A man has been implicated in the nearly two-decade-old case of the theft of the iconic ruby red slippers famously donned by Judy Garland in her role as Dorothy in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” The slippers had been stolen from a museum in Minnesota.
Terry Jon Martin has been indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday on a single count of theft of a significant artwork. He is accused of pilfering “an object of cultural heritage” from a museum’s care, as detailed in court documents filed in the US District Court of Minnesota. According to the same documents, the slippers’ value is estimated to be no less than $100,000.
In an incident in August 2005, it was reported that a perpetrator broke into the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The thief shattered a glass display case and absconded with the precious slippers. Despite a lone sequin from one of the slippers being the only evidence, investigators were undeterred.
A significant advancement in the case happened 13 years later when officials retrieved the stolen slippers during a covert operation in Minneapolis. No arrests were made during the procedure.
Before the theft, the slippers were insured for $1 million. However, in a recent press release, the United States Attorney’s Office, District of North Dakota, estimated the current value to be around $3.5 million.
The ruby slippers are significant in American film history as one of the most iconic movie memorabilia. These slippers, as shown in the film, were gifted to Dorothy by Glinda the Good Witch. Creating these unique slippers involved MGM’s chief designer Gilbert Adrian dying a pair of red pumps and adorning them with sequins.
It remains unclear how many ruby slippers Garland used during the movie’s filming, but the stolen pair was among the four known surviving ones.
In 2000, one pair of these slippers fetched a staggering $666,000 at an auction. Another pair is displayed at the newly inaugurated Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA. The museum’s collections curator, Nathalie Morris, stated last year to CNN that their pair was labelled as number seven, indicating that at least seven pairs existed at once.
In the meantime, the National Museum of American History’s conservators have spent over a year figuring out how to prevent the sequins on their pair, which consists of mismatched shoes labelled “#1 Judy Garland” and “#6 Judy Garland,” from losing their shine.
This case of the stolen ruby slippers has added another intriguing chapter to the storied history of one of cinema’s most enduring symbols. Terry Jon Martin now awaits his day in court as film enthusiasts worldwide look on, eager to see justice served in this long-standing mystery. In the meantime, the iconic shoes continue to fascinate fans, their crimson sequins carrying the magic of the movies, the nostalgia of a bygone era, and the echo of a wish: “There’s no place like home.”
