PITTSBURG – Cyril Wecht, a pathologist and lawyer whose biting cynicism and controversial stances on high-profile deaths such as the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy caught the attention of prosecutors and viewers, died on Monday. He was 93 years old.
Wecht’s death was announced by the Pennsylvania Administrative Office of the Courts, which did not reveal the cause or location of death, saying only that he “passed away peacefully.”
Wecht’s almost meteoric rise to fame began in 1964, three years after he reentered civilian life after serving a brief stint at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, Wecht was serving as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County and a pathologist at a Pittsburgh hospital.
The request came from a group of forensic scientists: Review the Warren Commission report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated Kennedy. And Wecht, with his usual meticulousness, did just that – the beginning of what became a lifelong obsession to prove his theory that there was more than one shooter involved in the murder.
After reviewing autopsy documents, discovering that the president’s brain was missing, and viewing amateur video of the assassination, Wecht concluded that the commission’s conclusions were that there was a single bullet involved in the attack that killed Kennedy and injured the governor of Texas. , John Connally. Absolute nonsense.”
Wecht’s lecture circuit demonstration detailing his theory that it was impossible for a bullet to cause the damage it did that November day in Dallas appeared in Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” after the director consulted with him. It became the famous courtroom scene showing the path of the “magic bullet”.
Attorney F. Lee Bailey called Wecht “the most important spearhead of the challenge” to the Warren report. Wecht’s verbal altercation with commission member Senator Arlen Specter also became well known, culminating in an accusation in his book “Cause of Death” that the politician’s support for the single-bullet theory was “a stupid and pseudoscientific at best.”
Yet somehow, Wecht and Specter overcame their differences and developed a friendship of sorts, with the senator coming to the pathologist’s defense during a grueling five-year legal battle that sapped him of much of his life savings and ended in 2009.
In the end, Wecht emerged victorious in this, also when a series of legal maneuvers and court rulings forced prosecutors to drop all fraud and theft charges against him in a case that revolved around accusations that he had used his public position as a Allegheny County physician. examiner to promote his multi-million dollar private practice.
Wecht’s candor about the Kennedy assassination and the publicity it later generated made him a go-to pathologist in dozens of other high-profile cases, from Elvis Presley to JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen whose death remains unsolved.
In the murder trial of school principal Jean Harris, accused of murdering Dr. Herman Tarnower of the “Scarsdale Diet,” Wecht testified unsuccessfully for the defense. His testimony at Claus von Bulow’s trial may have helped acquit Von Bulow of charges of trying to kill his heiress wife, Sunny.
After studying Elvis’ autopsy report, Wecht concluded, and shared his findings on national television, that the King of Rock likely died of an overdose rather than heart disease. His findings encouraged Tennessee authorities to reopen the case in 1994, although in the end the official cause of death remained unchanged.
In the months before OJ Simpson’s 1994 murder trial, Wecht was a frequent guest on talk shows, conjecturing on the “Today” show and “Good Morning America” about the meaning of blood samples and other evidence.
When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Wecht again went on air, discussing the deadly mix of drugs and sedatives that killed the King of Pop.
Although he spent more than five decades dealing with death almost daily, Wecht managed to remain generally upbeat, his heartfelt laughter echoing from deep within his gut, often amusing himself with his own sometimes insulting and caustic jokes.
Still, in a series of interviews with the Associated Press in 2009, Wecht was cautious, considering the possibility of his own death. His greatest fear, he noted at the time, was suffering or becoming dependent on other people, friends and family.
“I want to be alive when I die. Think about it,” Wecht said. “I mean, okay, what is life?”
It is essential, he said, to die recognizing those you love, because when you die, they will no longer be there.
“I will be separated from my wife, my children, my grandchildren and, one day, my great-grandchildren. That’s what death means to me,” Wecht said.
“I wish this could last forever.”
Ever the realist, however, Wecht took the time to detail many of his cases in six books. In “Cause of Death” – a book authored by Wecht, his son Benjamin and Mark Curriden, a former writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Dallas Morning News – attorney Alan Dershowitz praised the pathologist as the “Sherlock Holmes of the sciences forensics.” .”
The son of a grocer, Wecht attended graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh and later received degrees in medicine and law from the same school. He served two terms as Allegheny County coroner, finishing his second in 2006 when he resigned after being indicted on fraud and theft charges.
His first term, from 1970 to 1980, was also tense. Additionally, he was accused of using county morgue facilities for his private forensic business while he was coroner. He paid $200,000 in restitution after a long legal fight. He also served a four-year term as an Allegheny County commissioner.
A run for U.S. Senate against John Heinz III in 1982 was unsuccessful.
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