A dying thief who confessed to stealing ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz” is expected to stay out of prison after he’s sentenced
A dying thief who confessed to stealing a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz” because he wanted to pull off “one last score” is expected to stay out of prison after he’s sentenced Monday.
Terry Jon Martin, 76, stole the slippers in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He gave into temptation after an old mob associate told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value, his attorney revealed in a memo to the federal court ahead of his sentencing in Duluth.
The FBI recovered the shoes in 2018 when someone else tried to claim a reward. Martin wasn’t charged with stealing them until last year.
He pleaded guilty in October to theft of a major artwork, admitting to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum door and display case to take the slippers. But his motivation remained mostly a mystery until defense attorney Dane DeKrey revealed it this month.
Martin, who lives near Grand Rapids, said at the October hearing that he hoped to remove what he thought were real rubies from the shoes and sell them. But a person who deals in stolen goods, known as a fence, informed him the rubies were glass, Martin said. So he got rid of the slippers.
He and his mob associate thought they’d use a million dollars of jems to make a movie prop? Neither of them thought that maybe the insurance valuation was due to their history? Not the brightest pair of criminals I’ve ever heard of.
Sounds like a comedy heist movie plot.
Buddy heist comedy. It writes its self:
“No Jordan, the shoes have real rubies on them. They have to because if they didn’t it would be 'false advertising. They can’t do that! Its in the Constitution.”
The awesome thing is once you have the slippers, the getaway is only a few heel claps away!
Yeah, getting in is the hard part
Has there ever been an intelligent mobster? Ever? They are famously dumb as fuck.
This dipshit should not avoid jail/prison. Fuck this guy. He was willing to deprive the world of a work of art for his greed.
What’s the point? He’s wheelchair bound, on oxygen, and dying in a few months. Just throwing more taxpayer money away
Would that be a death sentence? (Assuming you read the article:)
Do they bring him oxygen to his cell where he sits in a wheelchair and perhaps change his diapers and so on?
He’s in hospice care, which probably looks similar to some nice Nordic prisons anyway. Prison with a care team.
He had the power to leave prison all along.
