Glinda, the Good Witch in “The Wizard of Oz,” says it best when she describes the appeal of those ruby red slippers to the Wicked Witch of the West:

“Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn’t want them so badly.”

And so, for 13 years, the fate of a missing pair of red sequined slippers worn by actress Judy Garland as Dorothy has eluded law enforcement. The slippers were taken from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota that August when someone gained entrance by breaking the window on an emergency exit door and broke into the small display case housing the slippers. The slippers, which were insured for $1 million, may be worth between $2 million and $3 million, John Kelsch, executive director of the Judy Garland Museum, told the Associated Press in 2015. Memorabilia collector Michael Shaw loaned the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum for Grand Rapids’ annual “Wizard of Oz” festival in 2005. In 2012, Leonardo DiCaprio led a group of donors in purchasing a pair to be displayed at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, set to open this year in Los Angeles. Three others pairs of ruby slippers worn by Garland in the 1939 film are known to exist. After mysteriously landing in the colourful Land of Oz after a tornado hit her farm in Kansas, Garland’s character Dorothy has to click the heels of her slippers three times and repeat “there’s no place like home” to return.
A pair of Judy Garland's famous ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (1939) are recovered by police. The shoes were stolen from a museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005.