Robert Wittman - Priceless

By the time I spoke with Mrs. Patterson in 1999, and after three years of Pritchard’s deceptions, she just wanted the truth. I’ve always found it’s just best to deliver bad news directly. So I told her what I’d learned from Pritchard’s records: Her husband’s collection wasn’t in any museum. Pritchard had sold it to two private Civil War dealers for $65,000. It was gone.

“My whole being has been violated and I have been emotionally raped,” the widow recalled.

Pritchard had to be stopped. He wasn’t just conning people out of money. He was stealing their heritage.

IN MARCH 2001, based on the evidence we presented to the grand jury, Pritchard and Juno were indicted on various federal charges, including defrauding the Wilson family and the Pickett family. The men faced as much as ten years in prison.

We were not finished. We had brought the initial indictment that March because the five-year statute of limitations was about to expire in the Wilson and Pickett cases. But we still had more time to bring a superseding indictment on charges related to the Zouave uniform, the Meade presentation pistol, and the Patterson family collection. We also weighed whether to charge Pritchard’s father for his role in the Hunt Confederate uniform scam. So far, I hadn’t interviewed the elder Pritchard.

I dreaded the confrontation. I’d known the elder Pritchard for more than a decade and had long respected him as a top man in the museum field. I’d visited him a dozen times at the Civil War Museum in Philadelphia to research cases and learn more about collecting. A well-thumbed copy of his three-volume treatise on Civil War weapons and uniforms sat on my desk at home.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to meet him face to face. The elder Pritchard was living in Memphis at the time, so I called him there. I made it clear that although he and I knew each other, this was an official FBI interview. I told him that we were going to charge his son with the Hunt uniform scam. I gave the father a choice: Cooperate on this one facet of the case or face a felony charge.

“Look, Russ,” I said. “Just tell me the truth and everything will go away.” In other words, you won’t be indicted. If he told us the truth, Goldman planned to exercise his prosecutorial discretion and leave him out of the next indictment. If he lied, Goldman planned to charge him.

“I’m sorry, Bob,” the elder Pritchard said. “I can’t help you.”

He couldn’t admit to me that he’d conspired with his son to swindle the Hunt family. I doubt this was because he wanted to protect his son. He knew it was too late for that. I think he couldn’t admit what he did because he knew it would ruin his reputation in the field.

I gave him one more chance. “Tell me what happened, Russ.”

“Bob, I can’t.”

“OK, but you’re going to go down.”

“I know. But I just can’t do it.”

Juno, on the other hand, played it smart. He knew we had a solid case against him, and he knew he could shave years off a prison term by pleading guilty and cooperating.

Two days after my conversation with the father, we filed the superseding indictment against both Pritchards.

Within a month, the Pritchard son and his attorney came to the FBI office in Philadelphia. He met with me, Goldman, and Heine to give a proffer statement, a private off-the-record confession, the prelude to a plea agreement.

Over two hours, Pritchard confessed to everything, and even dimed out his dad. Proffer sessions and confessions are incredibly stressful for defendants. They have to look their accusers in the eye—the very prosecutor and agents who’ve been hounding them for years, dragging their name into the newspaper, embarrassing their families, scandalizing their friends—and admit that yes, indeed, they did it. They did it all. Proffers are rarely pleasant and sometimes contentious. I’ve seen defendants leave a proffer session looking as if they’ve aged a couple of years. Pritchard? He didn’t look mussed at all.

When it was over, he walked over to shake Goldman’s hand, gripping the prosecutor’s elbow with his left hand, an old politician’s trick to keep the other man from pulling away.

“Mr. Goldman,” he said, “I want to thank you for bringing my act to an end. This is good for me. I’m glad you’re bringing these charges against me.”

Goldman raised his left eyebrow, broke away, and gave Pritchard a hard stare that said, “Don’t bullshit me.”

IN 2001, THE year Pritchard and Juno pleaded guilty, Harrisburg’s redbrick $50 million, sixty-five-thousand-square-foot National Civil War Museum celebrated its grand opening. It featured state-of-the-art displays and dioramas with genuine artifacts of war, including the kepi hat that Pickett wore at Gettysburg.

Like the Picketts, most families didn’t get their treasures back. The courts concluded that despite the frauds, the descendants no longer enjoyed legal title to the artifacts Pritchard had sold. The mayor of Harrisburg successfully argued that the city, too, was a victim of Pritchard and Juno, and that it was not required to return the items it acquired for its museum.

The Pritchard father would go to trial on the single charge related to the uniform scam, lose, and be sentenced to six months in a halfway house. Juno also got a few months in a halfway house. The Pritchard son would get a year and a day in prison and be ordered to pay $830,000 in restitution.

Despite the relatively light sentences, Goldman and I were thrilled with the outcome. The Antiques Roadshow investigation sent several important messages, and I couldn’t help but think of my father and all the other honest antiques dealers down on Howard Street in Baltimore, working to make a living on small margins. To them, the case demonstrated that someone cared, that someone was watching this unregulated industry—and that unscrupulous dealers faced public shame and possible imprisonment.

The public response was even greater than we’d hoped. In the collecting community, the Antiques Roadshow investigation represented such a watershed that one of the major trade publications printed the Pritchard indictment word for word. Surfing the wave of publicity the case brought, I received a torrent of tips that led to more important recoveries, including a Confederate regiment’s battle flag and a priceless sword presented to a Union hero of the great Monitor-Merrimack battle, missing since its theft from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1931. Goldman and I followed up the Antiques Roadshow prosecution with another indictment that shook the collectible world, charging two prominent Midwestern dealers with using fake appraisal documents to con a wealthy businessman into grossly overpaying for four antique firearms. One of the weapons in evidence was the world’s first Magnum revolver, a six-shot, .44-caliber Colt, the very handgun that Samuel Walker, the famed Texas Ranger, carried into his final, fatal battle against Mexican guerrillas.

But long before the Antiques Roadshow scandal wound toward its conclusion and Pritchard reported to prison, I was already turning my attention to my next case, my first international art crime investigation. Within months, I hoped, I’d be stalking stolen art in South America.

Rio de Janeiro, 2001 .

IN A CABANA ON IPANEMA, ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY David Hall and I sipped milk from coconut shells. Before us, Brazil’s trendiest beach buzzed under brilliant sunlight. Barefoot kids kicked up sand, playing volleyball with their feet. Rollerbladers in short shorts cruised the sidewalk. Bronzed hunks in Speedos preened, chatting up young ladies in thongs. The Latin pulse from a boom box dueled with the reggae beat from café speakers. At the opposite end of Guanabara Bay, a scarlet sun hovered over Sugar Loaf Mountain.