If it’s an objective opinion you desire, predicated on facts gleaned from forensic science, then Dr. Cyril Wecht is your man. A review of Tales from the Morgue.
Tales From the Morgue
By Cyril Wecht and Mark Curriden with Angela Powell
Prometheus Books, 2005
Hdbk, 314 pgs., photos
bibliographical references and index
ISBN: 1-59102-353-X
THAT DEATH, WHENE’ER HE CALL,
MUST CALL TOO SOON.
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert,
The Yeoman of the Guard, (1888).
Dr. Cyril Wecht, former Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) Coroner and renowned forensic pathologist, is our era’s Don Quixote, albeit with panache and credentials. Rather than jostling with recalcitrant windmills, Dr. Wecht takes on the monolithic state and mendacious bureaucrats. A certifiable genius, Wecht has earned degrees both in medicine and the law, but his great passion, much like the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, is the ever illusive commodity, justice. Cyril Wecht will pursue justice without regard to whose toes he steps on, and the good doctor has stepped on some important toes.
In his new book, Tales From the Morgue, co-authored with Mark Curriden and Angela Powell, Dr. Wecht takes his readers on a journey through that labyrinth of death, the county morgue, as he reviews a number of cases that have sparked recent national interest. Those interested in the more garish aspects of our society’s decadence will be enthralled with Wecht’s findings in the Scott Peterson, Jayson Williams, and Chandra Levy cases. He reviews the unhappy death of Jonny Gammage, a black man who died while being arrested by Pittsburgh area police just after the Rodney King affair, and the case of the accused “Angel of Death,” Jane Bolding, a victim of “positive law,” whose indictment was eventually dismissed.
Wecht and his co-authors save the penultimate and final chapters for a review of the Kennedy assassination and the suicide of Marilyn Monroe.
Wecht was the first nongovernmental forensic pathologist to review the physical evidence of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Prior to that Wecht had delivered a paper, in February 1965, to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences critiquing the Warren Commission findings concerning the autopsy and the handling of evidence. A doctor in the audience was greatly impressed with Wecht’s findings; he was Dr. Pierre Finck, the only forensic pathologist among the three doctors who performed the “autopsy” on the murdered president. Finck later met with Wecht and congratulated him on his speech, he then added a rather cryptic comment, “You cannot believe what it was like…it was horrible. Horrible. I only wish I could tell you more.” Indeed.
As a result of Dr. Wecht’s August, 1972 trip to the National Archives to review the autopsy findings, he revealed, for the first time, that the president’s brain, some x-rays of the chest, and the microscopic tissue slides were missing. Wecht’s involvement with the Kennedy assassination is impressive as are his statements of fact and his conclusions, so impressive in fact that they caused a brouhaha that no doubt prompted the creation of the Rockefeller Commission in 1975. The commission’s report included “testimony” from Wecht that was altered and required the good doctor to fight for twenty years to have his transcripts released revealing his real statements. Two years later (1977) Congress established the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and while no conclusions were reached, the committee’s final report stated there was “a high degree of probability that President Kennedy’s death was the result of a conspiracy that involved a second gunman.” The government’s hesitant lurch toward the truth is due in large measure to Dr. Cyril Wecht’s uncompromising search for justice.
Tales From the Morgue is written for the layman; it’s easy to read and provides numerous instances when “human tissue” is closely examined for evidence, for those that possess a morbid curiosity. The cases reviewed are all noteworthy and written without regard for anyone’s political affiliations (Republicans won’t be happy with his findings of the 1985 Gander air crash!). But, if it’s an objective opinion you desire, predicated on facts gleaned from forensic science, then Dr. Cyril Wecht is your man. If it’s the truth you want in a murder case, he’ll give you his conclusions without regard to politics or profit, in fact he often works pro bono. If I’m ever unjustly accused, he’s the first one I’m going to call.
Tales from the Morgue is available on Amazon.com.
robertcheeks@core.com
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