A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and insured for $1-million is missing from a museum.
Police Chief Leigh Serfling said the slippers were stolen late on Saturday or early on Sunday. Someone entered the museum through a window and broke into the small display case holding the slippers.
”There’s not a whole lot of evidence,” Serfling said. ”We’re hoping that someone in the community has seen something.”
Children’s Discovery museum director John Kelsch said the slippers belong to a Los Angeles man who loaned them to the museum for several weeks this summer.
The children’s museum houses the Judy Garland museum, which displayed the same pair of slippers last year. Garland was born in Grand Rapids in 1922.
”The slippers are a major attraction at our museum,” Kelsch said in a news release on Monday. ”It is our hope that the slippers can be recovered immediately.”
Four pairs of ruby slippers worn by Garland in the movie are known to exist, including one pair on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Another pair sold at Christie’s auction house in 2000 for $666 000. — Sapa-AP