Heists and Sex Tapes and Auctions, Oh My: The Wild Tale of the Ruby Slippers From ‘The Wizard of Oz’

If you’ve ever wanted to own Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, now is your chance. A pair of maybe the most iconic footwear in film history is up for auction. Online bidding has already begun and will continue through December 7.

These slippers have had a hell of a history. Yes, they were worn by Judy Garland on the set of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, one of the most famous and influential films of all time. But then they were owned by a guy named Michael Shaw, a memorabilia collector who owned the slippers for years until 2005 when he loaned the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids Minnesota, where someone broke the display case and stole them. They remained missing until 2018 when they were recovered by the FBI.

How that happened is its own little story: the shoes had been insured for $1 million. In the summer of 2017, twelve years after they had been stolen, a guy told the insurer that he could help get the shoes back. Grand Rapids police contacted the FBI, sparking a year-long investigation that ended with the slippers finally being recovered in a sting operation.

The man who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, was a career criminal who wanted to pull off “one last score,” believing the slippers contained actual rubies. He’s now in his mid-70s. He wasn’t sentenced for the crime until January 2024.

There was a second guy involved named Jerry Hal Saliterman who was charged with theft of a major artwork and witness tampering. The witness tampering part of it is crazy. Somehow, a woman he was associated with found out that he had the stolen ruby slippers so to make sure she didn’t rat him out, he threatened to release a sex tape of her “to take her down with him” to blackmail her into remaining silent.

These are some very dramatic slippers. Garland wore several different pairs of ruby red slippers during the production of The Wizard of Oz. Only four remain and this is one of them.

The Judy Garland Museum and Grand Rapids will have a chance to buy the slippers as the city of Grand Rapids raised money for them during its annual Judy Garland festival. That money will be added to a pool of $100,000 that Minnesota lawmakers specifically set aside earlier this year with the intent to buy the slippers.

Minnesota’s fervent desire to keep the slippers in Grand Rapids makes more sense when you realize Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids in 1922.