For the moribund gangster who confessed to stealing the iconic ruby slippers worn in “The Wizard of Oz,” there is no better place than home after he was spared a prison sentence on Monday.
Terry John Martin, 76, faced a Minnesota judge and was sentenced to prison for a brutal 2005 robbery. In this heist, a reformed thief comes out of retirement to break into the Judy Garland Museum on the Grand and score “one last point.” Take a quick swipe at the sparkly red shoes the actress wore while playing Dorothy.
Martin, who was ill, remained stone-faced as the judge handed down his sentence and was physically unable to fully rise from his chair at the end of the hearing.
His lawyer, Dane Decray, said the resolution of the case should bring some closure to the government, the museum, the collector who owns the famous shoe and Martin himself.
“They will never fully recover from this case,” DeCray said of the victims. “But they are healthier than they have been in the last 18 years.”
Martin is in hospice care and is expected to die within the next few months. He also requires continuous oxygen therapy due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schultz accepted the prosecution and defense’s recommendation that Martin be sentenced to life in prison because of his failing health.
During sentencing, the judge told the defendant, over the sound of an oxygen machine, that if it were still 2005, he probably would have sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
As part of the sentence, Martin will be required to pay $23,500 in restitution to the museum at a rate of $300 per month.
“We certainly don’t want to downplay the seriousness of Mr. Martin’s crimes,” Schultz said. “Mr. Martin stole and intended to destroy an irreplaceable part of American culture.”
Martin’s lawyers wrote in a court memo ahead of the verdict that the whole outrage hinged on a misunderstanding about the value of movie props.
Martin left a life of crime in the late 1990s to live as a law-abiding citizen, but in 2005 he was approached by a former associate with ties to the mob and asked to buy the ruby shoes worn by Garland in the 1939 classic. He was taught to wear slippers. It needed to be adorned with real jewelry to justify its $1 million insurance value.
“At first, Terry declined the invitation to take part in the heist. But old habits die hard, and thinking about the ‘final score’ kept him up at night,” Decray wrote in his notes. “After much consideration, Terry decided to relapse into crime and participate in the theft.”
Until last year, Martin was not charged with stealing the shoes, which were encrusted with sequins and glass beads.
Prosecutor Matthew Greenlee said in court Monday that investigators used phone records to zero in on Martin and searched his home to obtain his wife’s immigration status to coerce Martin into confessing to the robbery. He said he used it.
In October 2023, he pleaded guilty to major art theft and admitted using a hammer to break the museum door and display case glass to remove the slippers.
Martin said at a hearing in October that he wanted to remove what he believed to be real rubies from the shoes and sell them. However, a stolen goods dealer known as Fence tells him that the jewelry is not real.
Martin disposed of the stolen slippers less than 48 hours after he took possession of them.
Her lawyer said Martin had no idea about the cultural significance of the ruby slipper and had never seen The Wizard of Oz.
Rather, the memo claims, “old Terry,” with a lifelong history of robbery and receiving stolen property, defeated “new Terry,” who became a “contributor to society” after his release in 1996. There is.
After learning that the rubies on the shoe were fake, Martin gave the shoe to a former colleague and said he never wanted to see it again, Decray wrote.
The FBI recovered the shoes during a sting operation in Minneapolis in 2018. The agency was approached by someone willing to help track down the stolen items in exchange for a $200,000 reward for its safe return.
Martin has declined to identify his accomplices, and no one else has been charged with the theft.
Federal prosecutors estimated the slippers’ street value at about $3.5 million.
In this beloved film, Garland’s Dorothy had to click her ruby slipper heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home” to get back to Kansas from Oz.
Although she wore several pairs of shoes during filming, only four pairs of real shoes are known to exist.
Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw had lent a pair to a museum in Garland’s hometown before Martin stole them. His other three are held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and private collectors.
John Kelsch, founding director of the Judy Garland Museum, said the slippers were returned to the show and are now in storage at the auction house, where they plan to sell them after a promotional tour.
with post wire
