Doris Thompson is 82, walks hunched over with a limp, has trouble hearing and is an unrepentant career cat burglar.

Last week, the woman with more than 25 aliases, a 21-page rap sheet that goes back 50 years and hair styled like boxing promoter Don King was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for doing what she does best, or at least most often—burglarizing doctors’ offices in Southern California.

At an earlier court hearing, a defiant Thompson had told Judge Thomas Sokolov that she objected to having her picture taken by a news photographer. “I want to say something. Why are they filming this? I'm not newsworthy. I'm an 82-year-old woman who does burglaries. That really pisses me off.”

Thompson, or Doris Ann Gamble (another alias popular with the media), was arrested at a Torrance motel in August and accused of stealing $17,000 between March and August. She was caught on video, just as she was a couple years ago, using her standard MO of hiding in the office until everyone else has gone home, then using a burglar bag of tools to steal everything of value she could carry out.

The 2009 video showed her prying open drawers with a chisel and screwdriver at the Children’s Medical Group in Torrance. Her haul from that caper included $400 in cash and checks, stamps worth $25, a device for testing children’s hearing and a plastic urine container. 

Court records show that Thompson has been incarcerated at least nine times for burglary in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, but according to the Los Angeles Times, records don’t go back further than 1983 when she was a youthful 53 years old. In 2009, she vowed in court her life of crime was over. 

It wasn’t. She pleaded guilty to seven counts of burglary and attempted burglary last Thursday and this time refrained from the kind of promises she made at her last sentencing, not that she would necessarily have been believed.

As Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Paulette Paccione reportedly said in 2009, “I don't think this will stop her from doing this again. She's not really apologetic about it. This is her thing.”  

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

82-Year-Old Calif. Burglar Sentenced to 6 Years (Associated Press)

Career Criminal Doris Thompson, 82, Charged in New Burglaries (by Jeff Gottlieb and Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times)

Notorious Burglar Doris Thompson, 82, Arrested Again (by Jeff Gottlieb and Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times)

“Like I'm Dillinger or Something”: Woman, 82, Objects to Cameras at Her Burglary Hearing (by Larry Altman, Los Angeles News Group)