Grandmother Thief's 50-year career of distraction comes to abrupt end

As usual she tried on numerous rings and chatted to the sales person with an effortless warmth and ease. After deciding not to buy anything she appeared to leave empty handed. In fact, she walked out wearing a $31,500 (£18,100) ring.

It may well prove to have been the final act of one of America's most prolific jewel thieves. Knicknamed the "Grandmother Thief", Doris Marie Payne's traits were well known to the police who were amazed at how easily she could distract shop assistants and simply walk away with her loot.

Two weeks after the Palo Alto robbery, Payne was picked up in Las Vegas and her highly successful, 50-year career came abruptly to an end. The75-year-old is now languishing in Clark County Jail, Las Vegas. She recalls her past with amusement. "Yes, that was me," she says, and laughs. "I don't know- the whole thing just got out of hand. It kind of went amok." Amok is one way of describing hercareer. According to one detective, her rap sheet is more than six feet long and she has served jail sentences in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Colorado and Wisconsin. But what is so remarkable is that except for the very rare occasions on which she was caught, she consistently managed to steal from right under assistants' noses.

Her love for what she calls "the game" took her far from her birthplace of Slab Fork, West Virginia - as far as France, England and even Greece. Each time she would operate as a one-woman gang with a story to tell and a way to distract. Making it seem she was very rich was crucial.

Doris Payne learnt of her deceptive skills as a girl in Ohio when she managed accidentally to walk out a store with a watch on her wrist. "I know how to cause the man in the jewellery store to forget," she later confided to her mother.

Those robberies the authorities know about are "just the tip of the iceberg", said Paul G Graupmann of the FBI. What separated her from other thieves is that she was so prolific and able.