PITTSBURGH -- In a packed federal courthouse, with some people sitting on the hallway floors waiting for a seat, the trial for celebrity pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht began in downtown Pittsburgh on Monday morning.

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Wecht is accused of using government employees as secretaries, gofers and chauffeurs for himself and his private business while working as Allegheny County medical examiner and coroner, prosecutors said.

The 76-year-old Wecht is charged with 41 counts, including wire fraud, mail fraud and theft. He has denied wrongdoing, and his attorneys have maintained that the charges are politically motivated.

"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.

Now-chief forensic investigator Dr. Edward Strimlan testified on Monday to repeatedly being ordered to do personal errands and driving for Wecht, Wecht's wife and other Wecht family members when he was a deputy coroner.

Strimlan said he would drive Wecht's wife to the South Side Playhouse and his son to Oxford Center. Strimlan said he was on duty at the time of the errands, too.

He described trips with multiple members of the Wecht family, which he claims could involve a "caravan" effect of multiple county cars.

Strimlan said Wecht once ordered him to pick up and drop off one of Wecht's sons at a Steelers game, so the son could work as a doctor on the sidelines.

Once, Strimlan said, Wecht sent him to Giant Eagle in a coroner's wagon to buy hot dogs for a David Wecht political event at Three Rivers Stadium.

Another incident, according to Strimlan, Wecht sent another coroner's deputy to pick up theater tickets only to send Strimlan back to exchange them for other seats. Strimlan said all of the incidents happened on county time.

Wecht's defense attorneys gave their opening statement, saying the charges are either false or amount to minor infractions, such as improper use of fax machines.

Defense attorney Jerry McDevitt told jurors that Wecht is the "best deal Allegheny ever had."

He said the value of disputed charges for limo rides, mileage in county cars and use of faxes is petty, and he calls Wecht the most competent elected official in the history of the county, "CSI before anyone ever heard of it."

Wecht is known for sometimes provocative opinions on high-profile cases including the deaths of Elvis Presley and JonBenet Ramsey. His examinations in those cases stemmed from his private practice, which prosecutors say grossed nearly $9 million from 1997 through 2004.

Stallings said Wecht conducted only a handful of autopsies for the county as coroner from 1996 until he was indicted and resigned in January 2006. He made about $64,000 a year from the county, but conducted about 300 autopsies a year for his private practice.

That, Stallings said, wasn't a crime. But how Wecht managed to run his private business was, according to Stallings -- including using at least 16 cadavers from the county morgue to obtain free lab space at Carlow University.

Stallings said a funeral director will testify that he was given a false death certificate for a man he buried that said no autopsy was conducted on the body. The body actually 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 prosecutor 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.

Wecht's attorney said only one person knows if that's true, "a woman of God," former Carlow President Sister Grace Ann Geibel.

McDevitt said Geibel will testify that investigators never asked her, and that if they had, her answer would have been, "No."

Stallings said Wecht used county-employed administrative assistants as "bookkeepers, schedulers, to handle correspondence and the intake of new clients" for Wecht's private practice.

Wecht also used his deputy coroners as private "couriers" and "gofers" and chauffeurs for himself and his family to political events and Pittsburgh Steelers games, Stallings said. Anyone who complained was threatened with reprisals, Stallings said.

Wecht was the county's elected coroner for years, and when the job changed to an appointed position of medical examiner, he was the first to fill that role. He remains a consultant, pundit and expert on high-profile cases.

The trial is expected to be a lengthy one. The prosecution has listed 131 witnesses and could present more than 1,400 exhibits.

Stay with WTAE Channel 4 Action News and ThePittsburghChannel.com for the latest news from the Wecht trial.

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