'No place like home': Dying mobster who stole 'Wizard of Oz' ruby slippers won't go to prison

A mobster on his death bed will not spend any time in prison for his theft nearly two decades ago of the iconic ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the famous 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

Terry Jon Martin, 76, confessed in October to stealing the shoes from the Judy Garland Museum in the actress' hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005. He claimed he had no knowledge of the slippers' cinematic significance at the time of the theft.

Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz handed down the unusually light sentence on Monday in a federal courtroom in Duluth, a Minnesota city on the Great Lakes.

Federal guidelines recommended a sentence of 4 1/2 years to 6 years and a prosecution filing asked Martin to pay $23,500 to the museum.

"We are elated with how it concluded," said Martin's attorney Dane DeKrey.

DeKrey said the "driving influence" of the light sentence was the fact that Martin is in hospice care and receives constant oxygen therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.

"He accepted our proposed reduction to account for his health," DeKrey said.

More:How Judy Garland's ruby slippers from 'The Wizard of Oz' were recovered after 13 years

Terry Jon Martin hadn't seen 'The Wizard of Oz'

When an old criminal associate first tipped Martin off that the shoes were on display not far from where he lived, Martin was hesitant, according to a memo written by his attorneys. After a life spent in and out of prison, Martin felt he "had finally put his demons to rest." But in the end, he couldn't resist the allure of the glittering rubies attached to the slippers and the "handsome price" they would command on the black market.

Martin had no idea of the slippers' value in Hollywood history terms – he hadn't even seen the movie. Nor did he know that the gemstones attached to the slippers were replicas and virtually worthless on their own.

The museum, Martin said his associate told him, "leaked like a sieve," and Martin easily stole the slippers in August of that year by breaking a hole in a window before breaking the plexiglass that surrounded the slippers.

The slippers were in Martin's possession for less than two days before he learned that the rubies were fake. Infuriated, he gave them to his associate for no pay and swore off crime again, according to the memo.

The slippers were not returned to the museum until 2018, when they were recovered in an FBI sting operation at the end of a year-long investigation. Unbeknownst to Martin, the slippers were insured for $1 million and were appraised at $3.5 million for their value as "among the most recognizable memorabilia in American film history," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of North Dakota.

After their recovery, the slippers were taken to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where experts identified them as the "traveling pair," one of four known pairs of ruby slippers worn by Garland during the filming. They were first loaned to the Judy Garland Museum by Hollywood collector Michael Shaw.

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'There's no place like home'

The ruby slippers earned their timelessness from the iconic moment in the film when Garland, playing the character Dorothy Gale, clicks her heels together three times and repeats, "There's no place like home."

In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum that inspired the movie, Dorothy's slippers are silver. Film costumers decided to reimagine them as ruby red so the color would pop against the "yellow brick road," according to the Smithsonian Institution.

Born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922, Garland acted in her first film at age 13. Her starring role in "The Wizard of Oz" as the Kansas farm girl swept away by a tornado to the magical land of Oz shot her to stardom and won her a special Oscar the next year. She died in 1969 at age 47 over an overdose after a battle with substance abuse.

Contributing: Associated Press

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at cmayesosterman@usatoday.com. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.