A man has been charged in the US with stealing a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
Terry Martin was indicted by a grand jury with one count of theft of a major artwork, prosecutors in North Dakota announced.
The shoes were stolen in 2005 and recovered by a 2018 FBI sting operation, but no arrests were made at the time.
Garland wore several pairs of the ruby slippers during production of the 1939 musical, but only four authentic pairs remain. When they were stolen, the slippers were insured for $1 million but the current market value is about $3.5 million, federal prosecutors said in a news release.
The slippers were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when someone climbed through a window and broke the display case, prosecutors said when they were recovered.
Several rewards had been offered in hopes that the slippers would turn up. Law enforcement offered $250,000 early in the case, and an anonymous donor from Arizona put up $1 million in 2015.
The road to the missing slippers began when a man told the shoes’ insurer in 2017 that he could help get them back. After a near year-long investigation, the FBI recovered the shoes in Minneapolis in July 2018.
An initial court appearance has been set for June 1.
