A man charged with the museum heist of a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz was expected to change his plea to guilty in court, pulling back the curtain on a mystery dating back 18 years.
Terry Jon Martin, 76, was indicted in May on one count of theft of a major artwork.
The shoes from the film were stolen in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in the actress’ hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and recovered in 2018 by the FBI.
Photo: AP
No one was arrested in the case until Martin, who lives near Grand Rapids, was charged earlier this year. Martin’s attorney, Dane DeKrey, said that his client, who is in poor health, has been cooperative with authorities.
“I think Terry is facing his own mortality and I think when people are reaching that point in their life, they cut through the pleasantries and talk turkey,” DeKrey said in an interview ahead of a hearing scheduled for yesterday.
The one-page indictment gave no details of the path that led investigators to Martin, who has a 1988 conviction for receiving stolen goods on his record and is free on his own recognizance.
Much of the government’s evidence has been covered by a protective order prohibiting its public disclosure.
Garland wore several pairs of ruby slippers during filming of the classic 1939 musical, but only four authentic pairs are known to remain. The slippers were insured for US$1 million, but federal prosecutors put the current market value at about US$3.5 million when they announced the indictment.
The FBI said that a man approached the insurer in 2017 and said he could help get them back.
The slippers were recovered in an FBI art crime team sting operation in Minneapolis. They remained in the bureau’s custody.
The plea agreement was “fulsomely negotiated” between DeKrey and federal prosecutor Matt Greenley and would lay out the “factual basis” for his client’s guilty plea, DeKrey said.
DeKrey said that he expects US District Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief federal judge for Minnesota, to set a sentencing date about three months away.
He declined to say what the two sides are recommending for a sentence, but added that the nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines have recommended 10 to 12 years in similar cases.
DeKrey said he was grateful that Schiltz agreed to hold the hearing in Duluth instead of making Martin travel to the Twin Cities.
“My client is a sick man. He’s going to be on oxygen and he’s going to be in a wheelchair,” DeKrey said.
The slippers in question were on loan to the museum from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw when someone climbed through a window and broke the display case.
Three other pairs that Garland wore in the movie are held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a private collector.
Several rewards were offered over the years in hopes of cracking the mystery.
An anonymous donor from Arizona put up US$1 million in 2015.
The ruby slippers were key props in the 1939 movie. Following a mysterious landing in the colorful Land of Oz after a tornado hits her farm in Kansas, Garland’s character, Dorothy, has to click the heels of her slippers three times and say “there’s no place like home” to return.
The slippers are made from about a dozen different materials, including 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.
Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922. She lived in Grand Rapids, about 320km north of Minneapolis, until she was four, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She died of a barbiturate overdose in 1969.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS