Ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in ‘Oz,’ stolen and missing for years, are sold at auction for $28M

A bidder paid $28 million for the storied pair of ruby slippers worn by actor Judy Garland and featured prominently in the classic film “The Wizard of Oz,” during Heritage Auctions’ live event Saturday in Dallas.

It was not immediately clear who won the slippers, but whoever it was paid a total of $32.5 million when you count the buyer’s premium and the extra fees going to the auction house.

The slippers, creating a buzz that went beyond the Yellow Brick Road, were discovered among vintage Hollywood costumes decades ago and bought by a collector. In 2005, they were stolen while on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., in a late-night smash-and-grab that went unsolved for more than a decade.

Since then, two Minnesota men with criminal histories have been tied to the crime: Terry Jon Martin of Grand Rapids, who admitted he stole them, and Jerry Hal Saliterman, who is accused of burying them in a container in the backyard of his home in Crystal. Martin pleaded guilty this year, and Saliterman’s trial starts in January in federal court.

The online bidding for the ruby slippers, which became active at the start of November, reached $1.55 million by the time they hit the auction floor on Saturday.

Staffers from the Garland Museum planned to attend the Texas auction, backed in part by $100,000 from the Legislature and fundraising efforts. Janie Heitz, the museum’s executive director, said this week that they were traveling with documentary filmmakers who have been following the story.

If the shoes weren’t within the museum’s budget, there were plenty of other pieces of “Oz” history for the museum’s keepers to consider. Thirty-two lots in the auction had ties to the movie, including photographs, a script, books and the witch’s hat.

But the auction’s centerpiece was the ruby slippers — an unmatched pair made by Innes Shoe Co. The slippers — red silk faille heels with hand-sequined silk and rhinestone-rimmed bows — have Judy Garland’s name written on them. They’re actually mismatched; the right slipper matches the left slipper, and vice versa, for the pair displayed by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., according to expert Rhys Thomas.

The “Oz” portion of the auction was festive, with a spontaneous singalong to music from the movie and references to the Yellow Brick Road.

The shoes auctioned Saturday aren’t the only ruby slippers used in the 1939 film. Three pairs of ruby slippers were among the decades-old loot discovered by a Hollywood trivia buff who was asked to sort through old garments for an MGM Star Wardrobe Auction. One pair went to the auction, and one pair was kept by the sorter, Kent Warner.

The pair auctioned Saturday had been sold to memorabilia collector Michael Shaw — before they became the focal point of a whirlwind Minnesota crime story. One other pair of the slippers were won by a woman in Tennessee.

A pair, now owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was acquired in 2012 by investors, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg, to be a centerpiece at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles.

Shaw included the slippers in traveling displays of his Hollywood collection, but he sometimes loaned them to the keepers of the Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, where Garland spent her early years. The ruby slippers were on display at the museum in August 2005 when they were stolen. All that remained of them the morning after was a single sequin.

It took nearly 20 years to find out what happened after the shoes were recovered in an FBI sting in 2018. Martin, who had a lengthy list of crimes to his name but had gone mostly quiet in the decade after returning to his home in rural Grand Rapids, admitted to stealing the shoes.

He was in a wheelchair and toting oxygen when he took a plea deal and was sentenced to time served by a federal judge this year in Duluth.

Martin claimed to have briefly held the slippers, which he had believed were made with real gems, before ditching them within 48 hours of the theft, he said in court.

Saliterman has a history of possessing stolen goods. He is accused of keeping the slippers buried in a container in his yard for seven years.