Ex-Mobster who stole Judy Garland’s “Wizard of Oz” slippers avoids more jail time!
A dying former mobster who stole Judy Garland’s red slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” will not serve any more prison time for the theft.
Terry Jon Martin, 76, was sentenced Monday to time served for the 2005 theft. Martin departed the courtroom as a free man.
In October, Martin pleaded guilty. As part of his plea deal, both prosecuting and defense attorneys recommended he spend no further time behind bars.
Martin has been in hospice care at his home and is expected to die within six months. He requires constant oxygen therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In 2005, Martin broke into the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minn. He smashed open a glass door with a hammer and used the same hammer to break the case displaying the red slippers.
(Photo) Ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” are displayed at a news conference on Sept. 4, 2018, at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, Minn.
In court documents, Martin’s attorneys said that he’d been out of the mob life for about 10 years when an old acquaintance enticed him to try for “one last score” by convincing him the shoes had real rubies in them.
But two days after the theft, Martin met another associate who informed him that there were no real rubies in the shoes. They were just sequins and glass beads. Martin gave the slippers to the old mob acquaintance and went back to his reformed life.
The FBI recovered the shoes in a sting operation in 2018 after someone attempted to claim the insurance on them. None of the other parties in the case has ever been publicly identified.
Garland wore numerous pairs of ruby red slippers for her role as Dorothy in the seminal 1939 film. Only four pairs are known to have survived more than 80 years later. The other three are owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a private collector.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/29/judy-garland-slippers-thief-sentencing/-
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