They are the shoes famous for the phrase “There’s no place like home.” Just close your eyes, Dorothy, and click your heels three times.
Your heels, Dorothy, where are your heels?
Nearly 10 years ago, someone stole the famous “Wizard of Oz” ruby slippers from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. There’s surely no place like home when these shoes worth millions of dollars are, according to local rumor, stuffed in some basement closet or lost down a deep mine pit.
Now, one wealthy “Oz” fan is willing to give $1 million to the person who can identify the location of the slippers and the name of the perpetrator.
“We didn’t think the offer was legitimate at first,” said museum spokesman Rob Feeney. “They wanted to remain anonymous. They only wanted to share that they are a huge ‘Wizard of Oz’ fan, based in Arizona.”
This donor is determined to bring an end to a mystery that has long been the talk of this town, where only about 10,000 people live and everyone knows the story of Dorothy and Toto. Its pride and joy is being Garland’s birthplace. Its shame was letting her slippers — one of just four pairs from the set known to still exist — get away.
Every year, the once-sparkling shoes were lent to the museum by their owner, collector Michael Shaw. When the museum told him it wanted to put the slippers in a safe every night, Shaw wouldn’t have it.
“He was the only person he felt should touch them,” Feeney said. “Nobody else.”
And so Shaw delivered the slippers himself and placed them on a podium in a Plexiglass case, about 15 feet from a window. Early on Aug. 28, 2005, as the nation was gripped to TV screens watching Hurricane Katrina roll into New Orleans, the window was smashed with a baseball bat. The Plexiglass was smashed, too, and the slippers were gone. Investigators estimate the job took the thief or thieves less than a minute.
“We kicked ourselves in the butt for not putting them in the safe,” said Jon Miner, one of the museum’s board members. “Of course, the owner was dumbfounded. And so were we.”
The town’s police department — then a total of three officers — went to the security cameras. Surprise: The cameras were turned off.
Although that made them suspect it was an inside job, that possibility was quickly ruled out, Feeney said. They also investigated Shaw, the owner, but didn’t think it was him. Instead, the officers came to the conclusion that everyone in the town still believes.
“People know the perpetrators were a group of kids,” Feeney said. “They were at some place beforehand, drinking, and there was a dare of, ‘The ruby slippers are in town, I bet you would never go steal them.’”
The board offered a $250,000 reward, thinking the teens would surely turn the slippers in. It never happened. Investigators have since searched a collector’s mansion in California and sent divers down a local mine pit that was rumored to be the place they stashed the shoes. Nothing.
The donor, museum officials and police are hopeful that this time, for someone, there’s no place like sitting on $1 million.
“If the slippers are sitting in a closet somewhere, somebody knows,” Miner said. “And not just the perpetrator. We’re hoping to smoke them out.”
Anyone with information about the missing ruby slippers should contact the police at 218-326-3464.
