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Television was in its infancy when Doris Thompson began committing crimes, and cameras certainly weren't allowed in courtrooms at the time.
So when the 82-year-old career criminal was told a television cameraman and a still photographer would be allowed to take her picture in a Torrance courtroom on Tuesday, she didn't like it. Not one bit.
"I want to say something. Why are they filming this?" the elderly woman asked Judge Thomas Sokolov. "I'm not newsworthy. I'm an 82-year-old woman who does burglaries. That really pisses me off."
Thompson, also known as Doris Gamble among 25 other aliases, wasn't as eager Tuesday to go back to prison as she was two years ago when she last appeared before Sokolov.
In 2010, convicted of committing several burglaries at doctors' offices in Torrance, Thompson proclaimed her guilt and asked to be sent to prison for the full three years of her sentence. The only way she would return, she said, was "I'm going to die and be in the morgue."
Thompson, however, was released on parole in November, and police say she went back to what she does, committing burglaries at doctors' offices.
Prosecutors charged her Tuesday with seven counts of commercial burglary and one count of attempted burglary, felonies that could send her to county jail for five years.
Police said Thompson hid inside doctors' offices in medical buildings, then emerged after workers closed for the night. She rummaged
Once her Thursday arrest at an El Segundo motel appeared in the newspapers, Thompson's story went viral, appearing on local media, CNN and websites such as the Drudge Report.
Thompson's rap sheet, dating back to 1955, is 21 pages long. She's spent most of her life behind bars for crimes in Southern California ranging from disturbing the peace and burglary to forgery and grand theft.
Police arrested her in connection with a homicide in 1957, but she was deemed insane and committed to a hospital.
The complaint filed against her lists 10 prior convictions for burglary since 1983.
Thompson, bent over slightly as she walked, entered the second-floor courtroom slowly in her blue jail jumpsuit. After she sat down at the defense table, a bailiff handcuffed her to the chair, just like any other defendant, presumably so she wouldn't make a sudden escape.
Just like two years ago, Thompson announced she couldn't hear the judge. Sokolov ordered a hearing-aid device brought into the courtroom, and talked loudly.
"Can you hear me, ma'am?" Sokolov asked in a near shout after Thompson put headphones over her ears. "Can you hear me now?"
Apparently once she could hear the judge, Thompson did not like what she heard. Although her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dana Flaum, argued against allowing the photographer and cameraman to record the hearing, Sokolov allowed it, despite Thompson's protest.
"They don't have my permission," she said.
Sokolov entered a not guilty plea on Thompson's behalf and ordered her to return to court Sept. 18. She was held in county jail on $260,000 bail. None of her family members appeared to be in the courtroom.
Unlike two years ago, when Thompson thanked Sokolov with a "God bless you" for sending her straight to prison, this time she walked off in a huff, saying she wouldn't mind a couple of thousand dollars being put into a jail account for her and invoking the name of a 1930s gangster.
"Like I'm Dillinger or something," she said.
