Wayne Pratt.
By R. Scudder Smith
WOODBURY, CONN. -- Wayne Pratt, well-known antiques dealer with
shops on both Main Street in Woodbury and Nantucket, says that he
is "prepared to participate in an open, public civil proceeding
to determine the provenance and ownership of a long-lost copy of
the Bill of Rights that North Carolina claims belongs to it."
This document, owned by Pratt for a number of years, was seized
in a sting operation by the FBI on March 18 when in the process
of being sold to the National Constitution Center in
Philadelphia. The agents acted under a sealed seizure warrant
signed by Chief District Judge Terrence Boyle in Raleigh, N.C.,
five days earlier.
At least 14 copies of the Bill of Rights, handwritten, were made
when the first ten amendments to the Constitution were ratified
in 1791. One copy was given to each of the original states, and
one was retained by the federal government. At present, about
five states have either lost or misplaced their copies.
North Carolina's copy disappeared at the end of the Civil War and
it is the belief of historians that it was stolen from the
statehouse in April 1864 by a Union soldier while General William
Tecumseh Sherman's troops marched through Raleigh. The soldier
who stole it took it with him to his home in Ohio and sold it
about one year later.
According to a news article in the March 20 issue of The News
and Observer in Raleigh, the following took place:
At a two-hour meeting Tuesday [March 18] in Philadelphia, an FBI
agent posed as a financier buying the document for the National
Constitution Center. The agent met with the seller's broker.
After the broker confirmed the transfer of the money to the
seller's bank account, the broker made a call.
"A courier appeared with this document in a cardboard box, if you
can believe that," said Jeffery Lampinski, special agent in
charge of the FBI's Philadelphia office. But the wire transfer
was a ruse, arranged with the bank's help. As soon as the
exchange was made, the undercover agent revealed that he was
serving a seizure warrant issued in Raleigh by Federal Judge
Terrance Boyle and that the bank transfer was not real,
authorities said. The asking price for the document was $5
million. According to archivists the value of the supposed North
Carolina copy of the Bill of Rights is $20/30 million.
Hugh Stevens, Pratt's attorney, indicated his firm was notified
by federal prosecutors on Tuesday, March 25, that his client was
the subject of a criminal investigation. He went on to say "a
criminal case is unwarranted," adding "even the US attorney has
acknowledged that if the document was 'stolen,' the alleged the
theft did not occur within the lifetime of anyone now alive."
Antiques and The Arts Weekly has learned that there is a
bill of sale for the document and there was never any indication
that the item was stolen. "I have done nothing wrong and I am
sure that will be proven out," Pratt said.
