Stolen ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz auctioned for record amount

A pair of iconic ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and stolen from a museum nearly two decades ago sold for a winning bid of 28 million dollars (£21.8 million) at auction on Saturday.

Heritage Auctions had estimated that they would fetch 3 million dollars or more, but the fast-paced bidding far outpaced that amount within seconds and tripled it within minutes.

A few bidders making offers by phone volleyed back and forth for 15 minutes as the price climbed to the final, eye-popping sum.

Including the Dallas-based auction house’s fee, the unknown buyer will ultimately pay 32.5 million dollars (£25.3 million).

Online bidding, which opened last month, had stood at 1.55 million dollars before live bidding began late on Saturday afternoon.

The sparkly red heels were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 when Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case.

Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018. Martin, now 77, who lives near Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota, was not publicly exposed as the thief until he was indicted in May 2023.

He pleaded guilty in October 2023. He was in a wheelchair and on supplementary oxygen when he was sentenced last January to time served because of his poor health.

His attorney, Dane DeKrey, explained ahead of sentencing that Martin, who had a long history of burglary and receiving stolen property, was attempting to pull off “one last score” after an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their 1 million-dollar insured value.

But a fence — a person who buys stolen goods — later told him the rubies were just glass,Mr DeKrey said. So Martin got rid of the slippers. The attorney did not specify how.

The alleged fence, Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of the Minneapolis suburb of Crystal, was indicted in March. He was also in a wheelchair and on oxygen when he made his first court appearance.

He is scheduled to go on trial in January and has not entered a plea, though his attorney has said he is not guilty.

The shoes were returned in February to memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who had loaned them to the museum.

They were one of several pairs that Garland wore during the filming, but only four pairs are known to have survived. In the movie, to return from Oz to Kansas, Dorothy had to click her heels three times and repeat: “There’s no place like home.”

As Rhys Thomas, author of The Ruby Slippers of Oz, put it, the sequined shoes from the beloved 1939 musical have seen “more twists and turns than the Yellow Brick Road”.

More than 800 people had been tracking the slippers, and the company’s webpage for the auction had hit nearly 43,000 page views by Thursday, said Robert Wilonsky, a vice president with the auction house.

Among those bidding to bring the slippers home was the Judy Garland Museum, which posted on Facebook shortly after that it did not place the winning bid.

The museum had campaigned for donations to supplement money raised by the city of Grand Rapids at its annual Judy Garland festival and the 100,000 dollars set aside this year by Minnesota lawmakers to help the museum purchase the slippers.

After the slippers sold, the auctioneer told bidders and spectators in the room and watching online that the previous record for a piece of entertainment memorabilia was 5.52 million dollars (£4.35 million), for the white dress Marilyn Monroe famously wore atop a windy subway grate.

The auction also included other memorabilia from The Wizard of Oz, such as a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who played the original Wicked Witch of the West. That item went for 2.4 million dollars (£1.8 million).

The Wizard of Oz story has gained new attention in recent weeks with the release of the movie Wicked, an adaptation of the megahit Broadway musical, a prequel of sorts that reimagines the character of the Wicked Witch of the West.