A federal grand jury has indicted a man for thieving a pair of ruby slippers used in the filming of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. Deadline reports that Terry Martin is accused of stealing the iconic footwear from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005.
The indictment charges Martin, whose age and hometown were not disclosed, with one count of stealing a major artwork — specifically “theft of an object of cultural heritage from the care, custody, or control of a museum.”
Government officials reportedly searched for the slippers for 13 years before recovering them in a sting operation run by the FBI and the Grand Rapids Police Department in July 2018. According to the Justice Department, the slippers were insured for $1 million at the time of their theft, but a recent fair-market appraisal values them at $3.5 million.
The slippers in question are one of four remaining pairs worn by Judy Garland during filming. At least two of the existing pairs are owned by private collectors — one of which is on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC. In 2012, Leonardo DiCaprio led a group of donors in purchasing a separate pair for display at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
By far the craziest part of this story has to be the sting operation, right? Exactly how did that go down? Sure, someone from the FBI probably posed as a potential buyer, but what if the agency established a massive years-long roleplay scenario where Martin thought he actually was in the land of Oz and had to wear the slippers as part of the act? We picture FBI helicopters decked out as flying monkeys and Grand Rapids cops representing the Lollipop Guild. It’s a real shame that judges don’t preside over grand juries, because that’s half of the Wicked Witch’s outfit right there.