Ruby Slippers theft saga: now with revenge porn

The saga of the Ruby Slippers stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 has just gotten even weirder. First 76-year-old Terry Martin admitted to the theft and said in his plea agreement that he thought the shoes were festooned with real rubies rather than sequins and glass beads. Now a second man has been charged with the theft plus another count of witness tampering for having threatened to release a sex tape of a woman if she told authorities he had the shoes.

The second man, Jerry Hal Saliterman, also 76 years old, was busted after a search of his home on December 20th, 2023. When the FBI showed up at his door with a search warrant in hand, Saliterman admitted that he had stolen goods in his home, but insisted they were all the products of old crimes. You’ll be shocked to read that statement was less than fully honest.

In a padlocked, fenced-off area under the stairs, agents found name-brand electronics, digital grills and wine pourers, all new and still in their boxes. A storage shed out back had expensive artworks. The raid also found disposable food storage containers full of an estimate $30,000 cash wrapped with foil to hide their contents.

A woman involved with the crimes confessed to the FBI that Saliterman led a retail theft ring that operated undeterred for 15 years, hitting such august locations as William Sonoma and the Apple Store hundreds of times each. The theft ring ceased operations only in 2021 or 2022.

It was this woman who knew about the Ruby Slippers because Saliterman had shown them to her in a grocery bag. He then put them in a plastic tub and buried them in the yard for seven years. According to the indictment, Saliterman had the shoes from the theft in 2005 until their recovery in 2018. Apparently he and his gang put the shoes in an ultraviolet sanitizer cabinet in a risible attempt to destroy any DNA evidence they left on them. He also threatened the woman with revenge porn and that he would “take her down with him” should she tell the authorities what she knew.

Saliterman has not yet entered a plea, but his attorney claimed he was not guilty. The FBI has not divulged the details of the investigation that located the shoes, just that they were recovered in Minneapolis in July 2018, but given the timeline in the indictment, presumably he kept them hidden until the very end.

While the perpetrators wend their ways through the court system, the Ruby Slippers were returned to their owner, collector Michael Shaw, last month. Shaw had loaned them to the museum where they were on display at the time of the theft and now that he has them back, he has decided to sell them. The shoes will be exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo before going under the hammer at Heritage Auctions in December. The Judy Garland Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society are itching to acquire them for Judy Garland’s hometown museum, but with a pre-sale estimate of $3-5 million, they’re going to need a huge infusion of cash to beat the private bidders.

90-year-old British train container found in Belgium

A 90-year-old train container of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) has been unearthed in Antwerp, Belgium. The carriage was discovered in an excavation along the route of the Oosterweel Link, a project to complete the R1 Antwerp Ring Road by connecting the highway with tunnels under the Scheldt River and Albert Canal. It had been buried in the Noordkasteel, a 19th century fortress overlooking the Scheldt that was converted into a recreational park in 1934.

The wagon was placed on a concrete slab embedded into the embankment filled with sandy soil. Nobody knows why it ended up being buried in Antwerp or when.

In the early 19th century, simple square boxes were used in England for rail transport. Railroad companies quickly switched to standardized containers that were easier to load and unload.

The first model of LNER (London North Eastern Railway), one of the four English railway companies, was painted reddish brown around 1930. A few years later this color changed to the characteristic blue. The red container was only in use for a few years, which makes this find very rare.

The number BK769 identifies it as a furniture container with a capacity of four imperial tons (8960 lbs) built in 1935 or 1936. Like a moving pod today, the container was designed to be loaded onto trucks or flat train wagons to move furniture from house to house. This was the only known surviving example of the red oxide LNER moving container.

I say “was,” because unfortunately the container did not survive excavation. The wooden walls were too unstable to remain standing when the soil was dug away. Recovery proved impossible and the walls collapsed. The box all but disintegrated.

FBI repatriates 22 artifacts looted from Okinawa in WWII

The FBI has returned 22 objects and artworks looted during the Battle of Okinawa after they were discovered in a Massachusetts attic. The artifacts were found by a family when they were going through their father’s personal effects after his death. They figured the painted scrolls, pottery, metal figurines and a hand-drawn map of Okinawa were Asian pieces that might be antiques, so they did some online research and found the painted scrolls listed in the FBI’s National Stolen Art File. The family reached out to the FBI and reported the artifacts as potentially looted cultural property and the FBI Boston Field Office initiated an investigation in January of 2023.

They confirmed that the painted scrolls, map, pottery and metal objects were from the Ryukyu Kingdom, a tributary state of China (1429-1875) and vassal state of Japan (1609-1879) that ruled Okinawa until it was formally annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1879. The painted scrolls depict Ryukyu monarchs and date to the 18th and 19th centuries.

The scrolls were very fragile and had to be unrolled by expert conservators to determine if they were the lost scrolls.

The FBI transported the artifacts from Massachusetts to Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., where the scrolls were unfurled for the first time in many years, revealing portraits of Okinawan royalty in vivid reds, golds, and blue accents.

The FBI compared the scrolls to old black and white photographs taken in the 1940s before they were stolen and identified them as the lost Okinawan paintings. An unsigned, type-written letter found with the collection said they were collected in Okinawa in the last days of World War II. The deceased father was a Word War II veteran, but he never served in the Pacific theater.

[FBI Special Agent Geoffrey] Kelly explained that these artifacts were especially important because they depict Okinawan royalty—and serve as pieces of cultural identity. “A nation’s cultural identity is really summed up in the artifacts and the history,” said Kelly. “This is what makes a culture. And without it, you’re taking away their history. And the surest way to eliminate a culture is to eliminate their past. And so, it’s really important for us as stewards of artifacts and cultural patrimony to make every effort that we can to see that these go back to the civilizations and the cultures in the countries where they belong.”

The National Museum of Asian Art assisted the FBI in ensuring that the artifacts were properly packaged for transport. Colonel Scott DeJesse and U.S. Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) 38 G Monuments Men and Women led the effort to secure and transport the artifacts to Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service provided additional support, and FBI legal attaché office in Tokyo was responsible for the handover of the artifacts in Japan. On March 15, 2024, the official handover took place, and Denny Tamaki, the Governor of Okinawa Prefecture, announced the return of the artifacts.

Bodleian acquires rare Bach manuscript

Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685–1750 Cantata 'Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein', BWV 128 [1725]. Photo courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries have acquired a rare autograph manuscript by German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. One of only four manuscripts in the UK written in Bach’s hand, the document was accepted by the government in lieu of £3.65 million in inheritance taxes.

Also known as the Kohn manuscript after collector Sir Ralph Kohn who fled Nazi Germany for England in 1940, the 16-page manuscript is Bach’s composition of his cantata for the feast of the Ascension Day, May 10, 1725: “Auf Christi Himmelfahrt Allein.” This is the only surviving working manuscript of this cantata and it is the complete score. The music would not be printed until 1878.

Kohn had previously loaned the manuscript for exhibition at Buckingham Palace in the early 2000s. He died in 2016 and his widow Zahava inherited his collection. She has now passed away as well and her heirs paid the tax bill with the manuscript.

The short, festive cantata, which lasts less than 20 minutes in performance, is scored for two horns, three different types of oboe, trumpet, strings and continuo, with four-part chorus, and alto, tenor and bass soloists. Its five movements comprise a celebratory opening chorus, a short recitative and aria for bass voice, a duet for alto and tenor, ending with a simple chorale. The music for this cantata was all new, which is relatively unusual for Bach who frequently recycled and adapted movements from his other compositions. The music for many of his cantatas has not survived at all.

The manuscript comprises four large-format bifolia (16 pages), handwritten by the composer himself in brown and black ink. The title is written above the first page of music: ‘Festo Ascensionis Xsti, Auff Christi Himmelfahrt allein’, preceded by Bach’s personal epigraph ‘J.J.’, which stands for ‘Jesu Juva’ (‘Jesus, Help’). This is Bach’s composing score, a working document in which the composer made many corrections and revisions, especially in the opening chorus. The manuscript also contains some annotations by Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and a few faint pencil marks made by the printers as they prepared the work for its first publication in 1878.

As Cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, Bach was expected to compose a new cantata for practically every Sunday of the church year, as well as special festivals like Ascension Day. Much of the writing betrays signs of great haste: for example, bar lines straggle down pages and there is little attempt to maintain the vertical alignment of the different parts. It is also interesting to see how Bach achieves his alterations by a variety of means: sometimes by scratching out the text with a pin, or simply by crossing through with his pen. The smudges made accidentally by his hand or sleeve before the ink was dry add a personal touch to the manuscript. Occasionally, where Bach has deleted notes or passages and heavily gone over various sections with his pen, the acidic ink has eroded the paper. This is unfortunately a common problem with the surviving Bach autographs, but this example is better than most, presenting fairly limited signs of erosion.

Characteristically, Bach does his best to condense the maximum amount of music into the minimum space, keen to avoid wasting valuable paper wherever possible. Every corner of the page is filled, the music flowing right to the edge. The dramatic immediacy on the page and the evident haste in which the composer wrote down his music, impart a sense of urgency and creative energy to Bach’s scores, which are often extremely beautiful in their own right. This manuscript is no exception.

The Kohn manuscript went on display March 15th in the Weston Library’s Treasury as part of the Write, Cut, Rewrite exhibition which runs through January 5, 2025. The full manuscript has been digitized and uploaded to the library’s online collection, Digital Bodleian. A performance of the work to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its first performance in 1725 is being planned.

15th c. gold ring with Christ engraving found in Sweden

A gold ring engraved with the face of Christ dating to the early 15th century has been discovered in a wide-scale excavation in Kalmar, Sweden. The ring was found in a waste disposal context but it is in almost untouched condition, suggesting it was accidentally lost rather than deliberately discarded at the end of its usage. The ring is small, so it was probably worn by a woman. Rings of similar type have been discovered in northern Finland and in southern and eastern Sweden.

Another devotional object discovered in a waste area is a glass alsengem, a pilgrim’s amulet named after the Danish island of Als where the first examples was found. They were believed to protect wearers against misfortune on their travels. It dates to the 13th or 14th century and is carved with three rough stick figures. It is fragmentary — only the bottom of it survives — so it was likely thrown away rather than lost.

A major infrastructure project to replace water and sewage pipes and expand the stormwater pipe system was accompanied by archaeological investigations in compliance with cultural heritage laws. Two years of excavations over 10 blocks in the historical Old City, have unearthed the remains of wooden buildings, stone houses with vaulted cellars, streets, latrines, wells and more than 30,000 artifacts dating from between 1250 and 1650.

Never before have archaeologists had an opportunity to explore such a large contiguous area of medieval Kalmar (or of any medieval city, for that matter), and the results have exceeded all expectations, opening a window into the daily lives of the city’s residents over the course of centuries.