Man indicted for theft of Wizard of Oz ruby slippers 18 years after museum heist

John Kelsch still vividly remembers when the ruby ​​red slippers were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., nearly two decades ago.

It was a Sunday morning in 2005. He had just hopped out of the shower when the woman who worked at the museum’s admission desk, Kathe Johnson, called him and said: “He’s gone.”

“I know exactly what he means,” said Kelsch, the museum’s founding curator and director As it happens hosted by Nil Koksal.

“My heart was racing. Adrenaline kicked in. I drove like almost 90 miles an hour to the museum. I was there, like two minutes. Then Kathy showed me the crime scene.”

The emergency exit door was knocked down. Glass is scattered throughout the museum floor where the slippers – one of four pairs worn by Garland in 1939. Wizard of Oz – they disappeared. A single sequin remains on the ground in the middle of the fragment.

“It feels like a violation of our museum,” Kelsch said. “Everyone was just crushed.”

But now – 18 years after the slippers disappeared, and five years after they were recovered in an FBI sting – a man has been charged for the crime that haunts Kelsch’s memory.

Terry Martin, 71, was charged Tuesday with one count of theft of a major artwork, prosecutors announced Wednesday. The indictment did not provide further information about Martin, and online records do not list an attorney for him.

Terry Van Horn, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice in North Dakota, said he could not provide information beyond what was included in the one-paragraph-indictment.

When reached for comment by the Minneapolis Star-Tribunethe accused said, “I have to be tried. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Janie Heitz, the museum’s executive director, told The Associated Press that museum staff are “speechless” because someone has been charged so far.

A dive team, a big bounty and an FBI sting

The search for the famous sequined ruby ​​sandals has had many ups and downs over the years, garnering international attention and the interest of documentary filmmakers.

And the longer they remain unaccounted for, the more valuable they become.

When it was stolen, the sandals were insured for $1 million. But its current market value is about $3.5 million, federal prosecutors said in a news release.

Law enforcement offered a reward of $250,000 US for information about the slippers at the beginning of the case, and an anonymous donor from Arizona provided $1 million in 2015.

Meanwhile, rumors swirled in Grand Rapids, Kelsch said. Some people think that some local teenagers are responsible for the smash-and-grab, and they will throw their good shoes in the well of the iron ore mine.

In 2015, dive crews search the lake which is formed in an abandoned mine pit, it is useless.

Others, Kelsch said, thought it was an inside job.

“They mistakenly believe that the museum collects insurance money, which is not true,” he said.

At the time of the theft, the slippers were on loan from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who received an insurance payout seven years after the theft, according to the museum.

A big break in this case happened in 2017, when a tipster contacted the shoe insurance company in 2017 and said he could help to get it back. After nearly a year of investigation, the FBI seized the shoes in a sting operation in Minneapolis in July 2018.

Kelsch said none of this would have been possible without local police officers — especially Det. Brian Mattson, who coordinated with the FBI on the investigation – never gave up on the case.

The exact details of what happened are not yet clear.

“I’m sure the FBI has a lot more to reveal, so the book can’t be written yet,” Kelsch said, adding that he, in fact, plans to write the book himself.

WATCH | A 1965 interview with Judy Garland:

The stolen shoes, as Kelsch knows, are still with the FBI. But once the legal case is over, he thinks he should go home to the museum.

After all, Garland grew up in Grand Rapids, he said, and “there’s no place like hometown.”

“We will go on record as making an all-out fight to get to Minnesota,” said Kelsch, before explaining with a laugh: “I don’t know if it will be a fight. We will make a continuous effort to see if we can have him as part of the state’s heritage.” us.”