A grand jury in North Dakota indicted a man for allegedly stealing the iconic red slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic, “The Wizard of Oz.”
Minnesota resident Terry Martin was indicted Tuesday on one count of theft of a major artwork, federal prosecutors said.
Per the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Martin is 76 and lives approximately 12 miles south of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
The slippers – of which only four authentic pairs remain – were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown when someone climbed through a window in 2005 and broke the display case, prosecutors said. At the time, the slippers were insured for $1 million, but the current market value is about $3.5 million.
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FILE: A pair of ruby slippers once worn by actress Judy Garland in the “The Wizard of Oz” sit on display at a news conference on Sept. 4, 2018, at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, Minn. (AP Photo/Jeff Baenen)
Over the years, several rewards were offered in hopes that the slippers would turn up. Law enforcement offered $250,000 early in the case, and an anonymous donor from Arizona put up $1 million in 2015.
The road to the missing slippers being found began when a man told the shoes’ insurer he could help get them back. After a nearly year-long investigation, the FBI nabbed the shoes in Minneapolis in July 2018. At the time, the bureau said no one had been arrested or charged in the case.
Federal prosecutors said a man was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday, May 16, 2023, on charges of stealing a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP, File)
On Wednesday, a summons was issued for Martin. An initial court appearance was set for June 1, and it will be via video. The indictment did not provide any further information about Martin, and online records do not list an attorney for him.
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The shoes are famously associated with one of the iconic lines in “The Wizard of Oz,” as Garland’s character Dorothy clicks her heels and repeats the phrase, “There’s no place like home.” They are made from wood pulp, silk thread, gelatin, plastic and glass. Most of the ruby color comes from sequins, but the bows of the shoes contain red glass beads.
Judy Garland as Dorothy and Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow in the MGM film ‘The Wizard of Oz’, 1939. (Photo by MGM Studios/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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The three other pairs Garland wore in the movie were held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian and a private collector. When the other pair were stolen, the slippers were on loan from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who received an insurance payment seven years after the theft, according to the museum’s director.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
