MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A man charged in the museum heist of a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in the “The Wizard of Oz” pleaded guilty Friday in a deal that could keep him out of prison due to his failing health, but only cleared up some of the mystery that dates back 18 years.

Terry Jon Martin, 76, pleaded guilty to a single count of theft of a major artwork. The shoes were stolen in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and recovered by the FBI in 2018.

No one was arrested until Martin, who lives near Grand Rapids, was charged this year. During his change-of-plea hearing in federal court in Duluth, Martin said he used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum door and display case to take the slippers. He said he thought the slippers had real rubies and that he had hoped to sell the gems. But when a fence told him the rubies were glass, he said he got rid of the slippers.

Martin did not say how he got rid of them or to whom he gave them, leaving the slippers’ whereabouts during the ensuing years a mystery. He did say that the theft had nothing to do with trying to get insurance money, as some have speculated.

“Terry has no idea where they were and how they were recovered,” Martin’s attorney, Dane DeKrey, said afterward. “His involvement was that two-day period in 2005.”

Under the plea agreement, DeKrey and federal prosecutor Matt Greenley recommended that Martin not face any time behind bars because of his age and poor health. Martin, who appeared in court in a wheelchair with supplemental oxygen, has advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and struggles to breathe, DeKrey said. The proposed sentence would let Martin die at home, the attorney said.

“He’s basically slowly suffocating to death,” DeKrey said.

Martin, who has a 1988 conviction for receiving stolen goods, remained free on his own recognizance after the hearing. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief federal judge for Minnesota, ordered a presentence investigation and said he’d likely schedule the sentencing for about 2 1/2 months from now.

Schiltz told Martin that he isn’t legally bound by the sentencing recommendation by the defense and prosecution. According to DeKrey, the nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines recommended eight to 10 years in similar cases.

The U.S. attorney’s office said it would have no comment until after Martin is sentenced.

Garland wore several pairs of ruby slippers during filming of the classic 1939 musical, but only four authentic pairs are known to remain. The stolen slippers were insured for $1 million, but federal prosecutors put the current market value at about $3.5 million.

The FBI said a man approached the insurer in 2017 and said he could help get them back. The slippers were recovered during an FBI sting in Minneapolis. The FBI has never disclosed how it tracked down the slippers, which remain in the agency’s custody.

The slippers were on loan to the museum from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw when Martin stole them. Three other pairs that Garland wore in the movie are held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a private collector.

Several rewards were offered over the years in hopes of figuring out who stole the slippers, which were key props in the 1939 movie. Garland’s character, Dorothy, has to click the slippers’ heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home,” to return home to Kansas.

Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922. She lived in Grand Rapids, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Minneapolis, until she was 4, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She died in 1969.

The Judy Garland Museum, which is in the house where she lived, says it has the world’s largest collection of Garland and Wizard of Oz memorabilia.

LONDON (AP) — Microsoft’s purchase of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard won final approval Friday from Britain’s competition watchdog, reversing its earlier decision to block the $69 billion gaming deal and removing the final obstacle for one of the largest tech transactions in history.

The Xbox maker’s quest to acquire Activision — maker of other blockbuster games like Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch — could close imminently ahead of a Wednesday deadline. That would wrap up a merger delayed for close to two years by intense scrutiny from authorities around the world.

The blessing from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority was expected after it gave preliminary approval last month to a revamped Microsoft proposal meant to address concerns that the deal would harm competition and hurt gamers, especially in the emerging cloud gaming market where players can avoid buying pricey consoles and stream games to their tablets or phones.

“The new deal will stop Microsoft from locking up competition in cloud gaming as this market takes off, preserving competitive prices and services for UK cloud gaming customers,” the watchdog said.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the tech giant was grateful for the “thorough review and decision” and that the deal “will benefit players and the gaming industry worldwide.”

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick also welcomed the news: “We look forward to becoming part of the Xbox Team.”

Gamers will benefit from the deal, said Joshua Chapman, managing partner at venture capital firm Konvoy, which invests in video game startups.

Plus, it will be “productive for the gaming industry as a whole and healthy for competition in the gaming market,” he said.

Since the deal was announced in January 2022, Microsoft has secured approvals from antitrust authorities covering more than 40 countries. Crucially, it got a thumbs-up from the 27-nation European Union after agreeing to allow users and cloud gaming platforms to stream its titles without paying royalties for 10 years.

But the deal faced resistance from British and American regulators who worried it would stifle competition in the video game industry. Top rival Sony also feared it would limit PlayStation gamers’ access to Call of Duty, Activision’s long-running military shooter series.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission lost a court bid to pause the deal so that its in-house judge could review it. The FTC hasn’t given up, appealing the decision and last month filing notice of its plan to resume that trial. That signals the U.S. regulator’s intention to unwind the deal even after it closes.

In the meantime, the U.K. regulator was the last major obstacle to the transaction going through. To gets its approval, Microsoft will sell off cloud streaming rights outside the EU and three other European countries for all current and new Activision games released over the next 15 years to French game studio Ubisoft Entertainment.

British regulators had initially blocked the transaction over concerns Microsoft could withhold Activision titles from the cloud gaming market. Then, in an unprecedented move, the U.K. watchdog said it needed to reconsider.

One factor was the EU’s approval, granted after Microsoft promised to automatically license Activision titles royalty-free to cloud gaming platforms. Another “material change of circumstance,” according to court documents, was an agreement Microsoft signed with Sony to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation for at least 10 years.

But the regulator still criticized how the deal came together and warned other companies not to use the “tactics employed by Microsoft.”

“Microsoft had the chance to restructure during our initial investigation but instead continued to insist on a package of measures that we told them simply wouldn’t work,” the watchdog’s CEO, Sarah Cardell, said in a statement. “Dragging out proceedings in this way only wastes time and money.”

The U.K. regulator “deserves credit for imposing a structural remedy on Microsoft that is significantly stronger than the weak commitments accepted by the European Commission,” said Max von Thun, director of the Europe office of the Open Markets Institute, a proponent of stronger antitrust enforcement.

But the CMA’s flip-flopping makes the U.K. regulator look “weak and indecisive,” he said.

“Moving forward, there is now a serious risk that in their dealings with the CMA, merging companies and their advisors will no longer take no for an answer,” von Thun said.