In Duluth, Minnesota, a dying thief who confessed to stealing a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz” was given no prison time at his sentencing hearing.
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00:00 [PAPER RUSTLING]
00:12 This was a sentencing hearing for Terry Martin, the dying
00:17 thief who recently confessed that he was the person who
00:20 stole a pair of ruby slippers that were used in the movie
00:24 The Wizard of Oz from a museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota
00:28 in 2005.
00:30 Martin was brought into the courthouse in Duluth,
00:34 Minnesota in a wheelchair.
00:35 He requires oxygen for his chronic obstructive pulmonary
00:39 disease.
00:40 And his attorneys say that he has only a few months
00:42 left to live.
00:44 As a result, he didn't display a lot of emotion in the courtroom.
00:50 He was wearing a surgical mask and sat quietly in his chair.
00:55 Martin was sentenced to time served,
00:57 which is minimal at this point.
00:59 He confessed-- he changed his plea to guilty back in October.
01:05 And he's been free on his own recognizance since then.
01:11 And under the terms of the plea agreement,
01:14 which Judge Patrick Schultz accepted,
01:18 Martin was going back to his home in Grand Rapids
01:22 to live out the rest of his life.
01:24 The whereabouts of the slippers had been a mystery
01:27 until 2018 when the FBI revealed that it had recovered them
01:31 in a sting operation.
01:33 The FBI never revealed many details
01:35 on how it recovered the slippers.
01:37 But according to the museum's founding director,
01:40 they're back in the hands of the collector who had originally
01:43 loaned them to the museum.
01:44 And the collector is now preparing
01:48 to have them auctioned off and to take them
01:50 on a promotional tour before the sale in about a year.
01:54 Defense attorney Dane DeCray said in court
01:57 that this resolution to the case brings a certain amount
02:00 of closure to all sides, however imperfect.
02:03 He says it brings closure to the government
02:06 because they've now been able to hold one person accountable
02:09 for this crime.
02:10 He says that it brings some closure to the museum
02:14 and to the owner of the slippers because they now
02:16 know what happened and they got the slippers back.
02:20 And he says it brings a certain amount of closure
02:22 to Mr. Martin as well.
02:24 He says that's because Martin gets to close out
02:26 this last chapter in his life and he can die
02:30 with out taking the secret to his grave.