Known as much for his brilliant mind as his profanity, for his controversial opinions as his work ethic, for his love of family as his inflated sense of self, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was a study in contrasts.
While the forensic pathologist — who had both medical and law degrees — made a name for himself nationally by working on high-profile cases like the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the unsolved murders of JonBenet Ramsey and Nicole Brown Simpson, the diminutive Wecht also cut a larger-than-life figure at home in Pittsburgh.
From serving as Allegheny County’s coroner to one of its county commissioners to making a run for federal office, Wecht lived nearly all of his adult life happily in the public eye, often seeking out the intense media attention he got.
“I’m not one to tell colleagues in my field to engage the media as much as I do. That’s entirely up to them,” Wecht wrote in his biography, “The Life and Deaths of Cyril Wecht,” published in 2020. “But if any of them who, because of their passivity, shyness or arrogance, believe that I appear in the media too often, screw them.”
Wecht, who grew up in the Hill District and lived for decades in Squirrel Hill, died on Monday.
He was 93.
Celebrity status
Wecht was born in Bobtown, Greene County, as the only child of Jewish immigrant parents. According to his biography, he always knew he would grow up to be a doctor. But he also had an interest in the law and found a way — through forensic pathology — to follow the two pursuits together.
He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree and medical degree and later earned his law degree at the University of Maryland.
Wecht served in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed in 1959 at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., where he was able to continue his work in pathology.
It was there, according to his biography, that he met his future wife, Sigrid Ronsdal.
After two years of military service, Wecht moved to Maryland, where he finished law school and completed a fellowship in forensic pathology.
Cyril and Sigrid were married in Pittsburgh at Temple Rodef Shalom in 1961. The Wechts moved back to Pittsburgh in 1962 and stayed.
They had four children, David, Daniel, Benjamin and Ingrid.
Public life
Wecht began working as a pathologist and in 1964 was hired to be an assistant prosecutor and medical-legal adviser in the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.
He became chief deputy coroner in 1966 and was elected to the top position in 1970. He served as coroner for 10 years and then again from 1996 to 2006. Wecht served one four-year term as county commissioner in 1980 and made an unsuccessful run as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Wecht lost his bid in 1999 to become the county’s first elected executive — but he served, albeit briefly, as its first medical examiner when the row office of coroner was eliminated in a restructuring of county government.
In addition to his work as coroner, Wecht founded his own consulting business, Wecht Pathology Associates, in the late 1960s.
Wecht gained celebrity status in 1978, when he testified before Congress about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, challenging the single-bullet theory.
Wecht — who has been nicknamed the Godfather of forensic pathology — has worked on and reviewed countless high-profile cases, including those of O.J. Simpson, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley and Jeffrey Epstein.
‘Amazing orator’
Dr. Michael Baden, who first met Wecht in the mid-1960s, said Wecht remained one of the leading forensic pathologists in the country across seven decades.
“He contributed a great deal to the field in his writings, books, lectures and public statements,” said Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City who has his own extensive roster of high-profile death investigations.
But one of the most important things Wecht did, Baden continued, was to make forensic pathology understandable.
“He had a way of bringing forensic science to the public,” Baden said. “He was able to capture his audience.”
Wecht was able to connect with jurors to make the science understandable to them without overcomplicating it.
“He was an amazing orator,” Baden said. “He was able to continue talking and not take a breath better than any person I knew.”
Wecht also dazzled listeners with a vocabulary that he might have called sesquipedalian — characterized by using long words with many syllables.
Wecht served as president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in the 1970s and continued as an active leader for 60 years, Baden said.
JFK assassination
Wecht was never afraid to take on controversial cases — or to disagree with his friends and colleagues.
Wecht and Baden were on opposite sides of the theories behind the JFK assassination.
“He felt the autopsy was improperly done by people not competent,” Baden said.
Wecht believed there were two shooters.
Baden said he believed the findings confirmed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter who fired twice.
“Cyril never agreed with the final results,” Baden said.
During his second stint as coroner, Wecht convened 66 open inquests to investigate not just police-involved killings but also questionable deaths in nursing homes, industrial accidents and crashes, said Tim Uhrich, who served as the office solicitor.
“We never treated this like we were law enforcement,” Uhrich said. “He believed in the power of the inquest, not only when the police were involved. It was always geared toward public health, public safety.”
Uhrich met Wecht in 1982 and worked on his Senate campaign. They remained friends ever since.
“He commanded loyalty,” Uhrich said. “He was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve met in my life.”
Legal troubles
It was near the end of Wecht’s first stint as elected coroner that he was charged in state court with selling pituitary glands removed from bodies without permission from the next of kin.
Although he was acquitted on theft-of-services charges, Wecht later settled a lawsuit filed by the county over the matter for $200,000.
More than 25 years later, Wecht faced criminal allegations for a second time for commingling his private consulting firm with his elected position.
Wecht, who had been appointed to serve as the county’s first medical examiner just a month earlier, was indicted in 2006 on 84 counts of misusing his public office for private gain.
The charges, for fraud and theft, alleged that Wecht had used county employees and resources to benefit his private business. The charges also included allegations that Wecht gave bodies to Carlow University in exchange for lab space.
He resigned as medical examiner on the day of the indictment.
The federal case ended in a mistrial in April 2008 after jurors failed to reach a verdict following seven weeks of testimony and three weeks of deliberations.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said immediately after that it would retry the case, but a federal judge threw the case out after finding that the search warrants used by the FBI to seize evidence were improper.
The case had ended, but it took a huge toll on Wecht and his reputation.
While he’d often been embroiled in controversy in his work – including butting heads with Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. over Wecht’s use of the coroner’s inquest to investigate possible police misconduct – it was the federal charges filed against Wecht that really angered him.
Particularly, said Jerry McDevitt, the criminal defense attorney who represented Wecht in his federal trial, the “de minimis” — or insignificant — nature of them.
“I don’t think he ever got over that,” McDevitt said.
Dichotomy of a man
Jeff Sewald, who worked with Wecht on his biography, said the trial was painful for him.
“The trial was debilitating, devastating – not only because it cost him a fortune, but his political career was on the line,” Sewald said. “It hurt him.”
People around Wecht suggested that he could have pleaded guilty in the federal case, gotten probation and gone into a quiet, peaceful retirement.
“He didn’t want to plead – for that to be his legacy,” Sewald said.
The case took a toll on Wecht.
“You get to take a measure of somebody when they’re under that kind of stress,” McDevitt said.
Wecht never stopped working the whole time.
“Even during the trial, he was doing autopsies,” McDevitt said. “He had a great love for what he did.”
During the federal trial, McDevitt said he remembered talking to Wecht, who was waiting in the green room before making an appearance on a national program. As they spoke on the phone, Wecht was using every expletive in the book about the U.S. attorney who brought the charges against him.
Then, a few minutes later, McDevitt saw him fill his television screen.
“He’d switch to this eloquent forensic pathologist,” he said. “It’s an interesting dichotomy of a man.”
Always working
After the federal court case ended, Wecht continued his work. He conducted autopsies for several counties in Western Pennsylvania, including Westmoreland, Armstrong, Fayette and Greene.
In 2017, he moved to the Westmoreland forensic center in Hempfield. He appeared in an HBO documentary entitled “One Nation Under Stress” in 2019 with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
Wecht served as the key witnesses for Westmoreland County prosecutors in dozens of homicide cases over the last half century.
“Proof of cause of death is of critical importance in prosecuting criminal homicide cases, and his testimony was remarkably credible and persuasive. He was the quintessential expert in those types of cases,” said former Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck. “It was rare when anyone would challenge his observations, and when they did, they were never successful.”
Peck said it was not unusual for spectators to gather in the courtroom to watch Wecht testify.
“Many people I would meet in passing would bring him up, and I came to realize how popular he was in western Pennsylvania,” Peck said.
F-bombs
Ken Bacha served as elected coroner for two decades. His father, Leo Bacha, preceded him as coroner and served 24 years in office.
Both Bachas hired Wecht to perform autopsies for Westmoreland County. Ken Bacha arranged for Wecht to relocate his autopsy business in 2017 from Carlow College in Pittsburgh to a newly built morgue at the county’s Forensics Center in Hempfield.
The county cut ties with Wecht in 2022, citing concerns about his age and his ability to continue his level of work.
Wecht was a character, according to Bacha.
“I’d do an F-bomb tally when I talked to him,” he said.
But he also praised Wecht’s expertise, his gravitas and his dedication.
“He was a person I could pick up the phone and call anytime for the entire 20 years I was in office,” Bacha said. “I always joked about him that when asked if Cyril Wecht is as good as he says he is, ‘I said yes, just ask him.’”
“We always knew having him on our team was essential. It kept him from being on the other team,” Bacha said.
After ending their relationship with Wecht, Westmoreland County commissioners approved a one-year contract with Wecht’s former assistant, Jennifer Hammers, to do autopsies for county Coroner Tim Carson.
Carson told TribLive in December 2022 that the decision was a difficult one that weighed heavily. Wecht said he was blindsided.
A biography
Sewald, an author and filmmaker, met Wecht when he was working on a piece about him for Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine.
One day, over lunch, as Wecht regaled Sewald with stories from his life, they agreed they should do a book, and Wecht’s biography was born.
“It took years,” Sewald said.
He estimates that he interviewed Wecht on at least 15 separate occasions – each time for an hour or two.
Sewald said that Wecht was always forthright and sincere with him. Sewald described Wecht as honest but pugnacious, gracious and fun – “prickly on the outside and soft on the inside.”
Each time they met, as was his habit – even with people he might not have liked – Wecht asked Sewald about his wife and kids before they talked about anything else.
“It was almost like a reflex,” Sewald said.
Wecht remembered details about them and their families.
Sewald recounted Wecht’s prolific letter-writing – he was famous for sending snide, loquacious letters to local reporters and editors frequently, often asking why he wasn’t portrayed more prominently in stories.
But Wecht also answered letters from school-age children and college students looking to enter the field of pathology, Sewald said.
He also enjoyed speaking at local schools.
Wecht could have chosen to go anywhere to practice medicine, Sewald said, but he chose to stay in Pittsburgh.
“Certain people define cities,” McDevitt said. “When you talk about Pittsburgh, Cyril’s one of them. Everybody associates Cyril Wecht with Pittsburgh.”
Holding hands
One of things about Wecht that always struck Baden, he said, was how much time he was able to spend with his family.
“His devotion to them and his religious feelings put me to shame,” Baden said. “The results show.”
McDevitt called it an amazing family.
He remembers watching Cyril and Sigrid leaving federal court during Wecht’s trial.
“They were very close,” McDevitt said. “They walked out holding hands like they were teenage lovers.”
Uhrich called Wecht’s family his most lasting legacy.
“It was always family first to him,” he said. “Out of everything, I think that’s his greatest accomplishment.
More than one person noted that Wecht’s children, who include a doctor and a state Supreme Court justice, all stayed in Pittsburgh. They had regular Sunday dinners and often traveled together.
“The only thing that bothered him about dying was that he wouldn’t be around to see what happened to his kids,” Sewald said.
In addition to his children, Wecht is survived by his wife and 11 grandchildren.
Funeral, burial and shiva will be private. A public memorial service will be announced in the future. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Wecht’s memory can be made to Stand With Us, www.standwithus.com , PO Box 341069, Los Angeles, CA 90034.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2019 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
