Editor’s note: this article includes mention of triggering situations, including sexual abuse and exploitation of minors.
Two researchers at IU’s Kinsey Institute sent emails to Jeffrey Epstein, according to recently released files. One of the researchers, now Kinsey’s executive director, said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes at the time, condemning his actions and describing them as “antithetical” to his work.
The emails, first reported by Indiana Public Media, did not appear to include any mention or allusion to Epstein’s history of rape, sexual violence and sexual exploitation of minors.
Justin Garcia, then a postdoctoral fellow and now the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, sent one message to Epstein’s email associated with the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation in December 2012. The foundation was a philanthropic organization focused on a number of scientific fields of study, though it had later been found to embellish and mislead about its contributions.
Garcia sent the email after Epstein connected with him on LinkedIn, and the files released by the Department of Justice do not include a reply.
Read the full text below:
Garcia told the Indiana Daily Student on Monday morning he sent the message when he was a postdoctoral fellow at Kinsey.
“At the time I was submitting various grants and letters of inquiry to funding agencies and foundations,” Garcia wrote in an email to the IDS.
Garcia sent the email more than four years after Epstein pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He was released from jail in July 2009 and stayed free until he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell in what investigators determined to be a suicide.
“I only later learned of his criminal background, antithetical to all of my work,” Garcia wrote in the email to the IDS. “I never met or spoke with him, and I did not receive any funding. I totally condemn what he did.”
The other Kinsey researcher included in the Department of Justice’s latest file dump was Helen Fisher, then a senior research fellow. Fisher died at 79 in 2024 and was a fellow for more than a decade.
One email exchange from early January 2016 details Epstein inviting Fisher to a dinner, joining director and actor Woody Allen — who has faced sexual abuse allegations of his own — and Allen’s wife, Soon Yi Previn.
“lots of fun , thanks .. you new bud JE,” Epstein wrote to Fisher after the dinner.
Later in January, Fisher was invited to another lunch, which Epstein wrote would include former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, among others.
For that same date, she was also listed on a dinner guest list alongside Allen, Previn, businessman Tom Pritzker and a man who appears to be James Watson. Watson, who co-authored a paper proposing the double-helix structure of DNA, and who received his doctorate from IU, was disgraced in the scientific community for racist and sexist comments. He died in early November last year, and met with Epstein on multiple occasions, emails show.
In March 2017, Fisher and Epstein met again for lunch.
“Thank you, Jeffrey, for another fascinating lunch at your house....and a few sneak peaks at some of your art!” she wrote to Epstein afterward. “Very interesting.”
Both Garcia and Fisher collaborated with Match.com for multiple “Singles in America” studies.
The Kinsey Institute’s research focuses on sex and relationships and has attracted political attention over the past years after the Indiana legislature passed a provision barring its use of state funds.
