Jeffrey Epstein Had Weird Ideas About Spreading His Gunk Around

As if the Jeffrey Epstein story could get any more harrowing, the New York Times reports the billionaire financier/accused child rapist “hoped to seed the human race” with his DNA, an effort he planned to accomplish by impregnating as many women as possible at his ranch outside Santa Fe.

Epstein, 66, who was arrested earlier this month and charged with running a sex trafficking ring, allegedly told multiple people that he wanted to inseminate up to 20 women a day with his sperm at his ranch in an effort to perpetuate his own DNA. He reportedly shared this plan with scientists he held dinner parties for at his $56 million Manhattan home—the Times reports that the late Stephen Hawking was in his circle, though it’s unclear whether he was present for the baby ranch dinners—and often asked them questions about creating a “superior” genetic pool.

Per the Times:

According to Mr. Lanier, the NASA scientist said Mr. Epstein had based his idea for a baby ranch on accounts of the Repository for Germinal Choice, which was to be stocked with the sperm of Nobel laureates who wanted to strengthen the human gene pool. (Only one Nobel Prize winner has acknowledged contributing sperm to it. The repository discontinued operations in 1999.)

Mr. Lanier, the virtual-reality creator and author, said he had the impression that Mr. Epstein was using the dinner parties — where some guests were attractive women with impressive academic credentials — to screen candidates to bear Mr. Epstein’s children.

Epstein also allegedly told people that he “wanted his head and penis to be frozen,” and once argued that efforts to help poverty-stricken communities obtain food and healthcare contributed to overpopulation, though apparently populating the world with his own children was just fine.

The Times says these discussions and dinners took place in the early aughts, before Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crime charges in 2008. Still, it doesn’t seem like many people balked at Epstein’s deeply creepy DNA-spreading dreams, or the fact that a number of companies and charities connected to Epstein seemed to fund genetic engineering and DNA analysis. One of Epstein’s charities reportedly gave $20,000 to something called the Worldwide Transhumanist Association—now Humanity Plus, which “advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities,” according to its website.

It seems like the company’s no longer interested in being connected to Epstein:

Mr. Epstein’s foundation, which is now defunct, also gave $100,000 to pay the salary of Ben Goertzel, vice chairman of Humanity Plus, according to Mr. Goertzel’s résumé.

“I have no desire to talk about Epstein right now,” Mr. Goertzel said in an email to The New York Times. “The stuff I’m reading about him in the papers is pretty disturbing and goes way beyond what I thought his misdoings and kinks were. Yecch.”