A person has been charged with stealing a pair of ruby purple 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 had been stolen.
A grand jury indicted Terry Martin on Tuesday with one depend of theft of a serious art work, federal prosecutors in North Dakota introduced on Wednesday.
The indictment alleges that in 2005, Martin stole an genuine pair of sneakers that Garland’s character, Dorothy, wore within the 1939 movie.
They had been taken from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the late actress’s hometown.
The sneakers are considered one of 4 remaining pairs of purple slippers Garland wore within the film.
They are famously related to one of many iconic traces 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 information launch that when the slippers had been stolen they had been insured for $1m (£800,000) however the present market worth is about $3.5m (£2.8m).
Read extra:
Harry and Meghan’s taxi driver throughout paparazzi ‘chase’ speaks out
What Prince Harry has beforehand stated concerning the paparazzi
Cannes kicks off with big standing ovation for Johnny Depp
The slippers had been on mortgage to the Judy Garland Museum when somebody climbed via a window and broke the show case, prosecutors stated once they had 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 had been “a little bit speechless” somebody had been charged almost twenty years after the slippers had been stolen.
Source: information.sky.com”