No place like home: Dorothy's ruby slippers recovered
Posted 6:01 a.m. | Updated 2:30 p.m.
The case of the missing red ruby slippers is closed.
Minneapolis FBI agents and local law enforcement will hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon to announce they've recovered one of four known surviving pairs of ruby slippers worn by actress Judy Garland in the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz."
No details of the recovery were provided with the announcement of the news conference.
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The famous slippers, worn by Garland's character Dorothy as she clicked her heels and repeated "there's no place like home," have been missing since August of 2005, when they were stolen in a smash-and-grab burglary at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn.
The slippers have eluded hunters since then, even with several enticing rewards. Law enforcement offered an initial $250,000 reward for information leading to the slippers, and in 2015, an anonymous donor from Arizona offered a $1 million reward to anyone willing to come forward with the location of the slippers and the name of the person who stole them.
The search took investigators to some strange locations. Volunteers dove into the Tioga Mine Pit mine in Itasca County four times in 2015 to search for the slippers but came up empty. In 2011, law enforcement searched the San Diego home of a man who claimed to have the slippers but ultimately was hiding the wrong pair.
The missing slippers, which were insured for $1 million, have serial numbers and Garland's name scrawled on the inside. The museum hired a private investigation firm in 2013 to continue working on the case.
The other three remaining pairs are outside of Minnesota, located at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Smithsonian and in a private collection.
Minneapolis FBI agent Jill Sanborn, North Dakota United States Attorney Christopher Myers and Grand Rapids Police Chief Scott Johnson will host a press conference about the missing slippers at 1 p.m.