Man charged with stealing The Wizard of Oz ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland

A person has been charged with stealing a pair of ruby pink slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard Of Oz.

The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018 in a sting operation – 13 years after they have been stolen.

A grand jury indicted Terry Martin on Tuesday with one rely of theft of a significant paintings, federal prosecutors in North Dakota introduced on Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that in 2005, Martin stole an genuine pair of footwear that Garland’s character, Dorothy, wore within the 1939 movie.

They have been taken from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the late actress’s hometown.

The footwear are one among 4 remaining pairs of pink slippers Garland wore within the film.

They are famously related to one of many iconic strains within the musical. When Garland’s character Dorothy clicks her heels and repeats the phrase, “There’s no place like home”, she is transported again to Kansas.

Federal prosecutors stated in a news launch that when the slippers have been stolen they have been insured for $1m (£800,000) however the present market worth is about $3.5m (£2.8m).

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The slippers have been on mortgage to the Judy Garland Museum when somebody climbed via a window and broke the show case, prosecutors stated after they have been recovered in 2018.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Martin is 76 and lives 12 miles south of the museum.

He informed the newspaper: “I gotta go on trial. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Janie Heitz, government director of the museum, stated she and workers have been “a little bit speechless” somebody had been charged almost twenty years after the slippers have been stolen.