A dying thief who confessed to stealing a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard Of Oz because he wanted to pull off “one last score” avoided prison at his sentencing hearing on Monday.

Terry Jon Martin, 76, stole the slippers in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actress’s home town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

He gave into temptation after an old mob associate told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their one million-dollar insured value, his lawyer revealed in a memo to the federal court ahead of his sentencing in Duluth.

The FBI recovered the shoes in 2018 when someone else tried to claim a reward. Martin was not charged with stealing them until last year.

He pleaded guilty in October to theft of a major artwork, admitting to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum door and display case to take the slippers.

But his motivation remained mostly a mystery until defence lawyer Dane DeKrey revealed it this month.

Martin, who lives near Grand Rapids, said at the October hearing that he hoped to remove what he thought were real rubies from the shoes and sell them.

But a person who deals in stolen goods, known as a fence, informed him the rubies were glass, Martin said. So he got rid of the slippers.

Mr DeKrey wrote in his memo that Martin’s unidentified former mob associate persuaded him to steal the slippers as “one last score”, even though Martin had seemed to have “finally put his demons to rest” after finishing his last prison term nearly 10 years ago.