A hand-built plane carrying a fertility specialist who was suspected of using his sperm to impregnate patients crashed while in flight, killing him.
The experimental plane carrying Dr. Morris Wortman, 72, of Rochester, crashed on Sunday, May 29 in a pasture in Orleans County, killing both him and the pilot, Earl Luce Jr., according to authorities.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the aircraft involved in the disaster was a Wittman W-5 Buttercup, and the inquiry was ongoing as of Tuesday, May 30.
According to preliminary investigations, Sheriff Christopher Bourke stated in a news release, “the wings of the aircraft became detached from the fuselage and fell to the ground in an orchard.” Before collapsing, the fuselage traveled another 1,000–1,500 yards to the west.
The NTSBP acknowledged that it was looking into the ‘crash of a Wittman W-5 Buttercup’ that Luce, 70, had built in an effort to imitate the original craft built by Steve Wittman.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, the plane had the registration N18263 and matched the specifications of the one that Luce had constructed.
In western New York, his buddy Wortman was a renowned doctor who frequently faced demonstrators opposed to abortion.
The daughter of one of Wortman’s patients, Morgan Hellquist, whose mother became pregnant in the 1980s, sued Wortman in 2021.
It was stated that he used his own sperm, which he said belonged to a medical student, to inseminate Jo Ann Levy in January 1985.
According to the lawsuit, the doctor told the plaintiff that the donor was a local medical student while surreptitiously using his own sperm.
It claimed that Wortman preserved the secret even after his biological daughter started seeing him for gynecology.
According to the medical malpractice claim, the daughter learned that Wortman was the donor after DNA genealogy tests showed she had at least nine half-siblings.
Follow-up DNA testing with Wortman’s daughter from his first marriage, according to the civil complaint, which is still proceeding in Monroe County Court, verified the genetic connection. The lawsuit claims that between 1983 and 1985, Wortman treated Hellquist’s mother, giving her sperm injections two or three times each month for $50 each.
