A Minnesota man pleaded responsible to stealing the well-known pink ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland’s character Dorothy Gale within the 1939 movie Wizard of Oz from the actress’s namesake museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
Terry Jon Martin pulled off the heist in 2005, leaving a decade-long thriller in his wake. After a person approached the insurer of the slippers with inside details about their whereabouts, the sneakers had been recovered by the FBI artwork crime crew in a sting operation in 2018. A one-page indictment made public by the District Court docket in Duluth, Minnesota, accommodates no particulars of the federal government company’s highway to figuring out Martin because the thief. Nobody had been charged for the crime till earlier this yr.
Solely 4 genuine pairs of ruby slippers stay from the unique film set; the pair on mortgage to the Judy Garland Museum was initially insured for $1m, however is valued within the present market at about $3.5m, based on the prosecution. The three different pairs are at the moment within the possession of a non-public collector, the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences and the Smithsonian Museum of American Historical past.
“I feel Terry is going through his personal mortality, and I feel when individuals are reaching that time of their life, they minimize via the pleasantries and discuss turkey,” Martin’s lawyer, Dane DeKrey, instructed the Related Press.
On the time of the theft, the ruby slippers had been on mortgage to the Judy Garland Museum from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw. The thief climbed via the window and broke the show case holding them. A number of rewards had been provided in alternate for his or her protected return, together with an nameless $1m by an Arizonan donor. The slippers are constituted of wooden pulp, silk thread, gelatin, plastic and glass, and are lined with ruby sequins. The bows of the sneakers are constituted of pink glass beads.
The Judy Garland Museum was opened in 1975 within the actress’s childhood residence. It homes the world’s largest collections of Garland and Wizard of Oz memorabilia.
The chief federal decide for Minnesota, US District Decide Patrick Schiltz, didn’t set a sentencing date. Federal sentencing tips have beforehand really useful eight to 10 years in circumstances like this one, based on DeKrey.
Martin, described as a “sick man” by Dekrey, was seen arriving on the courthouse in a wheelchair, carrying an oxygen masks. The decide agreed to carry the listening to in Duluth so Martin didn’t need to journey to Minneapolis in his situation.
