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Housekeeping thief to the stars Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz pled guilty today to stealing from celebrity clients Robert DeNiro and Candice Bergen. As it turns out, however, this wasn't merely a matter of a sterling silver dessert fork here, a finger or two of single malt scotch there. No, this kleptomaniacal cleaning woman will go down as one of the great criminal domestics of her time:

Turyk-Wawrynowicz said, through a Polish interpreter, that she stole a pair of diamond earrings belonging to De Niro s wife, Grace Hightower. The prosecutor, Anne Schwartz, said the earrings were worth $95,500. [...]


Detective Richard Kenny, lead investigator on the case, said he would return property to the housekeeper s victims immediately. These items include Hightower s earrings and shoes, Bergen s leather jacket and cameras, and other items.

In her guilty plea to forgery, Turyk-Wawrynowicz said she had used a stolen credit card to buy items at Barney s, the luxury clothing store on Madison Avenue, and had signed the card owner s name.

Schwartz said the housekeeper visited Barney s on three separate days and made a total of 18 purchases.

Turyk-Wawrynowicz also admitted to the judge that she stole the identity of a now-13-year-old girl. Schwartz said the defendant used the girl s Social Security number to obtain residency and work papers that she should not have gotten as an illegal alien.

We imagine it's difficult to conduct an employment interview with someone who only speaks Polish, and thus, perhaps the stars did not vet Turyk-Wawrynowicz as properly as they should have. Still, anyone hiring a cleaning woman should consider it an immediate red flag if a middle-aged Eastern European woman arrives at your door in head-to-toe Prada, earlobes elongated by the weight of their 7-carat diamond earrings, only to fill out the name and age sections of the start paperwork as "Ashley Peterson, Age 11" with a glittery American Idol pen.