By 1975, Doris Payne had been stealing precious diamonds
around the globe for several decades. But when the 44-year-old set her sights
on her latest target, the world-famous Bulgari jeweler in Rome, she thought
she’d met her match.
The handsome young clerk didn’t have that special quality she looked for in a
mark, the “combination of eager to please and stupid,” she writes in her new
tell-all memoir, “Diamond Doris” (HarperCollins), out Tuesday.
He moved too fast, was as watchful as a hawk and didn’t give her a chance to
confuse him.
“This dude was trained like a stripper,” Payne writes. “But I was gonna find a
way to flip it on him.”
She moved at a dizzying pace, putting on and taking off rings and necklaces
until the clerk wasn’t able to keep up. As she slipped a yellow diamond ring
worth thousands onto her middle finger, “he didn’t notice my hand move like a
snake,” Payne writes.
Read more the new book on Doris Payne, the world famous jewel thief, on the New York Post website HERE
