How NC pried its long-lost Bill of Rights from ‘Antiques Roadshow’ dealer 18 years ago
North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights had been missing for more than a century when an FBI agent posing as a wealthy philanthropist showed up to “purchase” the historical document on March 18, 2003.
A courier brought it to a Philadelphia law office in a cardboard box.
Five FBI agents carried it out.
The Bill of Rights’ storied disappearance — from the waning days of the Civil War to the re-emergence at various points in history before its final recovery from the clutches of an “Antiques Roadshow” dealer and his partner 18 years ago — might sound like the stuff of a true-crime Netflix documentary.
But if “Murder Among the Mormons” has taught us anything, it’s that the world of historical document collectors can be ruthless.
“It was like a kidnapping,” said Charles Reavis, who was the U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of North Carolina at the time of the sting that led to the document’s recovery.
And it was. From the initial theft in Raleigh to the backdoor dealings between the family of an Indianapolis businessman, an antiques dealer and a museum, it took 138 years for the case to play out.
A ‘souvenir of the war’
The wild saga began in 1865 — 76 years after North Carolina ratified the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in 1789.
The Bill of Rights was the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and all of the original 13 states, including North Carolina, had copies. Only eight states today still have theirs, according to The National Archives Pieces of History blog.
North Carolina had kept its copies at the state Capitol in Raleigh, which was occupied by Union troops near the end of the Civil War. A soldier from Ohio who was posted at the N.C. secretary of state’s office stole the copy of the Bill of Rights as the war drew to a close, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
“Similar confiscations by souvenir-seeking soldiers took place throughout the final months of the conflict, but few were of this national magnitude,” the Marshals Service said.
The soldier sold the copy shortly thereafter for $5 to a businessman named Charles A. Shotwell, according to historical record.
The document re-emerged more than three decades later in an article published by the Indianapolis News, which described the copy of the Bill of Rights as an “interesting relic” that hung on Shotwell’s office wall. North Carolina’s then-Secretary of State Dr. Cyrus Thompson sent a letter to the paper asking for the document’s return.
Shotwell responded by saying it was “his property, valuable to him as a relic and souvenir of the war, and that he certainly would not give it up on any ‘demand,’ no matter from whom such demand might come,” the Indianapolis News reported at the time.
Refusing to pay
It wasn’t until 1925 that a representative for the Shotwell family reached out with an offer to sell the copy of the Bill of Rights to the state Historical Commission, according to the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. But the commission refused, saying it was the rightful property of the state.
Nothing was heard of the document’s whereabouts for the next 70 years.
Then, in 1995, the state cultural resources office received a letter from a lawyer named John Richardson offering to sell the Bill of Rights copy, Blue Ridge Now reported. In the letter, Richardson reportedly warned to not “try to figure out who my clients are ... if you try to figure out who my clients are, something could happen to the document that is in nobody’s best interest.”
The selling price was somewhere between $10 million and $29 million, according to Blue Ridge Now, but negotiations fell through when North Carolina refused to pay, for a second time.
Shotwell’s granddaughters ultimately sold the Bill of Rights copy in 2000 for $200,000 to an antiques dealer named Wayne Pratt — who frequently appeared on the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow,” the newspaper reported.
A few years after purchasing the document, Pratt tried to sell it to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for $4 million and said its origins were “unknown,” according to the the N.C. DNCR.
When the center asked the First Federal Congress Project at George Washington University to verify it, they reportedly found “the document was without question North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights.” Pennsylvania’s then-Gov. Ed Rendell subsequently proposed to former N.C. Gov. Mike Easley that they split the cost of the document.
But for a third and final time, North Carolina refused to pay.
The final showdown
In lieu of buying back the Bill of Rights copy, Easley reportedly worked with the state’s Attorney General Roy Cooper — who is now the governor — to orchestrate a sting with federal agents and retrieve the document.
Robert Wittman was an FBI agent at the time who specialized in the recovery of “valuable documents and works of art,” the N.C. DNCR said. He was sent to meet with Pratt’s attorney, Richardson, at a law office in Philadelphia on March 18, 2003, while posing as a philanthropist.
At the meeting, Wittman reportedly presented a check for $4 million.
Richardson arrived without the Bill of Rights, which was sitting at a nearby coffee shop with a courier, Blue Ridge Now reported. He waited to look over the documents and the check before summoning the courier.
“A courier appeared with this document in a cardboard box, if you can believe that,” Jeffrey A. Lampinski, the FBI special agent in charge of the Philadelphia office, said at a news conference after the sting, The Washington Post reported.
According to the N.C. DNCR, that’s when “someone in the room gave the signal for the five waiting FBI agents to seize the document.”
The Bill of Rights was subsequently returned to North Carolina on the jet of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who would later make headlines while investigating former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russian officials and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
While Pratt gave up his claim of ownership over the Bill of Rights copy to avoid being criminally charged, his partner Robert V. Matthews did not.
According to the state cultural resources office, it would take another five years before North Carolina was awarded both possession and ownership of the copy of the Bill of Rights in the court of law.
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 3:38 PM with the headline "How NC pried its long-lost Bill of Rights from ‘Antiques Roadshow’ dealer 18 years ago."
