‘A symbol of home’ — A new theft tour at the Judy Garland Museum as the ruby slippers go to auction

Curator John Kelsch walked from an empty pedestal to an emergency exit at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids.

“This is the crime scene,“ Kelsch said. “At about 2 a.m. on the night of Aug. 28, [2005], Terry John Martin had a handheld sledgehammer and just cracked this glass. It was all strewn down the hall here.”

Kelsch, who is also the museum’s founding director, is giving the new Ruby Slipper Theft Guided Tour — not to be confused with the original Judy Garland Guided Tour.

The museum started the tours earlier in 2024 because, Kelsch said, “Everyone is asking at the front desk. That’s the most asked question: What happened?”

In 2005, Minnesotan Terry Jon Martin, who Kelsch says lived about 15 miles south of Grand Rapids, broke into the museum and stole the slippers from their pedestal. They are one of the pairs used in the 1939 “Wizard of Oz” film. The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018 and eventually returned them to Michael Shaw, the collector who had owned the slippers and lent them to the Grand Rapids museum. Martin pled guilty in 2023.

On the tour, Kelsch called the robbery the result of a “comedy of errors” by the museum. At the time of the robbery, the museum building was new and the security alarms kept going off during open hours. Kelsch said they asked the security team to disarm the alarms during the day.

“Making the false assumption that when we keyed in to arm the building at night, they would re-arm,” Kelsch told the tour group. “Not the case. When those doors were disarmed, they were completely disarmed.”

There was also no motion detector surveillance in the gallery, and only one black and white camera taping the slippers on their pedestal, but the camera did not record.

Kelsch continued: “Here’s another comedy of error.” The galleries were getting too hot, so the museum had a policy of leaving the emergency exit open at night. “Unbelievable,” Kelsch said.

Kelsch also said he does not doubt that Terry Jon Martin and accomplice Jerry Hal Saliterman scoped out the museum beforehand.

The security systems have since been overhauled, Kelsch said, but the museum has not regained possession of the slippers. For the last several months, the slippers have been on an international tour through Heritage Auctions, with stops in Japan, New York and London. 

The slippers are now on auction on behalf of collector Michael Shaw through Heritage. The current bid is at $1,150,000. The final live auction starts 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, in Dallas, Texas.

The slippers will be bid on alongside one of the hats worn by Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in the same film, as well as the “Wilson” volleyball from “Cast Away” and the hoverboard from “Back to the Future II.”

In a press release, Heritage Auctions stated that the slippers auction was “among the most important auctions ever held.”

Kelsch ended the tour by discussing how the museum has been raising funds to purchase the slippers, which have been valued anywhere from $3 to $10 million. In May, the Minnesota Legislature earmarked $100,000 for the museum to purchase the slippers. 

Kelsch and museum executive director Janie Heitz declined to say how much the museum has raised. Heitz and Kelsch will travel to Dallas for the live auction on Saturday.

“We’re excited, hopeful,” Heitz said. “Hopefully, we get to see Michael Shaw and just support him.” Heitz said if they don’t have a successful bid, they hope to form a relationship with whoever does so that the museum could have the slippers on loan once again.

Kelsch said the slippers should return to Grand Rapids.

“The ruby slippers are a universal symbol of home, and we think they belong in Judy Garland’s hometown, the place that she remembered as a child as being very happy,” Kelsch said. The museum includes Garland’s childhood home.

“We are a museum dedicated to her life and legacy, and we feel she deserves to have a pair in a place that made her very happy in her life,” Heitz said.

The guided theft tours run at 10 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays all year. However, because of the auction, there will be no tour on Dec. 6 or Dec. 7.

It will be livestreamed.

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