Terry Jon Martin was lured into stealing Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz, thinking they were adorned with real jewels, attorney says.
Reformed mobster went after ‘one last score’ when he stole Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from ‘Oz’
The aging reformed mobster who has admitted stealing a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in « The Wizard of Oz » gave into the temptation of « one last score » after an old mob associate led him to believe the famous shoes must be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value.
Terry Jon Martin’s defense attorney finally revealed the 76-year-old’s motive for the 2005 theft from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in a new memo filed ahead of his Jan. 29 sentencing in Duluth, Minnesota.
The FBI recovered the shoes in 2018 when someone else tried to claim an insurance reward on them, but Martin wasn’t charged with stealing them until last year.
Martin pleaded guilty in October to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum door and display case to take the slippers. He had hoped to harvest real rubies from the shoes and sell them. But a fence, a person who deals in stolen goods, informed him the rubies were glass and Martin got rid of the slippers less than two days after he took them, he said.
Defense attorney Dane DeKrey said in his memo that an unidentified former mob associate tempted Martin to steal the shoes, even though he hadn’t committed a crime in nearly 10 years after his last prison stint.
« At first, Terry declined the invitation to participate in the heist. But old habits die hard, and the thought of a ‘final score’ kept him up at night, » DeKrey wrote. « After much contemplation, Terry had a criminal relapse and decided to participate in the theft.
