The once-lost ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz" have now found a new home.
Nearly 20 years after they were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the slippers were sold at a live auction Saturday for $28 million, along with a $4.5 million buyer's premium. It was not immediately clear who the buyer was, but it was sold to a phone bidder, according to auction records.
The 2005 theft of the ruby slippers - one of only a few existing pairs that Garland wore while playing Dorothy Gale in "The Wizard of Oz" - haunted authorities, who had billed the shoes as "one of the most recognizable pieces of memorabilia in American film history." After receiving thousands of tips and chasing fruitless leads for more than a decade, the FBI recovered the slippers in a sting operation in 2018.
The red-sequin shoes were returned earlier this year to collector Michael Shaw, who had loaned them to the museum when they were stolen. Shaw decided to sell through the Dallas-based Heritage Auctions.
The slippers were the center of a lively back-and-forth live auction, where staff of the Judy Garland Museum were among the bidders, hoping to bring them back to Grand Rapids. The museum did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday and it was unclear if they had prevailed at auction. The slippers' sale marks the close of another chapter in their wild, winding saga.
"It's so hard to explain, but it's just magical," Joe Maddalena, an executive vice president at Heritage Auctions, told The Washington Post on Monday. "And that's what they are. They're magical."
Maddalena told The Post earlier this week that the slippers, which federal officials had appraised at $3.5 million, could go for "a million, or they could sell for 10 million."
By the summer of 2005, the ruby slippers were on their fourth loan to the Judy Garland Museum. The shoes brought in droves of visitors who were captivated by the shining sequins.
That was until a late August night when a man smashed their display and escaped with the slippers, thinking they were made with real rubies.
He left behind a single red sequin and a gaping hole in the fabric of a small town that had long boasted itself as Garland's birthplace. A yellow brick road runs through downtown. Garland's restored childhood home sits on the museum's property. When the slippers were stolen, the police chief at the time said the thief "took a piece of history."
Those theft of the slippers - one of four surviving pairs from the 1939 film - severely damaged the Judy Garland Museum's credibility, said John Kelsch, who was its executive director when the slippers were stolen.
Rumors swirled, too.
Some who couldn't fathom how seamless the heist appeared came to believe it had been an inside job by staff at the museum. Others believed Shaw might have orchestrated it for a subsequent insurance payout. Years went by without any clues.
Then, in 2018, the FBI announced that it recovered the slippers during an undercover operation in Minneapolis, but gave few details. Early this year, Terry Jon Martin, then a 76-year-old in declining health, was sentenced to time served, one year supervised release and $23,500 in restitution to the Judy Garland Museum for theft of major artwork, the Justice Department said.
In a court filing, Martin's attorney wrote that he had a crime-filled past, but had turned his life around - until a "mob associate" called him about the slippers. It was Martin who broke the display and took the slippers, but he kept them for less than 48 hours after realizing they were designed with sequins and not gems, according to the memo.
In February, Shaw, Kelsch and the local and federal officials who investigated the case of the missing slippers saw the footwear again for the first time in a private ceremony at the museum. Kelsch, who is now a curator at the museum, didn't know what awaited him. He was only told to come in around 11 a.m. to Garland's childhood home.
There, he saw the long-lost shoes resting on the same stand where they had been two decades ago.
The ceremony was also a reunion for Kelsch and Shaw, who he hadn't spoken to over the last 10 years. After the theft, their relationship had soured.
"He was quite bitter about it, I understand," Kelsch told The Post on Tuesday. "Understood."
But on the day of the ceremony, they embraced. They cried together.
At the ceremony, the FBI also gave Shaw the single sequin that had been left behind, a token of a crime somewhat solved.
Still, the ruby slippers wouldn't be going "home" with Shaw, nor would they be staying at the museum. Shaw wanted them sold, and Heritage Auctions had sent staff to the ceremony and arranged for the slippers to remain in their care until the auction.
From then, the Judy Garland Museum knew it would raise money to be among the bidders.
"It was like, well, we may as well try," Janie Heitz, the museum's current executive director, told The Post on Wednesday.
The museum had been raising money mostly behind closed doors. But they had some help along the way, including from Minnesota lawmakers who set aside $100,000 and the restitution payment from Martin, Heitz said.
Heitz and Kelsch both headed to Texas to bid on behalf of the museum. They knew going in there was a chance the museum would not get them. But no matter the highest bidder, Kelsch said he hoped the ruby slippers would be on display for people to visit, the same way they had been at the museum.
"We just think it would be a shame if the slippers were purchased by a private collector and just locked away somewhere," he said.
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Jonathan Edwards contributed to this report.