Former Allegheny County coroner turned celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht talks with his daughter-in-law, Anna Wecht, as they leave the Federal courthouse in Pittsburgh on Monday. Wecht is accused of illegally using his staff for personal gain from 1997 to 2004 when he was the Allegheny County coroner.

PITTSBURGH — On-duty deputy coroners working for celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht once delivered hot dogs to a political function in a county van, gave rides to Wecht's family and ran other errands on county time, a former subordinate testified Monday.

Wecht, who has led inquiries into the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Vincent Foster among others, is accused of using his Allegheny County government staff as bookkeepers, secretaries, couriers and gofers for his family and his private, multimillion-dollar practice. His federal fraud trial began Monday in U.S. District Court.

Dr. Edward Strimlan, a deputy coroner under Wecht, was the first witness for prosecutors. He said he was told to buy hot dogs for a political promotion outside a Pittsburgh Pirates game when Wecht's son was running for a county row office.

Strimlan bought the franks, delivered them to the ballpark, then drove back to the office — all while on duty, he said.

"They didn't give me a hot dog, either," Strimlan quipped.

Prosecutors contend that Wecht, 76, grossed nearly $9 million from 1997 through 2004 in his private practice, illegally using his county staff to cut costs. He never made more than $64,000 a year as county coroner.

"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 in his opening statement.

Strimlan said he and other deputies were routinely told by Wecht, his top deputies, private secretary or administrative assistants to run errands — sometimes several times a day — on county time.

Strimlan eventually became assistant chief deputy before Wecht resigned when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in January 2006. Strimlan still works for the county, in what is now the medical examiner's office.

Among other things, Strimlan said Wecht's two main county administrative assistants often had files from his private practice on their desks. One of the administrative assistants did not even have a computer that could access coroner's cases, he said.

Strimlan also began laying the groundwork for one of the most macabre charges against Wecht: that the pathologist traded unclaimed county morgue cadavers for private lab space at Carlow College in Pittsburgh.

Strimlan testified about paperwork involving a man who died in November 2005 whose corpse was later dissected by Carlow students as part of Wecht's work at the school.

Strimlan, who is scheduled to resume his testimony today, said the paperwork showed coroner's deputies had located the man's next of kin shortly after he died and planned no autopsy because the man died of natural causes.

Wecht's defense argued that the bulk of the indictment contains minor infractions, such as the improper use of fax machines, and that the former coroner was worth far more than what the county paid him.

"We will prove to you he is the best bargain Allegheny County has ever had," defense attorney Jerry McDevitt told jurors.