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Auctioneer Mike Sadler during the Dec. 7 auction of the $15 prop ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.
The 1939 American film classic The Wizard of Oz continues to remain a cherished movie favorite. Produced on a high budget of $2.8 million, the movie amassed $2.7 million in its opening week.
The movie has always been considered a financial success. No one knew then how one pair of simple (but special) $15 props would rise to the description of the “Holy Grail of Hollywood.”
Ruby slippers stolen from the Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Judy Garland Museum on Aug. 27, 2005, among many adjectives have been called: frumpy, magical, secret, cursed and remarkable.
The stolen ruby slippers did meet a true holy grail status, securing a place in arts and entertainment Americana history by securing an astonishing $28 million dollars ($32.5 million with auction house fees) sale price on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, at Heritage Auction House in Dallas.
The fast-paced action was as edge-of-the-seat exciting for online watchers and in-house bidders on location. Judy Garland Museum co-founder John Kelsh and executive director Janie Heitz were present with what they hoped to be a winning bid. They were unsuccessful as the auction bidding moving swiftly past the market estimate of $3.5 million.
The Seth Gordon Production (LA) filmmakers were shooting the event for a planned documentary on the infamous shoes.
Mike Sadler, the auctioneer was colorfully animated with each rising bid. Co-director/producer Nikki Calabrese described the experience at the live auction as “once in lifetime.” The well-traveled and seasoned producer said, “This was something like I have never seen – the energy was off the charts incredible.”
Watching from their own electronics were retired Grand Rapids Police Depart-ment lead investigator, Robert “Bob” Stein, and current investigator Brian Mattson. Both men actively worked the stolen slipper theft case and feel a personal connection to this multi-faceted case. “It’s one I will never forget,” Stein said.
Closing to an astonishingly record-breaking price the room broke into applause. Lucky bidder #7508 (unknown) is the new owner of the most revered pair of ruby slippers – the ones that were underground, both figuratively and literally, after an unimaginable theft for the times. The stolen ruby slippers have found a new home.
Minnesota native and actress Judy Garland (1922-1969), born Frances Ethel Gumm, lived in Grand Rapids from her birth to 1926. Her starring role in The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy Gale, a farm girl from Kansas who lands in a place of imagination and is awarded a pair of red ruby slippers by a good witch, hunted by a bad witch, and eventually finds her power with learning “there is no place like home” – is as iconic as the powerful shoes tapped three times by Garland in the film.
The spool-heeled shoes were purchas-ed from Innes Shoe Company in Holly-wood for $15 per pair and bedazzled with sequins, beads and baubles that would sparkle and shine in Technicolor.
Only four known ruby slipper sets remain. One pair held by the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts & Science, one pair held by The Smithsonian Museum and one pair held by a private collector.
The fourth pair – the “shopping mall shoes” also referred to as the “traveling shoes” – were on the road via an exhibit called “Hollywood on Tour” with owner, collector and MGM child actor Michael Shaw for more than three decades prior to the theft that made international news in late August 2005.
Shaw purchased the shoes and a gingham dress from former MGM film costumer Kent Warner for approximately $2,500 dollars in 1969. Warner had been tasked with clearing MGM buildings that had been sold. Credited with saving treasured movie memorabilia, including multiple pairs of ruby red slippers, Warner died at age 41 in 1984 from AIDS, never knowing how those ruby slippers that he rescued would end up in another fabled story – a sensational burglary (2005) that would take 13 years to shoe recovery (2018) and another five years to charges (2023) and a federal conviction for theft of major artwork.
January 19, 2024, the federal senten-cing court papers tell a carefully scripted story of very narrow scope. Terry Martin, 77, a former career criminal living south of Grand Rapids, out of prison for nearly 10 years, was allegedly contacted by an old crime associate and asked to do “a job.”
The papers allege that Terry was led to believe that the glass red baubles on the bows were real rubies. The urge to steal was too powerful to bypass “one last score.”
In August 2005, Michael Shaw’s pair of ruby slippers were on their fourth visit to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids. Shaw requested that only he handle the shoes. He arrived with the shoes and placed them under the glass pedestal which was screwed to the pedestal base. A safe sat nearby in case Shaw changed his mind. He didn’t.
The employees never handled the slippers, and the small staff knew the shoes were not placed in the safe when the museum closed. The custodian (often accompanied by her husband and children) worked after hours and was aware of all the security issues within the museum. Visiting patrons could not have known the shoes would not be locked in the heavy stand-alone safe at closing.
Martin testified he arrived at the museum one late August evening after it closed. He broke the glass on the back emergency-only exit door and broke the plexiglass pedestal, stealing the ruby slippers. The slippers were in the museum gallery inside the museum. The gallery had its own lockable front and rear gallery doors.
Unbeknownst to the public, the doors were not closed and locked at night because of air flow problems setting off heat sensors in the alarm system. The doors were left open. Martin said he was told the museum “leaked like sieve.”
The next morning museum employee Kathe Johnson arrived to find that the shoes had been stolen. She contacted John Kelsch, museum co-founder and [then] executive director, who raced to town to meet Kathe to report to the Grand Rapids Police Department. Both Kelsch and Johnson talked to the responding officers. The security contractors also provided information.
Kelsch continued in follow-up with investigator Gene Bennett. No other employees and/or keyholders of the Judy Garland Museum were ever contacted and/or interviewed by law enforcement. Johnson said she was unsure if the custodian had been scheduled to clean the night of the burglary. There was no follow-up.
Early on, fingers pointed suspiciously at the shoe owner, Shaw, and the museum co-founder, Kelsch.
There was a one million dollar insurance policy on the shoes. Shaw, after careful investigation and what he would call being “put under a microscope,” received an $800,000 dollar payout.
John Kelsch lived under great stress and suspicion, trying his best to assure donors that the museum was safe. A private investigator was hired. A local businessman and co-founder of the museum, Jon Miner, offered a one million dollar reward leading to the return of the treasured ruby slippers. The reward spurred on added interest and new leads.
In 2017, the investigation stepped up when the newly assigned GRPD investigator Brian Mattson reached out to the FBI seeking additional support. A new tip, a new lead from a retired secret service agent and an inquiry about the expired reward surfaced. More twists and turns developed in 2018 when the shoes were recovered from a well-known Minnesota criminal defense attorney in an FBI sting. The public remains mystified as there were claims of extortion, but no arrests made. The ruby slippers remained in FBI custody.
On October 13, 2023, Martin was charged with the federal crime. Few details were released, and the court ruled that confidential informants would not be named. By sentencing in early 2024, Martin was the lone culprit minus a probable side “associate” or two. The court was told he was terminal and would be dying shortly.
By March 2024, Michael Shaw had repaid Merkel Insurance for the first right to buy back his shoes. The FBI presented Shaw with the slippers at the Judy Garland Museum. Shaw was thrilled. He and Kelsch reconciled. The reunion was short-lived as an agreement was made with Heritage Auction House in Dallas for an international tour with the slippers and then to the auction block with the hope of an over-the-rainbow ending.
To coincide with the shoes being returned to Shaw, another man was indicted for the theft of the ruby slippers. Terry Martin’s good friend, referred to as an “associate,” Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of Crystal, Minn., was charged additionally with witness tampering, as a provocative tale of threatening an informant through exposure of a porn tape became known. Saliterman was also served an Order for Protection from his estranged wife. The details of an embittered divorce via state records and investigations revealed more to the stolen ruby slipper theft story.
Saliterman is alleged to have kept the stolen ruby slippers sealed in a container and buried underground at his home. He awaits trial slated for January 2025.
The Saliterman case is not yet over. Data requests to the Grand Rapids Police Department on the shoe burglary provide a one-page basic descriptive and nothing further. The $28 million dollar sale price for the stolen ruby slippers also sets the record for the highest valued recovered property by the Grand Rapids Police Department, according to Chief Andy Morgan.
The GRPD continues in partnership with the FBI. The FBI considers the case still active, still open.
Questions remain unanswered. Stolen ruby slippers, magic or cursed? Inside job? In the end will it remain that only the Wizard is in the know?
Stay tuned.
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