Dr. Cyril Wecht, the famed pathologist who argued that more than one gunman killed JFK, has died at age 93

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist and lawyer whose acerbic cynicism and controversial positions on high-profile deaths such as the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy captured the attention of prosecutors and television viewers, died Monday. He was 93.

Wecht's death was reported by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, which did not give a cause or place of death, saying only that he "passed away peacefully".

Wecht's almost meteoric rise to fame began in 1964, three years after he returned to civilian life after a brief stint at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, Wecht worked as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County and as a pathologist at a hospital in Pittsburgh.

The request came from a group of forensic scientists: Analyze the Warren Commission report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, had killed Kennedy. And Wecht, with his characteristic thoroughness, did just that-the beginning of what would become his lifelong obsession-to prove his theory that there was more than one shooter involved in the assassination.

After reading the autopsy documents, finding that the president's brain was gone, and reviewing an amateur videotape of the assassination, Wecht concluded that the commission's conclusions that a single bullet was involved in the attack that killed Kennedy and wounded Texas Governor John Connally were "absolute nonsense".

A demonstration of Wecht's lecture, in which he detailed his theory about the impossibility of a single bullet causing the damage it did on that November day in Dallas, was included in Oliver Stone's movie 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 single most important spearhead in challenging" the Warren Report. Wecht's verbal altercation with Senator Arlen Specter, a staffer on the committee, which culminated in an accusation in his book Cause of Death that the politician's support for the one-shot theory was "at best a ridiculous, pseudoscientific pretense", was also widely publicized.

Somehow, however, Wecht and Specter overcame their differences and struck up something of a friendship. The senator stood up for the pathologist during a grueling five-year legal battle that deprived him of most of his life savings and ended in 2009.

Wecht eventually prevailed in that case as well, when through a series of legal maneuvers and court rulings, prosecutors dropped all fraud and theft charges against him in a case that involved allegations that he used his public office as Allegheny County medical examiner to grow his multimillion-dollar private practice.

Wecht's candor in the JFK assassination case and the publicity it generated later made him a key pathologist in dozens of other high-profile cases, from Elvis Presley to JonBenét Ramsey, a beauty queen whose death is still unsolved.

At the murder trial of school principal Jean Harris, accused of killing "Scarsdale Diet" Dr. Herman Tarnover, Wecht served unsuccessfully as a defense witness. His testimony at the trial of Klaus von Bülow may have helped acquit von Bülow of the charge of trying to kill his heiress wife Sonny.

After studying Elvis' autopsy report, Wecht concluded, and shared his findings on national television, that the King of Rock likely died of an overdose, not heart disease. His findings prompted Tennessee authorities to reopen the investigation in 1994, although the official cause of death ultimately remained unchanged.

In the months leading up to the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1994, Wecht was a frequent guest on talk shows, speculating on the "Today" and "Good Morning America" programs about the significance of blood samples and other evidence.

When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Wecht was back on the air, discussing the deadly mix of drugs and sedatives that killed the King of Pop.

Despite facing death almost daily for more than five decades, Vecht managed to keep his spirits upbeat, his hearty laughter resounding from deep within him, and he often cheered himself up with his own, sometimes hurtful and caustic, jokes.

Nevertheless, in a series of interviews with the Associated Press in 2009, Wecht was circumspect when contemplating the possibility of his own death. He noted that his greatest fear was suffering or becoming dependent on other people, friends and family.

"I want to be alive when I die. Think about it", Vecht said. "I mean, okay, what is life?"

According to him, it is important to die professing love to those you love because when you die, they will no longer be around.

"I will be separated from my wife, children, grandchildren and someday great-grandchildren. That's what death means to me", Wecht said.

"I wish it could go on forever".

Always the realist, however, Wecht took the time to detail many of his cases in six books. In "Cause of Death", authored by Wecht, his son Benjamin and Mark Carriden, a former contributor to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Dallas Morning News, attorney Alan Dershowitz called the pathologist "the Sherlock Holmes of forensic medicine".

The son of a grocer, Wecht attended undergraduate school at the University of Pittsburgh before earning medical and law degrees from the same institution. He served twice as Allegheny County coroner, resigning the second time in 2006 after being indicted on fraud and embezzlement charges.

His first term, from 1970 to 1980, was also turbulent. Then he was accused of using the county morgue facilities for his private forensic business while serving as coroner. After a lengthy legal battle, he paid $200,000 in restitution. He was also a member of the Allegheny County Commission for four years.

Ran for U.S. Senate against John Heinz III in 1982, but was unsuccessful.

He is survived by his wife, Sigrid, and four children, David, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice; Daniel, a clinical professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Benjamin, a freelance writer and teacher; Ingrid, a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology; and 11 grandchildren.