Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist whose accounts of the traumatic last moments in some of the most sensational American deaths of the past 60 years figured in cases involving President John F. Kennedy, that carried a message of feminist empowerment, died on April 20 in Barrington, R.I. She was 81.

In 1973, Ms. Specht was a copywriter at the McCann-Erickson agency in Manhattan. Preference was created to challenge Clairol’s Nice ‘n Easy. Her copy empowered women, and the tag line has endured all the years since: Because I’m worth it.”