As Dorothy's ruby slippers theft trial concludes, the mystery endures

The man who admitted stealing what might be one of the world’s most famous pairs of shoes will be sentenced at the federal courthouse in Duluth Monday morning.

Nearly 20 years ago, Terry Jon Martin swiped one of four remaining pairs of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.” They were on display at the actor’s namesake museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids.

Martin’s sentencing will close one chapter of the mystery, but it leaves unresolved lingering questions about the heist. Meanwhile, the Judy Garland Museum works to move forward from an incident that tarnished its image, but continues to transfix fans of the iconic film.

The robbery

John Kelsch will never forget Aug. 28, 2005, the day he learned the slippers had been stolen. Kelsch is the founding director of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, a three-hour drive north of Minneapolis. He received an early morning call from a staff person.

“And all she said was ‘They, they’re gone.’ And I knew exactly what she meant,” Kelsch recalled.

Kelsch still serves as the curator at the museum, where he's worked for 36 years. Standing in the Judy Garland Gallery, he points out some of the museum’s prized possessions: the carriage Dorothy rode into the Emerald City in “The Wizard of Oz,” and a dress Judy Garland wore when she tested for the film.

“And here’s the original case, which bore the original ruby slippers when they were stolen in 2005,” he said, pointing toward a small, clear box on a pedestal. “It was right in the center of the gallery, with a plexiglass top, just like this.”

Someone smashed a door window to enter the museum, then broke through the case to grab the slippers. All that remained was one tiny red sequin amidst shards of glass on the floor.

“There were all kinds of theories around town, of course, right away,” Kelsch said. Many suspected an inside job. There was a $1 million insurance policy on the slippers. Kelsch himself was a suspect. So was the Hollywood collector who owned the slippers.

But for more than a decade, there was no sign of them. They had seemingly vanished.

“We’ve chased so many leads over the years, and even the ones that were false leads, you still have to track them down to show that they weren’t legitimate,” said Brian Mattson, an investigator with the Grand Rapids police department.

Mattson remembers getting a search warrant for a house, staking it out for hours, and finally approaching a man who retrieved an ornate green box from his closet and said, “‘you’re not gonna believe it.’”

Mattson opened the box. “I see red. And then I see that they’re glitter. Then I see they have these pink soles that say Made in China.” He had reached another dead end.

For years he heard rumors that a local was involved. “We heard that they’ve been burned in a bonfire, thrown in the Mississippi River.”

Divers even searched an abandoned mine pit.

Then, more than 10 years after the robbery, Mattson got a tip. Subsequently police and the FBI recovered the slippers in a sting operation, when someone tried to claim an insurance reward.

For Mattson, that was more important than catching the thief.

“I knew what they meant to the world, their cultural importance to our little town where Judy Garland was from,” Mattson said. “That’s what we all agreed was the most important, and that’s what we went after.”

The arrest

No one was arrested in the case until last year, when Terry Jon Martin, who lived just 12 miles south of the museum, was charged with the theft.

Martin had a long criminal record, with several felony convictions for burglary and assault.

“One of his convictions is for a fur coat heist in Minneapolis,” said his attorney, Dane DeKrey. “So this type of stuff that is, you know, true crime fodder."

But DeKrey says in 2005 Martin had put his past behind him, and was living quietly, and lawfully, near Grand Rapids, until an old associate — allegedly someone with connections to the mob — contacted him about the slippers.

After the robbery DeKrey says Martin contacted a ‘fence,’ someone who deals in stolen property.

"Terry’s goal was to take off the gemstones, or the rubies, that were on top of the slippers. And he thought those were real. He was told by his associate they were real. And so he was hoping for this fence not to sell the slippers as this commemorative memorabilia, but simply to sell the jewels,” said DeKrey.

When Martin realized the rubies were just costume jewelry, DeKrey said he gave them to the fence. He kept the shoes for fewer than 48 hours. Martin didn’t understand the cultural value the slippers held.

“Because Terry had no clue about anything really related to Dorothy, Judy Garland, “The Wizard of Oz,” DeKrey said. “He thought that it had been a waste of time.”

Martin is 76 now, in hospice care. DeKrey plans to ask the judge not to sentence Martin to prison, because he likely only has a few months to live. He believes Martin wants to clear his conscience.

“I don’t think he wants to go with anything on the wrong side of the ledger where he thinks I should have come clean on that,” DeKrey said of his client. “And so this is a perfect opportunity for him to do so.”

The Museum

Judy Garland Museum curator John Kelsch said he's happy the slippers have been found. But he says the mystery endures.

“Someone called me a few months ago and said, ‘Aren’t you so relieved? Now that it’s all over?’ “I said, ‘You don't understand, it’ll never be over.’”

“People are going to want to know where they were for 12 years,” explained Janie Heitz, the museum’s current director.

Mattson, the Grand Rapids detective, said some day he’d love to tell that story to the world. He said he knows many of the details, but can’t reveal them, because the case remains open. “It’s a fabulous story with all kinds of turns and twists,” he said.

Meanwhile Heitz hopes to install a professionally designed exhibit about the slipper heist at the museum.

“Because it is part of our history, and our culture now. And so, you know, at some point, you just have to embrace it.”

She said the museum took a big financial hit, and a blow to its reputation, after the theft. For years other museums and collectors didn’t want to loan them artifacts to display.

As for bringing the recovered slippers back, which the FBI now estimates are valued at several million dollars?

“I’m afraid they’re out of our league,” said Kelsch.