Heiress Duke’s Nurse Charged in Thefts : Crime: The woman, who claimed her client was killed, allegedly stole art and jewels from six patients. Her lawyer says she is paying the price for blowing whistle.

The nurse who alleged that billionaire heiress Doris Duke was murdered with overdoses of morphine was charged Wednesday with stealing jewelry and artworks from six wealthy patients--including Duke and cosmetics magnate Max Factor.

Tammy Payette, 28, was being held in lieu of $1 million bail on grand theft charges alleging that she took scores of valuables--ranging from Duke’s prized pearls to a Picasso print--while providing home care for a who’s who of patients on Los Angeles’ Westside from 1993 until early 1995.

Detectives who led Payette away in handcuffs from the West Los Angeles Courthouse said they have tied the nurse so far to nearly $450,000 in missing jewelry, artwork and other items, and that the actual value of the stolen property could be much higher when their investigation is complete.

Meanwhile, records in the case, obtained by The Times, show that Payette may never have been apprehended if she had not emerged as a key figure in the fight over Duke’s $1.2-billion estate.

Her January affidavit alleging that the tobacco heiress “did not die of natural causes” set off official investigations on both coasts, one just this week resulting in the removal of Duke’s former butler and a major New York bank as co-executors of the estate.

But the bitter fight over the Duke fortune also turned a spotlight on the nurse, as teams of private detectives began following her--and in March discovered her trying to sell statues, necklaces and other items at Beverly Hills jewelry stores.

Until then, authorities were unaware that such valuables were missing from Payette’s patients. “When people are in the process of dying,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Donnelly, “the last thing on their family’s mind is a piece of property.”

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Payette was first arrested March 31 outside a jewelry store on Rodeo Drive, but merely on suspicion of stealing from one patient, and was released on $20,000 bail. In interviews at the time, she admitted to The Times that she had stolen some ivory statues and other items as a “nervous reaction.” She added, “I was under a lot of stress.”

On Wednesday, however, she was rearrested as she showed up for what was expected to be a routine arraignment--and hit with charges that represented a vast expansion of the case against her.

She now faces more than eight years in prison if convicted of stealing from Duke and five others, including Factor, in whose Beverly Hills home she began working just days after the heiress died.

Payette’s attorney, Curt Livesay, suggested that the trauma over Duke’s death had driven the nurse to “classic self-destructive behavior.” Livesay called her a victim of the high-stakes battle over the Duke estate. “This is a prime example of the very extreme high price you pay for doing what’s right,” he said. “It all gets turned against you.”

But attorneys for those Payette accused of wrongdoing--Duke’s doctor and her former butler, Bernard Lafferty--are certain to use the theft case to try to discredit Payette’s allegation that the 80-year-old billionaire was killed with drugs on Oct. 28, 1993, in her Benedict Canyon home.

“The arrest of Tammy Payette for stealing from Doris Duke and others confirms our belief that she lied,” said Howard Weitzman, who represents Lafferty and the estate.

Combatants on both sides agreed on one point, though--that it was amazing, in retrospect, that Payette let herself become a central figure in the Duke dispute, given all she apparently had to lose.

“Without Tammy Payette, we wouldn’t be here today,” said Burbank private detective Robert Frasco, whose firm investigated her on behalf of Duke’s physician, Dr. Charles Kivowitz. “She put herself in a tough position.”

Payette, who grew up in Massachusetts, settled in Los Angeles after her 1991 discharge from the Navy. After working at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she signed up with the elite Saratoga Nursing Registry, which provides private duty care.

Tony Assinesi, the director of the registry, said he found the slender, dark-haired Payette “a hell of a nurse,” who passed an exam he gives “A-No. 1.”

“For 31 years, I’ve taken care of all the rich and famous,” he said. “There’s never been one dime missing.”

Assinesi said he was shocked when Payette was arrested because her patients had never complained--perhaps, he speculated, because such people “don’t want anyone to know their business.”

Such was the case with the reclusive Duke, who came home from the hospital after a stroke on Sept. 20, 1993. Payette was among the team of Saratoga nurses assigned to care for her until her death weeks later.

Though Duke’s will raised a few eyebrows when it was revealed that she had named her former butler as her executor, more than a year passed before the heiress’s death was embroiled in controversy--and Payette went on to other cases with hardly a notice.

But according to memos prepared by the law firm representing the Duke estate, an unsettled Payette began calling the firm last December to report that she was being pressured to help a New York attorney suing the estate on behalf of three former Duke employees. According to the memos, Payette said the attorney threatened that there was going to be “a big murder trial” and that she risked “going to jail.”

The attorney, Ray Dowd, insisted Wednesday that he never pressured Payette to make any allegations about Duke’s death. “Immediately, she said Duke did not die of natural causes,” he said.

Filed on Jan. 20, the nurse’s affidavit alleged that Duke arrived home from the hospital “in good, stable condition” and that her death was caused by morphine.

Los Angeles police quickly put the Robbery-Homicide Division on the case and Manhattan Surrogate Judge Eve M. Preminger, who was hearing challenges to the Duke will, appointed a former Manhattan district attorney to investigate.

And in Los Angeles, Frasco’s private detective firm was hired to investigate the nurse herself on behalf of Dr. Kivowitz. “We started looking into other patients she had cared for,” Frasco said.

An unexpected lead surfaced when his investigators contacted the personal business manager of 90-year-old Factor, who had built up the cosmetics company founded by his father--and who was cared for by Payette from Nov. 1, 1993, to Jan. 15, 1994.

Business manager Duny Cashion said “things became missing” while Payette and other nurses were in the home. Among them were platinum and diamond cuff links and a gold watch.

In an interview with The Times, Cashion said he did not make an issue of the losses because he did not want to disturb Factor’s care by accusing the nurses. “I was afraid they’d all quit,” he said.

But the tip proved fertile for the private detectives, Frasco said, especially when they “followed [Payette] to a couple of jewelry stores,” where she had placed items for sale on consignment.

It was in front of one such store, on Rodeo Drive, that she was arrested on March 31.

Payette told The Times the arrest had been “very humiliating,” but admitted taking items from at least one patient as “a nervous reaction. . . . They were so wealthy . . . I thought they weren’t going to miss it,” she said.

Donnelly said police have since gotten the cooperation of jewelers and pawn shop operators to compile a list of items missing from the six Payette patients “conservatively estimated” as worth $439,000.

Many have been returned to the owners, but “a quantity” remain unidentified and the detectives are still looking for patients they may have come from, he said.

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Police did not say how much Payette got from the sales, but the nurse told the Times, “It wasn’t like something you could live on.”

Livesay, her lawyer, said Payette’s state of mind may play a role in her defense. “I think it will be fairly easy to see what happened to this young lady once she was in the crunch of all these special interests [in the Duke dispute],” he said. “She’s now paying the price for blowing the whistle.”

Ironically, Payette found herself back in jail two days after an investigation she set off toppled the executors of the Duke estate.

The investigator appointed in New York, Richard Kuh, wound up investigating not only the circumstances of Duke’s death, but also the spending habits of Lafferty. And that part of his report prompted Judge Preminger on Monday to replace Lafferty and U.S. Trust Co. of New York.