FILE - Ruby slippers once worn by Judy Garland in the “The Wizard of Oz,” are displayed at a news conference, Sept. 4, 2018, at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, Minn. A second man has been charged in connection with the 2005 theft of a pair of the ruby slippers, according to an indictment unsealed Sunday, March 17, 2024. Jerry Hal Saliterman, of Crystal, Minn., is wheeled out of U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minn.
The ruby slippers were at the heart of the beloved 1939 musical. Garland’s character, Dorothy, danced down the Yellow Brick Road in her shiny shoes, joined by the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. To return home to Kansas, she had to click the heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home.”Memorabilia collector Michael Shaw’s ruby slippers were believed to be the highest quality of all of them — they were the ones used in close-ups of Dorothy clicking her heels.
The indictment says that from August 2005 to July 2018 Saliterman “received, concealed, and disposed of an object of cultural heritage” — specifically, “an authentic pair of ‘ruby slippers’ worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” The indictment says Saliterman knew they were stolen. It also says that, starting sometime last year, he threatened to release a sex tape of a woman and “take her down with him” if she didn’t stay quiet about the crime.
Martin said at an October hearing that he had hoped to take what he thought were real rubies from the shoes and sell them. But a person who deals in stolen goods informed him the rubies weren’t real, Martin said. So he got rid of the slippers.