Twenty years ago today: Antiques Roadshow’s Wayne Pratt pleaded guilty in escalating Rowland scandals. End grew near.
The surprise guilty plea of a celebrity antiques dealer twenty years ago today signaled the approach of the end of Governor John Rowland’s tenure in office as scandal grew closer to the Republican in his third term.
Wayne Pratt, who made frequent appearances on the popular Antiques Roadshow program, entered a courtroom in the U.S. District Court in Hartford twenty years ago today to enter a plea to filing false tax information and agree to cooperate with prosecutors. Pratt confirmed the lengthy tale of facts read by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy that revealed the Litchfield County resident as the go-between in a scheme between Rowland and state contractor Robert Matthews in the sale of Rowland’s 278 sq. foot Washington, D.C. and its meager contents.
The Pratt plea came three months after Rowland confirmed a Courant investigation that revealed state employees and contractors had paid for or provided significant improvements at Rowland’s Litchfield County lakefront cottage. Rowland had initially scoffed at the Courant revelations.
By spring, one survey revealed 88% of Connecticut voters did not trust the once-popular governor.
Rowland unsuccessfully resisted subpoenas for records from a House inquiry committee and resigned shortly after a State Supreme Court decision ordered him to hand over documents. He resigned shortly after, leaving office on July 1st. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges three days before Christmas in the U.S. District Court in New Haven. In what appeared to be the end, it was a dreary roll call of acts betraying the public trust.
The first Rowland scandals (another would follow ten years later) included “trading authority for valuable favors and gifts. Charter flights, prostitutes, a state party American Express card, a vintage Mustang of mysterious provenance, a hot tub at a cottage and a staff member (whose husband Rowland nominated to be a judge) who covered his overdrawn checking account make up an incomplete but dispiriting roll call of perversions of public authority.”
On this day 20 years ago, his slide into disgrace came into view.