Wayne Pratt

Wayne Pratt, who appraised antiques on "Antiques Roadshow" and who figured in the corruption scandal that toppled former Gov. John G. Rowland, died Thursday. He was 64. He died at home in Woodbury of complications after heart surgery, said Marybeth Keene, vice president of Wayne Pratt Inc. Pratt's business, in Massachusetts, specializes in Windsor chairs, primitive portraits, painted country furniture, mechanical banks and folk art. He bought his first Windsor chair at age 7 and made enough money selling antiques as a teenager to finance his first year in college, Keene said. He pleaded guilty in March 2004 to a federal tax charge related to his purchase of Rowland's Washington, D.C., condominium at more than the market rate. Pratt told prosecutors that a friend, state contractor Robert Matthews, used him as a front man for the purchase. Pratt, on public television's "Antiques Roadshow" for six seasons, also figured in a lawsuit over an original version of the Bill of Rights. The document was a draft that President George Washington dispatched in 1789 to encourage North Carolina to ratify the U.S. Constitution. It had been missing since the end of the Civil War and resurfaced in 2000 when Matthews brokered a sale in which Pratt bought it from two Connecticut women for $200,000. After a legal battle with the FBI, which seized the document in 2003, Pratt relinquished his claim and donated it to North Carolina. In return, federal authorities agreed to not prosecute Pratt and dropped a federal lawsuit.