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Jan 28, 2008 4:13 pm US/Eastern
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Prosecutor: Wecht Used County Workers As Gofers
PITTSBURGH (AP) ―
Celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht used government workers as bookkeepers, secretaries, couriers, gofers and chauffeurs for him, his family and his private business, federal prosecutors told jurors Monday at the start of Wecht's federal trial.
"In plain English, what he did was he stole and he did it for the same reasons people have stolen for thousands of years: so he could make more money and because he thought he could get away with it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Stallings said.
But Wecht's defense countered that the bulk of the indictment amounted to minor infractions, such as the improper use of fax machines, and that the former coroner was worth far more than the $64,000 annual salary he got from the county.
"We will prove to you he is the best bargain Allegheny County has ever had," defense attorney Jerry McDevitt told jurors.
Wecht, 76, is known for sometimes provocative opinions on high-profile cases including the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Vincent Foster.
His examinations in those cases stem from his private practice, which prosecutors say grossed nearly $9 million from 1997 through 2004.
Stallings said Wecht actually conducted only a handful of autopsies for Allegheny County as coroner from 1996 until he resigned when he was indicted in January 2006.
He conducted about 300 autopsies a year for his lucrative private practice.
That, Stallings said, wasn't a crime.
What was illegal, the prosecutor said, was how Wecht ran his private business - including using at least 16 cadavers from the county morgue to obtain free lab space at Carlow College.
A local funeral director was given a false death certificate for a man he buried and the document said no autopsy was conducted on the body, Stallings said.
In reality, the body had been dissected by Carlow students, even though the man and his family did not give permission for his body to be used for science.
The coroner's staff lied to the funeral director and said they had autopsied the body, Stallings said.
Similar things happened to other morgue bodies.
"The next of kin was not notified or consented, the county didn't approve, and the families got extra grief," Stalling said. "But the defendant received a lab that he could use without paying rent."
McDevitt denied Wecht did anything other than establish a prestigious autopsy program at Carlow at the invitation of its former president, a nun whom McDevitt repeatedly called a "woman of God."
"The defining allegation of this case is false," McDevitt said.
McDevitt said the program was designed to let Carlow "watch the master" at his craft. "This man was 'CSI' long before any of us ever heard about it," McDevitt said.
Only unclaimed morgue bodies were used, McDevitt said, which was legal.
But prosecutors said Wecht also used county-employed administrative assistants as "bookkeepers, schedulers, to handle correspondence and the intake of new clients" for his private practice.
"They did it from the county, on county time," Stallings said. "They were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the county" while doing large volumes of work for Wecht.
Wecht also used his deputy coroners as private "couriers" and "gofers" and chauffeurs for himself and his family to political events, Pittsburgh Steelers games and other entertainment venues, Stallings said.
Stallings said deputy coroners did these jobs so often they called them "Wecht details" and, on at least one occasion, a deputy was told to leave a dead body waiting for pickup while the deputy ran a private errand for Wecht.
Those who complained were threatened with reprisals, Stallings said.
Wecht also used a county lab worker to examine microscopic slides of body tissues and, Stallings said, the county lab workers were so burdened with Wecht's private work that they fell behind on county cases.
Stallings said Wecht even cheated his private clients with fake bills that overstated air fare and limousine expenses.
Wecht billed the Mississippi Attorney General's Office $604.70 for a flight, even though he paid only $273.70 for the air fare.
But McDevitt said Wecht's private clients never complained about their bills and would have happily paid more than he charged them.
Wecht successfully staved off similar accusations that he used his county staff in the early 1980s, when he was charged with using county morgue employees to examine slides for his private practice.
That case led to his ouster, although he would later settle a related suit for $200,000 and return in 1996 to serve a second 10-year stint as coroner.
The current fraud trial, which stems from his last term in office, opened Monday before U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab and is expected to last two months.
Richard Thornburgh, the former U.S. Attorney General and Pennsylvania governor, sat with Wecht's wife, Sigrid, as the trial opened.
Thornburgh appeared on national media as Wecht's attorney before trial, but was not one of the three attorneys representing him in the courtroom.
Stay with KDKA for complete coverage of the Dr. Cyril Wecht trial.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)