The dress was gifted to Catholic University and the former head of the drama department, Father Gilbert Hartke, in the 1970s. However, it is said to have mysteriously gone missing just a year after its arrival at the Washington, D.C., campus.
That is until June, when a staff member set out to unearth the piece of cinematic history, and found it in an unlikely spot.
Shutterstock
“Our building is in the process of renovations and upgrades, so I was cleaning out my office to prepare,” Ripa explained. “I noticed on top of the faculty mailboxes a trashbag and asked my co-worker to hand it to me. On the trashbag was a note for our former chair stating that he had found ‘this’ in his office and that he must have moved it when he moved out of the chair’s office… I was curious what was inside and opened the trashbag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoe box was the dress!! I couldn’t believe it.”
Ripa said he quickly retrieved gloves so he could examine the dress before bringing it to the archival department.
“Needless to say, I have found many interesting things in the Hartke during my time at CUA, but I think this one takes the cake,” he concluded.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Alastair Grant/AP/Shutterstock
Five other versions of the costume, besides the one discovered at Catholic University, have been found and verified as likely authentic, researchers from the Smithsonian told the school. This one will be housed in the university’s special collections department.
For more than a decade, the slippers remained lost. Then in 2017, the Grand Rapids Police Department got the FBI involved in the case after a tip came forward that turned into a potential case of extortion. The FBI put its Art Crime team, FBI Laboratory, and Chicago, Miami and Atlanta offices on the case, and eventually got the slippers back from a recovery operation in Minneapolis.
source: people.com
