Dr. Cyril Wecht’s legacy: Pathologist remembered for JFK assassination theory

Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 is remembering renowned forensic scientist Dr. Cyril Wecht. Wecht, former Allegheny County medical examiner was known for his work on cases such as the JFK assassination.RELATED: Dr. Cyril Wecht, renowned pathologist, dies at 93In 2023, anchor Michelle Wright sat down with Wecht to talk about that case, who looked at the assassination through lens of forensic science: On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Wecht, the former Allegheny County coroner, spent most of his life analyzing the Kennedy assassination. The Warren Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot three bullets from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The first shot missed, the second struck Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, and the third bullet was fatal to Kennedy. “My analysis is the Warren Commission is quite wrong,” Wecht told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4. “I believe there were two shooters. I’m not at all certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was one of the two shooters.”It’s that second bullet’s trajectory and all the damage the commission said it did that made Wecht skeptical. He called it the magic bullet. He said the bullet’s path doesn’t make sense, calling it “ridiculous.” In addition, Wecht said the quick timing of the bullets being fired would not be physically possible. Wecht was the first civilian given permission to examine the physical evidence. He was the one who discovered Kennedy’s brain was missing from the case file and had never been examined. Wecht said the brain would hold the answers of whether there was more than one gunman. So, who did Wecht think killed JFK?He told us he doesn’t think it was the mafia, the Russians or Vice President Lyndon Johnson. While he wasn’t quite sure of who, he suspected it was a high-ranking CIA agent or one who recently retired. Many other people who have examined the evidence feel the Warren Commission’s report was accurate.