Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist and attorney, died Monday at age 93.
A cause of death was not announced, just that he “passed away peacefully.” While he was serving as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County and a pathologist in a Pittsburgh hospital, he became involved with the analysis of former President John F. Kennedy’s death.
Following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Wecht was commissioned to review the Warren Commission’s report, which concluded that Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the sole bad actor in the assassination. Wecht then became obsessive over a theory that Oswald was not alone in the shooting.
After reviewing video footage and autopsy reports, Wecht concluded that the finding of a single bullet killing Kennedy and injuring former Texas Gov. John Connally in Dallas was “absolute nonsense.”
Some disagreed with his theory. Former Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania called the theory “an asinine, pseudoscientific sham at best.”
His willingness to challenge official findings, however, made him something of a go-to pathologist for high-profile deaths. He also worked on cases such as Elvis Presley and JonBenet Ramsey. He also appeared on TV before the O.J. Simpson homicide trial in 1994, becoming a frequent guest on the Today show and Good Morning America to explain the significance of blood samples.
He was praised by some for his work; attorney Alan Dershowitz called him the “Sherlock Holmes of forensic sciences.”
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When asked about the possibility of his own death after working on so many celebrities’, he said his biggest fear was growing dependence on his family as he aged.
“I want to be alive when I die. Think about that,” Wecht said in a 2009 interview with the Associated Press. “I mean, OK, what is life?”
