Dr. Morris Wortman, a gynecologist who allegedly used his sperm to impregnate patients, died Sunday in a small plane crash in upstate New York.
The pilot, Earl Luce, who built the plane himself, also perished.
What Happened?
Police said the plane came apart mid-air and went down in Orleans County, which is northeast of Buffalo.
In a news release, County Sheriff Christopher Bourke said, “The preliminary investigation indicates that the wings of the aircraft became detached from the fuselage and fell to the ground landing in an orchard.”
One witness said they thought people were jumping out of the plane with parachutes. It quickly became apparent this wasn’t the case.
The Doctor Faced Controversy and Serious Allegations
Dr. Wortman had a fertility practice in Rochester, New York. He was at odds with extreme, anti-abortion demonstrators in the early 2000s, and they leveled death threats against him.
However, that wasn’t the end of his troubles.
Wortman was accused of fertility fraud. The Daily Beast defines this as, “Lying about the source of the sperm he used to help some of his patients conceive.”
One woman, Morgan Hellquist, claimed to be Dr. Wortman’s daughter in a lawsuit filed in 2021. Her mother had gone to his clinic in 1985 and became pregnant with her soon afterward.
The Daily Beast reports that while doing her own research, “She discovered she had about nine half-siblings and concluded that her donor father had been a serial sperm donor.”
The flames of suspicion were fanned even more during Hellquist’s visit to the fertility clinic in April 2021. During that visit, she claimed that Dr. Wortman was acting in a way she perceived to be strange and incriminating.
The Daily Beast reported, “Hellquist was able to confirm her ties to Wortman by comparing her half-brother’s DNA to that of the doctor’s daughter from his first marriage.”
This was perhaps the most damning bit of proof of her true parentage.
The suit didn’t mince words in describing Wortman’s alleged behavior. It says in part, “[His] wanton, reckless and malicious conduct is so outrageous in character as to violate all bounds of decency.”