Want Them So Badly

If the ruby slippers could talk, what a tale they’d tell.

WRITTEN BY ALLISON SANDVE

They debuted in one of history’s most-watched movies, adorning the feet of a Minnesota-born teenager who became one of the greatest stars of her time and beyond.

They’ve captivated generations—ever since that moment in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz when they evaporate from the feet of the fallen Wicked Witch of the East and reappear on Dorothy’s. They have a mystical force, Dorothy learns, that inflames the Wicked Witch of the West’s obsession.

“Keep tight inside of them,” warns Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. “Their magic must be very powerful or she wouldn’t want them so badly.”

The Wicked Witch wasn’t the only one to covet those shoes. In 2005, the ruby slippers were stolen while on loan to the Grand Rapids museum bearing the name of Oz’s heroine, Judy Garland. They stayed missing until the FBI recovered them in 2018. What happened in between? Federal authorities have revealed almost nothing; the investigation remains active.

Here’s what we do know: last fall, a career criminal named Terry Jon Martin, seventy-seven, who lives thirteen miles south of Grand Rapids, pleaded guilty to the theft. But, Martin said in federal court, he turned them over to a “fence” (someone who deals in stolen goods) two days later and maintained he knew nothing about what became of them afterward.

John Kelsch, now in a consulting role at the Judy Garland Museum, sits in the star’s childhood living room (photo by Allison Sandve).

His motive? The seasoned thief said he believed they were made of real rubies and planned to cash in. Martin’s courtroom revelation left observers speechless—and more than a few skeptical.

Added bombshells came earlier this spring when a second man was arrested on federal charges in the case. As with Martin, there are no details about the theft outlined in the charges against Jerry Saliterman, seventy-six, of Crystal, Minnesota. Public records draw a connection between Martin and Saliterman going back at least forty years. Shortly after Saliterman’s arrest, paperwork filed in Hennepin County detailed two state search warrants executed at his home. The documents linked an unnamed third person to the case—and revealed a stunning allegation: “The cooperating defendant stated that the ruby red slippers were placed into a clear plastic container with a white lid and buried in the yard. The cooperating defendant stated that the slippers were buried in the yard near the shed on the south side of the property for approximately seven years.”

“They’re Gone.”

The night Terry Martin sledgehammered his way into the Judy Garland Museum was “just another night shift,” says Grand Rapids Police Chief Andy Morgan. He was a twenty-six-year-old patrolman on the 5:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. shift when the ruby slippers were stolen during the wee hours of Sunday morning, August 28.

Grand Rapids police are responsible for a city of just under twenty-five square miles—almost two miles larger than the entire island of Manhattan. Though a couple big box stores had arrived and more development would follow, the museum in 2005 was a somewhat lonely outpost on the southernmost edge of town, where Pokegama Avenue becomes Highway 169.

A crescent moon rose that cloudy night.

Police believe the entire theft took less than a minute. Depending on the route home he chose, Martin could have turned off Highway 169 in as little as two minutes.

On Sunday, the first employee on-site called museum director John Kelsch: “They’re gone.” It was all she needed to say. Nothing else was taken.

The call notifying police came at 9:56 a.m. A senior officer called Morgan. Did anything “weird” happen the night before? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Cops gathered at the museum. A “be on the lookout” alert for the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz went out to Minnesota law enforcement agencies.

Shadows Fall on Grand Rapids

It was a local and statewide story for a while, but didn’t register much more than a blip on the national scene. The day the theft was discovered, the mass evacuation of New Orleans was ordered as Hurricane Katrina intensified. The next day, the levees broke. The world was watching the pleas of Americans stranded on their rooftops, not updates on a stolen pair of sixty-seven-year-old shoes.

Back in Grand Rapids, the investigation quickly revealed porous security at the Judy Garland Museum. The alarm at the back door was disabled during working hours as mischievous kids had a tendency to set it off; museum officials mistakenly thought they’d reprogrammed it correctly. Only paces away, the door separating the back entry from the gallery housing the slippers was left open to facilitate airflow. A security camera to monitor visitors was regularly turned off at night. The ruby slippers’ owner refused to allow them to go to a safe deposit box after hours, telling Kelsch he didn’t want the delicate treasures handled twice a day.

Murmurs of an inside job spread almost immediately, stoked by the $1 million insurance policy the museum had on the ruby slippers. In fact, insurance money was paid out, but it went to the owner of the shoes, not the museum.

Aside from the security issues, Kelsch had built the museum into a top-notch facility. But he would shoulder the blame for the museum’s vulnerability for the better part of two decades.

“It hurt me,” Kelsch says. “But I went on with my business.”

And business at the nonprofit museum was hurting. New exhibits bring in fresh crowds, but after the theft, collectors weren’t loaning the museum their valued items. Donations and memberships plummeted as the inside job rumors persisted, a hardship exacerbated when the recession began in 2008. That year, the museum couldn’t make its mortgage, necessitating the sale of adjacent land. Four years later, it sold valuable items that had belonged to Garland.

All told, the museum liquidated more than a quarter million dollars in assets. Only the support of a small cadre of donors held back the tide. “Without their yearly backing for ten years—at least—[the museum] would have folded,” says Kelsch, who is now working in a consultative role at the museum, which is back on solid financial ground. The future holds more exhibits—including one about the theft—as well as the possibility of adding a stage for performances.

The Long Chill

Suspicion fell on Hollywood, too, where the ruby slippers’ owner Michael Shaw had amassed a prolific collection of movie memorabilia. Now well into his eighties, Shaw met Garland back in the day when he was under contract as an MGM child actor. “She was lovely, wonderful,” Shaw says. “I had the joy of talking with her. A sense of humor like you’ve never seen.”

In moviemaking, it’s customary for extra props and wardrobes to be created; there may have been as many as seven pairs of ruby slippers. Four are known to exist today. One set of ruby slippers is displayed at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History in Washington, DC, where they’re among the most popular exhibits. The Smithsonian pair and the stolen pair are actually mismatched twins, their differences so subtle only an expert examination can spot the mix-up. The accidental switch may have occurred on the Oz set or when the pairs went into storage.

“People just loved looking at them,” Shaw says, who acquired his pair for $2,500 in 1970, shortly after an auction of movie memorabilia that had been languishing in an MGM warehouse. Over the years, he had loaned the ruby slippers to the Judy Garland Museum on four separate occasions. As time passed, they’d become as fragile as they were famous. To make them, thousands of sequins were hand-sewn through a nylon mesh and into the shoes using silk thread—an organic material that degrades with time. The weakest threads couldn’t withstand much, if any, pressure. Any attempt to put on the shoes designed for Garland’s size 5 feet was all but guaranteed to ruin them.

Other plausible fates were equally grim. From the start, the rumor mill had the ruby slippers at the bottom of a lake, river, or mine pit—or turned to ash in a bonfire. Morgan took over the investigation several years after the theft and followed up on every tip, no matter how outlandish. Calls came in reporting the ruby slippers were “spotted” at rummage sales or storage unit auctions or hanging on the wall of homes.

Murmurs of an inside job spread almost immediately, stoked by the
$1 million insurance policy.

Grand Rapids Police Investigator Brian Mattson. The fake slippers found in a rural home are kept on top of the cabinet in Mattson’s office (photo by Allison Sandve).

“‘Saw them at the Smithsonian!’ That was a real report,” says Grand Rapids Police Department Investigator Brian Mattson, laughing.

There were a couple scuba dives to search abandoned mining pits. Local troublemakers were investigated. Suspects were routinely asked about the ruby slippers, in case they had information that could be a bargaining chip in criminal proceedings. “We’d ask ‘Do you know anything about drugs? How about the ruby slippers?’” Morgan says. “We tried anything and everything that ticked the traditional boxes.”

Morgan was promoted and turned the case files over to Mattson, his friend and former partner, in 2012. “Congratulations,” he recalls telling Mattson, adding only half-jokingly, “you’ve inherited the curse.”

To Help and Serve

Brian Mattson doesn’t miss a beat when asked why he became a cop: “It’s a calling.”

Mattson sat down with the files to take a fresh look. Like Morgan and others, he found “you have to put as much effort into the false leads just to eliminate them.”

A few years later came a lead with a whisper of legitimacy. It started with a traffic stop and a report involving what Mattson called “a criminal element that we’re aware of.” The lead took Mattson and Itasca County Sheriff’s Department deputies deep in the woods to a vagabond encampment, unlike anything he’d seen before. There, a man willingly led Mattson through a garbage-filled house on the property and, climbing over rubbish, retrieved an ornate green box from a closet shelf. As its ribbon was undone and the lid removed, Mattson recalled freezing momentarily at the sight of something red and twinkly. Then came instant reality—the shoes were covered in glitter and had spiked heels. The crowning blow—not that any hope was left —was the “Made in China” stamp on the shoes.

Then in 2017, Mattson got a phone call that started him in a new direction; after countless false starts, his cop’s instincts told him something about this lead was different. Ultimately, he turned to the FBI for the help the agency had the resources to provide. And the FBI did find the shoes, but the story stops there, at least for now. At the FBI’s request, local authorities are not detailing the events that cracked the still-active case.

Mattson is particularly glad the cloud over Kelsch is gone. “He’s taken a beating over the whole inside job question. You won’t find a guy more passionate about the work and doing something good.”

Mattson also has the introspective nature that comes with years as a detective, one assigned to cases including murder and child abuse. “This was my most notorious case, not my most important case,” he says.

Living by a Crooked Code

Instant infamy fell upon Martin when he was charged in 2023 with one count of violating a federal law prohibiting theft of an object of cultural heritage from a museum. On his side was an impassioned defense attorney, whom reporters came to enjoy for his candor and wit.

“I had no illusions about the life he lived,” says Dane DeKrey. “Terry is no angel.”

DeKrey said he grew to like his client, to see more than an aged ex-con who’s battled the bottle for much of his life. He had sympathy for chapters in Martin’s early years, including the car wreck that killed his one-month-old twins in 1971. The accident occurred as their mother (who survived) was driving home from a state prison, where their incarcerated father met them for the first and only time.

In court documents, DeKrey called his client “New Terry” to underscore the comparatively straight life he’d led in the latter years of his adulthood—minus the theft of what’s been called the holy grail of Hollywood memorabilia. Martin succumbed to the lure of one last caper, DeKrey said, at the urging of an unnamed former criminal associate. His naivete about the rubies—not real gems—is consistent with a “life lived off the grid,” DeKrey said.

“He didn’t confess out of the goodness of his heart.
. . .But he did confess.”

“Old Terry,” on the other hand, was in and out of prison—in his lawyer’s words, “the definition of street smart.” Old Terry, for instance, was at full throttle in 1977 when he and two accomplices attempted to rob a gambling joint in rural Iowa. A gun battle broke out, mortally wounding one of Martin’s partners. Martin and the other surviving robber dumped the third man at a wayside; he died shortly afterward.

What brought the FBI to Martin has yet to be explained. What’s clear is that once they got to him, the deck was stacked in the FBI’s favor: They had the goods on Martin’s wife.

Chris Abraham, sixty-six, married Martin sometime in the 1980s. She’d been brought to the United States from Germany as an infant but was never naturalized as a citizen. Abraham, too, had been in serious trouble with the law and was deported after a prison sentence for attempted armed robbery. Back in Germany, she knew no one and didn’t speak the language, DeKrey says. At some point, she returned to the United States illegally. The still-married couple reconciled in 2018.

“They [federal authorities] definitely made it clear that if you don’t talk to us, we will deport this woman; whereas, if you do talk to us, we won’t,” DeKrey says in an interview. “Without Chris, they wouldn’t have had anything. I think they would have gone to trial and he [Martin] would have had a good chance of winning, frankly.”

In court, DeKrey said: “He didn’t confess out of the goodness of his heart. . . . But he did confess.”

Suffering from chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder, Martin was in a wheelchair and breathing from an oxygen tank in his two appearances before US Chief District Judge Patrick Schiltz. Were it not for Martin’s ill health, Schiltz said, the ruby slippers theft—paired with his lengthy criminal record—would have earned him the maximum ten-year sentence. He was not sentenced to any jail time, but ordered to pay the Judy Garland Museum restitution of $23,000 in monthly $300 installments. It was deemed a realistic penalty for a man said to be living on modest benefits.

“Mr. Martin intended to steal and then destroy an irreplaceable part of American culture to line his pockets,” Schiltz said during sentencing, calling the theft “extraordinary in its stupidity and selfishness.”

Terry Martin, assisted by his wife, Chris Abraham, enters the federal courthouse in Duluth for a hearing in October of 2023 (photo by Allison Sandve).

Defense attorney Dane DeKrey meets with the news media after his client’s sentencing in January, 2024 (photo by Allison Sandve).

United States v. Saliterman

A tentative trial date has been set in September for the second defendant, Jerry Saliterman. In addition to the theft charge, Saliterman faces a second charge of tampering with a federal witness. According to the charges, Saliterman threatened an unnamed witness “that if she did not keep her mouth shut, he would take her down with him and distribute sex tapes of her to her family.” The charge carries a potential twenty-year sentence.

Saliterman has a lengthy record of running organized theft rings. He was convicted in 1979 of running a house of prostitution in Wisconsin. The state search warrants executed at his house allege more than two hundred items believed to be stolen were stashed throughout his home, many inside a storage area in his basement.

Like Martin, Saliterman showed up at his first appearance in federal court in a wheelchair and using an oxygen tank. In a photo taken by the Associated Press, he appears to be wearing pajamas.

Ruby slippers owner Michael Shaw (second from left) is reunited with them at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids earlier this year. With him are (from left) Brian Chanes of Heritage Auctions, FBI Agent Christopher Dudley, and Grand Rapids Police Chief Andy Morgan (photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions/HA.com).

There’s No Place Like Home

It snowed thirty-nine inches in Grand Rapids the last winter before Judy Garland (born Frances Gumm) and her family moved to southern California, settling first in Lancaster, a near-treeless town on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. Throughout her life, Garland made fond references to early years, calling Grand Rapids “a beautiful, beautiful town.” She remembered snow forts, snowball fights, and making snow angels with her sisters, followed by hot cocoa at home.

“I think the reason I can remember so many of those things in such a short space of time so early in my life was it was the only tranquil, happy time my family ever had,” Garland said in an interview in the early 1960s.

She was so much more than a twentieth-century cautionary tale.

The Judy Garland Museum gives visitors the chance to reflect on the entirety of her life, one that had “many, many more ups than downs,” says film historian John Fricke. One exhibit deals forthrightly with her addiction. The rest of her story and artistry unfold throughout the museum’s displays and the Gumm home. Visitors get a sense of her spellbinding stage presence, her dedication as a homefront volunteer during World War II, and her life as a mother who loved her three kids dearly, if imperfectly.

Earlier this year, the ruby slippers returned briefly to Grand Rapids, this time accompanied by the FBI agent assigned to the case, Christopher Dudley. Also on hand for a small private ceremony in Garland’s one-time living room were Morgan and Alvin Winston, special agent in charge of the FBI in Minnesota. Kelsch and Shaw were there, having rebuilt a friendship splintered by the theft. It was the first time Shaw had seen the ruby slippers in nearly twenty years.

“It was very emotional,” Shaw says.

Shaw, who was allowed to keep the insurance payout, will be featured in a documentary about the theft, as will local blogger and sleuth Pam Dowell. Few details about the film have been released, but the ruby slippers have a busy schedule ahead. Shaw is scheduled to join the ruby slippers on visits to London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, a tour de force building up to an auction later this year in Los Angeles.

As of this writing, they’re expected to fetch at least $3 million.

If You Go

The Judy Garland Museum describes itself as “Home to an eclectic Judy Garland and Wizard of Oz collection, Judy’s 1920s restored Birthplace Home, the Children’s Discovery Museum, on two acres of Minnesota beauty. The Museum hosts thoughtfully curated exhibits and artifacts, including the original carriage featured in The Wizard of Oz, a Dorothy Gale test dress worn by Judy Garland, and many personal Judy Garland items collected over the last 40 years.”

The museum is open daily from Memorial Day to September 30 and is open four days a week the rest of the year. A Ruby Slippers Theft Tour is offered Fridays and Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. Privately scheduled tours are also available. For prices, hours, and more about the museum and adjoining Children’s Discovery Museum, visit judygarlandmuseum.com.

Once, She was Frances

In 1938, fifteen-year-old Frances Gumm returned to Grand Rapids, her birthplace and where her vaudeville entertainer parents had operated a theater for about a dozen years. From the moment she performed “Jingle Bells” onstage at age two, Frances was enamored with entertaining audiences, and the love was mutual.

Eleven years had gone by since the family moved to southern California. The girl who came back was a movie star with a new name: Judy Garland. During her brief sojourn, she saw her childhood home and met kids who’d have been her schoolmates. Ironically, an airtight contract prohibited the girl with the peerless contralto voice from singing even a note in Grand Rapids.

THE WIZARD OF OZ. Year: 1939. Director: VICTOR FLEMING. Stars: JUDY GARLAND. Credit: M.G.M. / Album.

Garland’s life was on parallel trajectories by that early April visit: One was fueled by the sheer force of her talent. Once Oz was released a year later, it catapulted her to the highest echelons of show biz. “She’s one of the very few performers of any generation who transcends film, dance, and recording,” says John Fricke, film historian and respected Garland biographer.

But the 1938 visit also foreshadowed a far darker arc in Garland’s life. In histories about the Gumm family gathered in the mid-’80s by the Itasca County Historical Society, one woman wrote:

“My mother and a few of her and Ethel’s [Garland’s mother] mutual friends, all of whom are now dead, hosted a luncheon at a local restaurant, and I remember Mother remarking afterward that she felt very sympathetic toward Judy because they were served fresh strawberry shortcake and Judy refused hers, saying she wouldn’t dare eat that because of weight-watching. She was very young at the time.”

Big shots at MGM Studios decided the petite teenager wasn’t thin enough; they wanted their four-foot-eleven star at ninety pounds. On their orders, starting when she was about fourteen years old, Garland was administered amphetamines. She spent the rest of her life battling addiction.

MGM’s publicity machine churned out images of studio chief Louis B. Mayer as his young star’s champion. Behind closed doors, Mayer belittled Garland, calling her “a fat little pig with pigtails.” On the Oz set, she was provided unlimited quantities of coffee and cigarettes, but on Mayer’s orders, the studio cafeteria was only to serve her chicken broth at mealtime. Until she died of an accidental overdose at age forty-seven, critics would label her as too scrawny when she was at her thinnest and too fat when she wasn’t.