or she has her
mother's squared away. Doris is now set for herself. She's like,
I'm gonna go be Doris Criming on my own alone.
And she said, and I quote, a woman practicing being
a world class jewel thief wasn't going to be home much.
So she's just ready to hit this road. Yeah. Off
she goes, a black woman existing in a supremely limiting

(17:45):
time in her own way. She basically spreads her criminal
wings and just flutters away from Cleveland. Right. But she,
as I just pointed out, she decided to lean into crime.
As Cheryl Sandberg might put in, right, this was like
her view of feminism as exactly. She was a girl
boss in the hat in the nineteen fifties. So her
modus operanda, in case you were curious, it's rather simple.

(18:05):
I've kind of laid it out for you, which is
that she would pull the miss lady act. But there
was a lot more too. That she did what you
often tell us and remind me, which is to act
like you belong somewhere. Yes, she would go one step further.
What she would dress like she belonged somewhere and act
that way. So she put on as much of the
compartment as she could, and then all the fineries. Right,
so she'd use her miss Lady routine and her Scarletto

(18:25):
hair inspired act, and then then she would go and
she'd hang out with these ladies of elegance and wealth
and she would watch them and she'd practice them, and
then she would imitate them when she goes swanning into
a jewelry store, and she tried to act like all
they did whenever they were looking at select pieces of jewelry.
The same hand gestures, the same lift of the wrist,
everything she did. She was basically an actress, right, So
a typical move would be for her to go into

(18:46):
a store and she would do all of this stuff.
I just described the graceful, elegant movement, the lilting voice,
and then she would ask a try it on a
piece of jewelry. The employee would be like, you know,
sometimes suspicious whatever, but they would be like, you know,
give her a ring to try, and then she would
accidentally lose that ring, you know, while she's talking to
the person. Right, So she'd hopefully have like multiple rings,

(19:07):
like two or three out she loses one of them, right, Yeah,
So while she's doing that, then she would eventually quickly,
rather you know, promptly, grab the ring and then return
it and then be like, oh, look, we misplaced this.
I dropped this whatever it was. And then the employee
because this has now aillaid their fears of thievery. She's
earned their trust, earned their friendship, and they stopped watching
her with that hawcus I and yeah yeah when she

(19:28):
suddenly does the real move, once had their trust, and
then she'd be like, okay, yes, I'm so happy though,
thank you. Here you go. That's what I should have
done it, old Navy, I should have done that whole
thing and then turn around and gone back and taken
a bunch of stuff she'd never blasted. I missed my
chance to be a crimer. Well, if you'd like to
hear an example of her working a jewelry star employee

(19:50):
and Philip, I got one for you, she says in
her memoir. The gentleman that was serving me must have
been the manager or whatever. But everyone else congregated in
the cluster and they were looking dead at me. I
told myself, I can't do this with five or six
people staring at me. So as luck favors the bold,
or you know, the Romans would say, Diamond Doris. She
gets lucky when the store managers shoot away the crowd

(20:11):
that has gathered in the store, and he embarrassedly explains
that Diamond Doris, it was simply a matter of her
looking so elegant, right, it's all these people staring at her.
You know. He's starting to downplay the racism of the moment.
And this is the moment when her childhood acting and
her original like criminal mo became one and the same.
She's like, well, I'm gonna dress like this from now
on because she got treated the way. She's like, oh,
it's the perfect cover, right, So let's take a short

(20:32):
break and I will get back to you with Diamond
Doris Payne takes Monte Carlo. Oh, yes, all right, Elizabeth, Hey, Darren,

(21:03):
he doing a b So Ever since Diamond Doris Payne's
mother turned it down to become her fence, she's been
working alone. She's like, where can I work alone in America?
As I told you it's the fifties, they're really sixties.
She's got problems with racism pretty much every turn, even
in the North. So she's like, I'm going over to
where all the jazz musicians have done really well for
the last thirty years. I'm going to Europe. Yea. Before

(21:24):
she goes to head off to Europe, she does have
this one criminal partner I'd like to tell you about
real quickly. You got a second. The dude's name was Babe.
He sticks out of memory. He was six foot two.
He was in the Israeli dude living in Cleveland, right,
and his government name was Harold Braunfeld, now Harold Braunfeld.
Babe was a certified criminal with all the ties you

(21:45):
would want to the underworld, like legit, right, so he
becomes like a paramore to Diamond Doris. And yeah, so
early on, she gets busted in a jewel heist or
is suspected and she gets arrested pop by the Cleveland police.
And then good old Babe Abe swans on in and
he has lawyers, the good kind, the expensive kind. He
gets his lawyers aimed at her case. He gets her

(22:07):
released on a guilty plea with no time served in jail.
No way, good lawyers, Yeah exactly, and all thanks to Babe. No.
Things were good for her and Babe for a good
long time. But unfortunately Babe was the sort of Underworld
character who felt the need to get cosmetic surgery to read.
He always to make his face look like totally different.
So he's like, I'm going to be a different babe. Okay.

(22:30):
He goes in there to get into his surgery. He
goes under the knife complication for surgery. He passes away.
See that's the risk. Yeah, okay, exactly so and he said, Babe,
I get it. I just didn't battle do peg with
the band on the table. I was like, well, that's
what the that's what the doctor said when they put
the sheet over sheet, and everyone just like lowered their

(22:54):
heads and credits roll. So Diamond Norris Pain this is
what sends her on her own. This is like basically
the last time. She's like, oh, she did have another
woman who's a lady who ran a brothel in Cleveland,
who she also worked with for a while, and that
lady would give her tips about like where to run
her campaigns. So she would go off and she's like
she quote she says, quote she told me where to

(23:15):
go and give me names. I used to set up
shop and sell to Cleveland Indian baseball players. So the
old Cleveland Guardians to Cleveland Indians she settled to those
ball players, and this actually got her in trouble because,
like you know, she ended up like, well, I'll get
to that later. Just remind me Willie Mays. But let's
get on to Europe. Yes, So, Diamond Doris, she longed,
as they told you, for a bigger score. The racism

(23:36):
of America is holding her back. So she's like, I
want bride horizons. I want, you know, shores that are
more inviting to me. And so she goes, where's elegance
and opulence? Where can I take my show on the
road in Europe? That would really be, you know, something
befitting my talents. She remembers when she was a kid
back in slab Fork, West Virginia, reading all about the

(23:57):
marriage of Hollywood royalty Grace Kelly and Reiner. Right, and
this is like a big deal when she was a
little girl. So she's just stuck with her. She's like,
I'm going there, yeah, and it's funny. It's funny to
me at least once again. How often these criminals are
They model their reality on movies. Basically a Grace Kelly
scarletta hera. These are like her models for the life
she wants, right, Yeah, So she goes off to Monico,

(24:17):
but before she does that, she's like, you know, I
should probably brush up on my skills. I bet those
European jewel people they're probably top notch. They I don't
know all the stuff. So she goes to Manhattan and
she's like, I'll practice at Saxfith Avenue. I'll practice like
all the swanky spots. That makes sense. And so she
does this. She practices being moneyed, just being able to
convey this vibe. Right, So she said, quote, for three weeks,

(24:39):
I watched the women in Saxsmith Avenue like a hawk.
I read the New York Times every day, and I
studied Vogue to mimic the fashions and memorize the most
valuable jewels. So she gets her leg work. Yeah. The year,
by the way, is nineteen seventy four. This is after
a babe has passed away, and she's like, you know,
still kind of bouncing around the Pittsburgh Cleveland area. Now

(25:00):
she's in New York. She's about to go off to Europe.
But first I wanted to point out this is the
summer of nineteen seventy four. Do we know a little
bit about the summer of nineteen seventy four, not off
the top of my head. Well, there was this little
story that happened in the summer of nineteen seventy four.
The President of the United States, my man Richard Nixon,
which I say, my man, with my tongue so firmly
pressed in my cheek. I think I bruised myself. But

(25:20):
my man, Richard Nixon, you know what I mean. This
is when he decided to, you know, basically quiet quit
the White House. And it was right, I'm out pieces,
I'm retiring from the game, right, Diamond Doors, Pain's like
I'm going deep in the game. So they cross pass
like he's leaving powers, actually cross paths. It was just
the kind of a thing because you know, I just

(25:41):
wanted to place this in time. It is. It's an
interesting So that faithful summer of seventy four, Diamond Doors
Paint hops her bag or Paxster bags rather, and hops
on a flight to Nice, France. We visited before in
these stories. It's a good place for criminals to go
because there's a lot of dumb and wealthy people there. Correct,
So she wins her way down to Monte Carlo, and
I'll just let her set the stage you're reading quote.

(26:01):
It was so gorgeous to drive through the spaces of
wide open skies above valleys, rows of hills, and evergreen
trees like back home in West Virginia. For the short
thirty minute ride, experience mountains that descended to the sea.
As we entered Montico, there were yachts with their masts
sticking up like pins out of one of Mom's pincushions.
To my left, the high cliffs of Chucky Limestone looked

(26:22):
no different from the limestone cliffs and mountain passes of
West Virginia. I thought, child, you would come a long
way from taking the bus to Pittsburgh. We drove through
a small tunnel and there it was the wealth of
terra cotta tile roofs piled on the hillside right down
to the Mediterranean Sea. So from West Virginia Monte Carlo. Wow,
what a moment for her, right, Yeah, I just loved that. Anyway,

(26:43):
So to anyone who asked, you would explain her presence
of Monte Carlo by telling them, well what I would
call a believable lie. Okay, she would tell folks that
she was the wife of the film director Auto Premager. Yes, okay. Now,
for those who don't know, Ottoremager was a big filmmaker
back in the day, and he was married to the
actress Dorothy Dandridge, a black woman. Because he's a European filmmaker,

(27:04):
he didn't give two feathers or a fig what Americans thought,
so he did it now. Perhaps Diamond Doris was thinking,
maybe people don't know what Dorothy Dandridge looks like in
nineteen seventy four. But I don't know, but the lie
work exceedingly well. Maybe she thought, you know, Auto Premature
has a taste, a type, a style of woman who
goes for anyway. She's there it's work and the lies
given her like a believable reason to be there. Time

(27:26):
to shop. So she gets a driver. She says, please
take me to the most exclusive shopping district, which is
this place called Place du Casino. So she goes to
Place du Casino. The street signs are all in French. Elizabeth, Yeah,
she doesn't read French, so she has no idea what
she's doing. She's like, Okay, I've got to trust this guy.
So Diamond Doris She's like, oh wait, I forgot Catholicism.
This will once again come to my rescue. Howe, and

(27:50):
I quote, I knew just enough French to get by.
Mom had been raised Catholic without a place to worship
and slab fork. She had recited the priest part and
the congregation is part of the Catholic Mass while doing
the dishes. WHOA, those Latin roots have given me just enough. Yeah,
and that's pre Vaticantus exactly talking. She's speaking in Latin
while she's doing a high Mass while doing dishes. It's

(28:12):
her own high Mass, both as congregation and priest. Wow,
you can see the diamond doors. Pain comes from a
line of creative people. Yeah. Now, honestly, I've done the
exact same thing bouncing around Europe because you'll see the
signs and we'll be written in three four languages. And
so that's like how I learn other languages, because I'll
take the Spanish I do know, and I'll apply it
to the French I don't really know, or the German

(28:34):
I need to know, or whatever it is. Anyway, it
does also I don't know if you've ever tried this,
but Spanish works really well in Italy. YEA say it
with an Italian accent. It's so close. Yeah, it's like
they know exactly what I mean. It's just like anyway,
so diamond doors. She makes it work for herself, just
about the same way. She's bouncing around, speaking her like

(28:54):
pigeon French with Latin roots, and this to her feels
like a winning campaign. She's like, oh, I'm on one right.
And another thing that she's tickled by. She's out of
America and I quote, on the streets, I didn't see
one black person, but I was all right holding things
down from my people in Monte Carlo. Yet that's exactly so.
Now that she's in Monte Carlo, making her way looking

(29:15):
clean in the latest drip, she's all ready to operate. Right. So,
rather than just tell you about it, I think I'd
like you to close here up as a clue and
Elizabeth picture it. Yes, Elizabeth, you've recently started a new
job in Monte Carlo. You're working in a jewelry start.
It's not your favorite gig, but you still have those
school loans to pay off for your time at Clown College. Now,

(29:35):
while you wait to make it as France's next big mim,
you happily buide your time at your day job working
at the counter of Cartier. It's a small crowd today
as they shop Cardier. As you well know, it's an
amazing place to work. It's the world's preeminent jeweler, and
today is no exception. As a few swanky looking customers
take a gander at all of the gemstones on offer.

(29:56):
You and the other employees glide over along the glass
cabinets and graciously show them whatever it is that they'd
like to see. You see an older black woman who's
been looking over some diamond rings, so you walk over
to her, and this same woman would later recall of
this day and her time with you in the Cartier store.
Quote the place had Bella epoc decor. There were velvety

(30:17):
black displays of diamond necklaces and glass cases with black
velvet tubes of diamond bracelets. I saw what I had
come for, glass cases with big ass rocks. Now that
she's seemingly ready to try on one of those big
ass rocks, she warmly greet the older woman and ask
her if there's a ring that she would like to
look at. She smiles graciously and points out with a

(30:38):
really elegant move, that there are three rings that she'd
like to try. You open up the dress case, you
bring out the three diamond rings. Just as you set
them down, the doors to the store open, and some
cloud patrully scented American hippie strolls into the Cartier store
like it's some head shopping. He needs rolling papers, and
everyone's like, what the hell, Well, David Crosby, you don't

(31:00):
belong here, and take Steven Steals with you now. The
American hippy he clearly, as you point out, doesn't belong
in this world's premiere jewelry store. So it's a perfect
distraction for the older black woman you've been helping. But
you don't know this. While you and everyone else suspiciously
I this dirty hippie, the older woman standing before he
swipes one of the diamond rings, you don't even see
her make the move. It's so well practiced. The big

(31:20):
ass rock as a price tag of five hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. No way, that's about three million dollars
in today's dollars. That's three million dollars. Wow. And you
notice that there's now one less ring than you brought out.
But right at that same moment, your boss, the floor manager,
looks over at you with a steely eye. The dirty
hippie is still milling about, making everyone nervous. The floor
manager she calls you over with just her eyes. It's

(31:41):
a very French come over here right now. Look now,
you put the rings on top of the shelf with
a glass case and you lock it, and then you
go to walk over to your boss, and right in
that moment, you have the flash. Wait the third ring
you forgot to grab and you turn around and you
hear the ladies say, oh, my driver is here and
there's more shopping to be done. I'll come for the
piece tomorrow, and she goes to walk out. You don't
know what to do. You smile politely because that is you.

(32:02):
How you're practiced and well trained. And you're still focusing
on your steely eyed floor manager who is dread demanding
you come over here and deal with the dirty ass
American hippie. So you are busy and then with one
quick look back at the customer out the door. Gone.
Now you have a multimillion dollar ring. You have to
explain why it is gone. Man, that's curtains for Marcel

(32:22):
mar So so diamond. You're going back to Colown College,
Diamond Doris is struck again. So while you try to
think of a compostic way to let tell this pain
in the ass boss that you just let your two
point five billion dollars ring out the door. YEA, Diamond
Doris is going to do stroll casually back to hotel,
and we will follow her. As her calm exterior is
just an act. She is fretting on the inside, just

(32:44):
absolutely redlining, but trying to stay calmly. She has ever
pulled off, so I don't know how you walk when
you're nervous, but she's doing her best to not do
the exactly just drip drip. Elizabeth went that way. So
as she gets back to her hotel room, dry legged,
she quickly packs takes a cab to the nice airport

(33:06):
right now. Once she's in, I'm good to go and
a diamond doors. She pulls out her diamond ring and
she's never really noticed the price tag. She looks and
spots the price tag. She's blown away. It's a string
of zeros. She has never stolen anything like this, As
she wrote in her memoir quote, I never saw that
many in my life. I broke out in a sweat

(33:27):
and everything. I was freaked out thinking I had taken
something that the whole world was going to be looking for.
So now as she's like basically racing to the nice
airport with something that she knows is pretty much a
major jail sentence, right, she knows that the spot is hot,
so she's like, okay, what can I do? What can
I do? Meanwhile, the gendarmes have been contacted by Cartier
and they are indeed hot in hot pursuit. They are

(33:50):
hot on her case. Right, the airport is the first
place she checked. They check first, of course, they're like,
we know she's going there. So the gendarmes they make
it in time, and they find her posted up waiting
for her flight, sitting there with a diamond ring still
on her. We'd like you to come plaze us. Do
you have a moment? And then she's like, oh no, no,
I have coing. I'm an American. I can't understand you.
Oh no, it doesn't work right. So she's taken in

(34:12):
police custody. She then have to figure out how does
she hide this diamond? So what does she do? What
would you do? You're in police custody, you know you
have the diamond on you. They've yet to me. I
would have like a major panic attack. Someone put this
in my pocket. I found this a gap. There's there's
no way I could. I could not physically sustain through

(34:33):
a situation. I think one of your parts would fall off.
So she keeps somehow a cool head, and she manages
to pop the diamond ring in her mouth. Oh okay,
so she now has it hid in her mouth. But
that's only gonna be good for so long. You know.
That gets her a couple searches. But now she realized,
I need to move it again, so she uses a
bit of theater and she fakes the sneeze and she

(34:53):
passes the diamond ring into the tissue, and from that
point then she takes the tissue and she manages to
get that into her pantyhose. So now she's got the
time and ring tucked away in her pantios. This allows
her to get it through a strip search because she's
able to pile up her pantios and they don't apparently
pat it down accurately. So the French police apparently not
sticklers for like a thorough like American style cavity search.
So anyway, the gendarmes. They can't find the ring, so

(35:16):
now they can't accuse her of stealing anything because there's
no stolen property on her. But they're like, that's not
gonna stop us. We're gonna still gonna take you into custody.
They hold her for nine months in a hotel nine wait,
okay months, nine months, and then in a hotel, so
they hold her for nine months where they count try
to convince her to tell them where the ring is.

(35:37):
She won't break, so they just basically, I don't know
how the jurisprudence of this works, but they charge of it,
don't charge her, and they hold her in custody, in
French custody. They have her like stored in a hotel
because there is no women's facility in Nice, so they
have to They have a woman's prison guard post outside
of her hotel room, and they just make a one
person in prison oh man. So there she is right now.

(35:58):
She gets to know the prison guards, so she's telling, oh, hey,
i've got a I need a couple of favors of
the prison guard. We're good her stuff. So one day
she's like, Okay, I think I figured out how I'm
gonna get this ring, because she still has the ring
in her study. She's still hiding it. And so she
tells the prison guard, Hey, I need um some thread
and needle to men's some stockings. And then you know,
the person's like, okay, she also needs a tonail clippers through,

(36:21):
like tonil clippers, Like yeah, from my ton for nine months. Yeah,
So like, okay, I'll get you the toneil clippers. She's like,
I have some in my bag. You can just go
to my bag and pull the stuff out. But the
gendarme prison guards like, oh we and so she goes over,
she pulls out the tonail clippers. She gives her the
thread and the needle, and then she goes in and
she then takes the tonail clippers and I'll leave it
to diamond Doris quote. I use the tonail clippers to

(36:43):
pry the diamond out of the mounting, and I threw
the mounting in the Mediterranean. So apparently she had a
Mediterranean view in her hotel room. So she's in nice
with a Mediterranean view, like a balcony, flowers on the
list to throw something into the ocean. Yeah, So she
then takes the diamond and what gusted, right, so she

(37:05):
puts it, this diamond into a bunch of thread, like
basically makes a little ball of thread and then sows
that into her girdle and then where's the girdle the
rest of the time. So now she's got this diamond
girdle and she manages to outlast the French after the
nine months pass like, fine, we'll let you go, and
then she flies back to America with the girdle because
you know, they don't do all the metal searches of everything.

(37:26):
So she gets the diamond back to America, where she
promptly goes to a pawnbroker and sells it for a
third of its value. That's incredible. So she managed to
get one over on the Gendarmes. Wow, let's take another
quick little break and I'll be back with the rest
of the Doris pain life and Crimes. All right, So

(38:06):
Elizabeth Aron, I told you that Nixon left the White House. Yeah,
now we're back in America. Gerald Ford is in the
White House, Remember him, Gerald Ford? Yeah, the guy fell
well I forget him a lot. Yeah, well he was there.
So the old college Football Center, you know, old Dinghy.
He he's the president, but he doesn't matter at all, right,
because Doris Payne is out of her legal trouble. She's

(38:27):
escaped Monte Carlo and the Nice Airport, and she's made
it back to America, and uh, well what does she
do now? I don't know. She goes back to Europe.
She went back. Yes, sometimes she's like, oh, I'm not
going to go back to France. That's she goes to Rome.
She's like, I think I think my Latin may go
further there. So she goes to Rowans. She when she's

(38:48):
in Rome, she hits up the Bulgary store, you know Bulgary. Yeah,
so she got to Bulgary and she records in her
memoir Diamond Doris, the True Story of the World's most
Notorious jewel Thief, that she quote finally met her match
in a jewelry store employee. Yeah. So, quote this dude
was trained like a stripper, but I was gonna find
a way to flip it on him. Train like a stripper.

(39:09):
I think like he was professional. You're saying like he
was able to handle everything all comers. Yeah. Yeah. So
it took some wrangling and some sweet talking distraction, but
eventually Diamond Doris was able to slip a yellow diamond
ring under her middle finger. And the jewelry store employee,
the one who was up to snuff, he failed to
notice this move. So she'd done her like distraction into

(39:29):
the graceful, like a like magician's hands or whatever. Now
she's got the rock on her finger, right, I imagine
it's turned around to the rock is inside by her paw. Right.
But anyway, Diamond Doris goes, oh, where's the loop? And
then or the bathroom? And so the person tells her
she excused herself to the restroom. But instead of going
to the restroom, what did she do is she'd be
lines to the front door out the store. Right, Because

(39:51):
they just believe she's going to the restroom, they stuff
restaurant exactly. So in Bolden by her good luck, Diamond
Doris is like, you know what I'm thinking, I'm on
a googlin right now. So she goes on a five day,
four city campaign, hitting all the hot spots she can.
She pops over the Channel, she dicks a stop over
in London. She manages to hit up the British jeweler

(40:11):
Garrard and Company. Do you know Gerard and Company of Guard?
So there, I didn't know this they're the jeweler of
the British crown. She ripped them off. Okay, spot right. Yeah.
She walks back onto the plane where she's going to
return to America, and at this point she has a
small fortune on her this time. Yeah. Quote, I was
carrying what would amount today to nearly one million worth
of jewelry on me. Wow. Yes, But as with all

(40:34):
good things, there were signs at the heady days of
robbing the Queen of England's jeweler and slipping away like
she's the scarlet pimpernel or behind her. Because the most
dire sign is she started to get caught way more often. Yeah,
for a decade, she's rarely ever napped. Right. She used
to say, quote, I never went to jail and stayed.
That is the reputation I wanted. I knew I could

(40:55):
get out. She starts to lose that reputation. So for
the longest time, that's her deal. Right. She's in Zurich
for her fiftieth birthday. The year is nineteen eighty and
she spends the day acquiring rolexes while she's out drinking
with her driver. So she's sliding in and out of consciousness,
stealing rolexes in Zurich. Right, happy fiftieth to me. She
also violates one of her own rules. She's operating will

(41:17):
drunk Like She's like, Ohshan, do you not operate this
machinery will drunk? Right? So, but she for her fiftieth birthday,
she breaks her rules. She breaks one of the Diamond
Doors ten commandments and she goes and gets drunk with
the driver that they throw back way too many cocktails.
And then that same evening, feeling festives, she goes out
to a nightclub. Quote. Next thing I know, I'm up
in dance and I'm not having a great time. Right,

(41:39):
So she's turning out the dance floor. But she doesn't
know this. She's on TV because this club has a
link that they broadcast on Swiss TV showing all the
missing are doing. It's amazing, right, So everybody turns out.
There are some viewers of this show that aren't just
club kids. The local police, they apparently the station. Yeah,

(42:00):
I'm sure they watch it. They bought Diamond Doris and
recognize her, so they just go on down to the
club kid. Yeah, So on her fiftieth birthday, she gets
arrested and she sent on the train to Geneva to
stand trial for theft, but the cops made one fatal mistake.
The train wasn't a NonStop train, hey stop, so they

(42:20):
stopped to reload fresh water and Diamond Doris that's all
she needed to make a getaway quote. I jumped off
the train. It was funny too later because I looked bad.
I looked awful. That's what she's thinking about, Letts. She's like,
my wig was off sideways. Anyway, she's lost in the
darker Switzerland, bounce around by herself. Diamond Doris wanders all
through the night. Remember this is her fiftieth birthday, right,

(42:41):
So she makes it to a town, doesn't know where
she is. She doesn't know she's what border. Maybe she's crossed.
She all she knows, she's crossed some cornfield, some farms,
she went through, a goat herd and then all of
a sudden, she finds his taxi driver working that night
in the quiet part of town, late at night, so
she offers him all the money she had on her
for a ride. Yeah, she doesn't have any money on her,

(43:02):
but she tells him that, right because remember she's arrested,
so she doesn't know where to go, So she's like, yes,
go to that direction to night. So the driver isn't
suspicious because he's a late a night doing his own thing.
So she knows she needs to keep moving all right.
And plus she's all starting to sober up because I
remember she's been really drunk, this drunk, so she's got
also the sudden memory of these stolen rolexes popping into

(43:25):
the flour of her mind. She's like, oh, that's right,
all the how embarrassing. She's like having all this like
it's a really bad fiftieth birthday, That's what I'm saying, right,
So as the effects of the drink are creeping up
on her and fading away, at the same time, she said, quote,
I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.
Maybe I'm too old for this, I told myself. Wow,
And this is a time arter tradition in the black community,

(43:45):
when you've reached the point of saying maybe I'm too
old for this. You are too old for this, So
I mean, it's truly, it's true. So Danny Glover sealed
it and la weapon and we've all known it ever
since then. So now Nyman door, she didn't listen to
herself which she should have. Instead, she starts getting busted
with the smooth regularity of a Rolex watch. Yes. In

(44:07):
the nineteen eighties, Diamond Doris is busted in Ohio. She's
caught after she went to a hospital for treatment. Problem
was she was under federal custody at the time, so
she was under federal custody. He went to the hospital,
tried to walk out, she gets busted. She back to
federal custody. In nineteen ninety one, she gets caught stealing
like Jane's addiction. She was in prison for five months.
She had stolen a seventeen thousand dollars ring from a

(44:27):
store in Eleira. Yeah. So eight years later, in nineteen
ninety nine, Diamond Doris is busted again, this time in Denver, Colorado,
for a fifty seven thousand dollars ring. Thanks to this bust,
she's now facing serious time. She gets sentenced to twelve years.
She only ends up doing five though they release her
own like you know crowding, I think prison crowding. Ten

(44:48):
she gets popped in Coasta Mesa, California. She was in
a Saxsmith Avenue store. She was trying to buy, like
or lift a barbery coat for thirteen hundred dollars. She
gets spotted ripping the price tag out of the coat.
She's getting slop. Later that same year, she's busted in
a macy for attempting to steal a diamond ring worth
nine grand. You notice the prices are dropping fast, right, Yeah,
so the amounts are going down, the busts are going up.

(45:10):
These are inversely proportional bad for diamond doors, never good
for a career criminal. For this to happen, is this
bad end of the career averages? Right, She's like a
star athlete. This would be the bummer years. These would
be like, oh man, like the you know, a soon
to be Aaron Rodgers on the Jets, like go ahead
and retire, Yes, exactly when you, as a fan wish
they retire. You're like, okay, well, I as a fan

(45:30):
of diamond doors on a girl hang up? Yeah. Well,
in twenty eleven, she's eighty one years old. She's still
working hard in the hight game. Are you kidding me?
She went on an epic tear. She retarts ripping off
diamonds from Palm Springs to San Diego. She was like
a criminal snowbird. She went a good weather was but
just for ripping stuff off, right, She's like a jailbird,
a snow jailbird. Anyway, So she gets busted in San Diego,

(45:54):
sentence to sixteen months into San Diego prison. She gets
caught stealing a one carrot diamond ring, like old Doris
would be looking so down on one of the detectives
from the San Diego Pedia. This dude, detective Thomas Jacks.
He recalled that Diamond Doris quote was a nice old
lady who's seeing quote like my mom and my grandparents.
And Detective Jack's also added the quote, I think she's

(46:15):
romanticized this beyond what it really is. She is a thief,
and what she does affects other people. You've basically become
a victim of your own myth making. So Diamond Doris's lawyer,
Gretchen von Helms, she was quick the defender. She's like, well,
you know, my client, you have to understand, quote never
hurt anybody, and quote is not forceful, like when you're
getting down to the point. Looked, She's never actually smashing

(46:36):
anyone in the face, you know. But this is not
exactly a ringing endorsement. So this, this is the metric
that they're using for crime, which is if you're not
hurting anybody who cares. I've said this before this and
my metric. Diamond Doris is really testing beyond this one,
I have to admit, because as Detective Jack says, Diamond
Doris was indeed hurting folks, right. She was like the

(46:57):
jewelry store owner's bloo, whatever thees. Yeah, that's who I
was thinking about. The employees that she's stealing from the
they're losing their job. You know, they're getting fired anyway,
Remember I said earlier Willie Mays, Yes, bringing it back
to William May. Another one is an example of back
in the sixties, she stole a diamond ring, back when
she was you know, selling stuff to the Cleveland ball players.

(47:18):
She stole a ring and it turned out, through an
odd course of events, Willie Mays's wife gets blamed for
the theft. Willie Mays's wife then gets arrested or the theft,
and Willie Mays's wife spends like time being like having
her whole everything be disparaged. Willie Mays looks bad. It's
like I do not need to do yes exactly. So
there's another example of somebody who gets hurt by done so. Anyway,

(47:40):
So when she was asked though, when if she had
any regrets. In a twenty twenty two interview with Karen
Greer from a Landed Channel two news team, Yeah, Kara,
she had, Diamond Doris told the journalist Karen Greer, well,
I didn't kill nobody or rob nobody, and so once
again the same bars. So Karen Greer pointed out what
I basically pointed out, Well, you kind of robbed somebody. Yeah,

(48:02):
it's like and I would go past kind of Karen,
rob and you hurt people. Yeah, you definitely did so. Butever,
in a colorful twist of semantics, Diamond Doris argued, I
didn't rob them. They gave it to me, So they're stupid.
It's like a child's version of like they handed it
to me. I didn't steal it. I walked out with it.
I thought they gave it to me. I'm like, come on,

(48:23):
snap too. Anyway, the chairman and the owner of the
luxury jeweler brand Black Star and Frost this cat named
Alfred Bollina no relation to the Doctor Octopus actor Alfred Molina. Yeah,
he said of Diamond Doris quote, I found her to
basically have an open heart and to share her life
with everyone. She's not a threat to society. I don't
agree with what she has done, but I see her

(48:44):
as a product that was created by us. WHOA, that's yeah.
I literally thought that was like damn, I never expect
to hear that. Anyway. It's a generous, admirable view from
the Jeweler. I'll give them to that. Admittedly, his company
was never a target of Diamond Doris. Well, that's easy
to say then, yeah, but he he said, and I
quote that if Diamond Doris had, you know, hit his store,
his opinion would have not changed even quote one degree. Yeah,

(49:08):
that's it's not really We can test that one in theory,
but in reality you don't know. So the Jeweler Security
Alliance President John J. Kennedy not to be confused with
former President John F. Kennedy, Okay, and not to be
confused with Senator John Neely Kennedy Louisiana. Right this, John J.
Kennedy uh T told Business Ends Center. Quote, it's extraordinarily
rare for a criminal to have that lengthy of a career.

(49:30):
Usually they either stopped because they have enough money and
they don't want the risk anymore, or they're dead. So
I really gets right down to it. So in other words,
Diamond Doris has explained why she can't stop stealing diamonds,
Like basically she she speaks to his point and she said,
quote stealing jewelry, it was just exciting, which is what

(49:51):
you said? Yeah, and I can continue the quote. It
also became a social outlet for me. This was her
way of meeting new people. Social out quote. That was
my everything. I don't regret being a jewel thief. Do
I regret getting caught? Yes? I have a few. Yeah.
So she's still a little like, you know, prickly. Yeah,
but she did say that quote, I've been a jewel

(50:13):
thief for many, many years. I am exceptionally proud of
my being the very opposite of what is expected. So
she's still flexing on him. And now in twenty fifteen,
Diamond Doris was busted yet again. At least this time
the ring was in the double digits. She was back
up and around thirty three thousand dollars ring. She gets
busted in Charlotte, North Carolina, twenty fifteen. How old is
she at that point? Yeah? So next year she gets

(50:37):
caught in Atlanta at the Perimeter Mall, and she had
her eye on the two thousand dollar necklace. She gets
out of jail in twenty seventeen, it is promptly busted
again and at the age of eighty six. This time
the granny with a lars in his fingers is busted
stealing a six hundred and ninety dollars pair of Christian
Dior earrings from a sax Fifth Avenue in Atlanta Phipps Plaza.
Oh that's a bummer, dude. I grew up a street

(50:58):
away from Atlanta Fipsplaza. I could literally picture the parking lot.
I'm like seeing her getting pulled out and put into
the police car like I was, like, it was sad, right,
So the bummer bust is though when she the ultimate
bummer bust, and this is a series of bummer bust
She gets caught later that year the same year, twenty seventeen,
attempting to steal eighty six dollars worth of stuff from

(51:19):
a Walmart in Shambly, Georgia. She was wearing an ankle
monitor at the time when she gets popped into Shambly Walmart.
Diamond Dorris had a ready excuse, and she said that
this was a career strategy. She claimed she got busted
on purpose. She wanted the publicity. She said, quote, if
I come to Atlanta, I might get a book deal.

(51:40):
I might get a movie deal because this is the
only city in the United States that blacks have any
firm footing. Now like most of other criminals. She did
not get that book deal, not then. But how about
a movie deal, Well, there was in the works. There
was a movie almost about her in two thousand and eight.
It was gonna star can you guess, no, Hollie Harry

(52:00):
Real Alle Barry, Diamond, Doris halle Berry. Yeah, but that
wasn't the call because Diamond Doris wasn't so into halle Berry.
She said when they mentioned halle Berry, and I was
kind of shocked. She is not the person I would
choose to portray me, because halle Berry has a carriage
about her. She don't really know who she is. But
Queen Latifa she just lets it all. It doesn't matter

(52:22):
how much she has. She's just a good old girl.
She wanted Queen Latifa to play her. She saw that
opening to what's that movie? Oh the movie set him off? Yeah, no, no, no,
the movie where she's like a bike messengers that ridiculous opening.
Can't think of what it is. I don't know where
she's like, she's doing stunt, crazy stun subway round on

(52:44):
a bike and then she pulled off my helmet. Queen
Latifa maybe saying she saw that and she was like, no,
that's me. That's what I look like on the mountain bike.
After the halle Berry bio because shelved and the Queen
Latifa movie never goes forward. In two thousand and nine,
the Netflix documentary is made about Diamond Doris. It's called
The Life in Crimes of Doris Pain. And now there

(53:05):
is a new biopic in the works. It will star
can you guess no, Tessa Thompson. Oh okay, that's interesting.
She's already blurred on Doris Pain's memoir quote. Doris Pain
is an unapologetic badass. I love her. So she's a
big fan. And apparently she was long covered a chance
to play her, so she's tweeted about it. She's all excited,
So keep an eye on that space. Anyway. If you'd

(53:27):
like to check more of her story, be sure to
check the documentary, or you can read more of her
own words in her memoir Diamond Doris, The True Story
of the World's most notorious jewel Thief. In the book,
she closes her story with these words, and I quote,
did I imagine some of this? Make it up, elaborate it,
polish it like a good diamond, make you want to

(53:48):
look at it, make a smile. You have to decide,
she's not still with us. She's still alive. You're a kid. Yes,
she is not deceased. She's out there still swiping rings
and getting busted to this day. If I had any money,
I would send it to her. I'd be like, girl,
get yourself a good Cadillac and cruise this country. That's amazing,
star ridiculous takeaway here. Well, you know, she's maybe it's

(54:11):
good for your health. Thisay crime is good for your health.
She doesn't have dementia. She doesn't. It's pretty impressive. Yeah,
Like she's got a good bit of health. It's incredible, Doris.
Although I do have to be a little bit real
about this. You gotta know when to get out of
the game or get some young blood to help you.
Either she gets a young girl to come in and
help her, or some young brother to be a distraction. Yeah,

(54:33):
but I mean I know people who once they retire,
their health goes down. Just to recognize it. She needs
like a you know, she needs to start d ching.
She can't be out. She needs she needs a mentee.
Yeah exactly, she got a stuff one of them young
mentees and start doing like I don't know, like some
Luke Skywalker and Ray stuff. Or he's like I'm gonna
train you and I'm gonna be mad about it the
whole time. She needs a baby Yoda. Yes, exactlyyone needs

(54:54):
a baby Yoda. Does you need a babu frick? I
really need a Bobby, which she would culos takeaway. That's
pretty much it. You need to know when to get
out of the game, like when you tell a story
and then you're asked, what's your ridiculous takeaway? Hello, if
you've not been listening to ridiculous takeaways, you need a
bobbo frick. Girl, I do need a bb frick. Well
that's all I got for you. I just wanted to

(55:15):
tell you a crime biopic. So there you go. We
have this debate over biopic or biopic to Oh, yeah,
I say biopic, you say biopic. I was in Hollywood.
I know that's how they set it down. I will
not like that. That's my best Andy Coffin, I'm from Hollywood. Anyway,
you can find his online ridiculous comment about Twitter and Instagram,
Twitters for the discards Instagrams where we put up all

(55:37):
the photos of these episodes that we all of the
stuff we've been talking about. We'll have some good ones
with Diamond Doris Pain. The stories are there for some
laughs and uh yeah, if you want to reach out
to us, hit us up at Ridiculous Crime at gmail
dot com. We always appreciate it. Here in front of
the end as always, thanks pretty Ridiculous Crime. It's hosted

(56:02):
by Lizabeth Duddon and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Diamond,
Dave Kustin. Researches by Marissa Diamonds Off Forever Brown and
Andrea Diamonds. A Girl's Best Friend song Sharp End Tier
our theme song is by Thomas Diamond, Dog Lee and
Travis demon On. The Diamond thoracic specialist Dutton. Executive producers

(56:22):
are Ben Legs, Diamond Bowling and Noeld Diamond, Jim Brady,
Hi Elizabeth is Erin producer Dave Dude melody here reporting
for duty, taking one for the team. I knew immediately
when I heard about the Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream

(56:42):
I had to try it. I'm happy to see what
happens here for everyone else who knows. As I said
on my Instagram, it's either going to end as a
huge success or in tears. I have it sitting right
in front of me. I have not opened it. It
says on the side, good job hands Now it's mouth's
turn a life without anything good is bad? True, true,

(57:09):
and the paper just ripped. Let's try. Okay, it smells interesting.
It smells kind of like ranch, but very odd. And
I do consider myself to be a ranch connoisseur. I
am a big fan of ranch. So it looks just

(57:32):
like ice cream. Nothing exciting. All right, let's see what happens.
Take a bite. WHOA, this is odd? WHOA? This is
really odd? WHOA? Okay, so it's actually not terrible if
you like ranch dressing. It hits kind of sweets and

(57:57):
then you start getting kind of a ranch aftertaste and
it feels like I ate a salad now with a
lot of ranch dressing on it. Trying another bite. Yeah,
I don't know. I would give you again, but I'm
not sad that I got it now, So d dudes,

(58:18):
if you like ranch dressing, it might be worth a try.
I've certainly spent more on stupider things in the past.
Thanks for the podcast, Guys, Cry See It one more times.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
of my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(58:40):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.