The Thief Believed that the Legendary Slippers were Adorned with Real Rubies

On August 7, 2005, at present 76-year-old Terry Martin undertook a theft at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He stole an exhibit displayed there – the ruby-covered slippers famous from the movie “The Wizard of Oz (1939).” Initially, he believed the stones were real and intended to remove them from the slippers to sell.

However, upon learning that the rubies were fake, he handed the shoes over to the man who had coerced him into the theft. Now, regretting his actions and considering his health condition, he was sentenced to one year of supervised release in Duluth, Minnesota, and ordered to pay $23,500 as restitution to the museum.

The slippers, one of the four surviving pairs from the film’s production, were eventually recovered by FBI agents in an operation on July 10, 2018, in Minneapolis. They were in the possession of a group of individuals with whom Terry Martin did not cooperate, contributing to his non-incarceration.