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Theranos scammer Elizabeth Holmes calls federal prison ‘pure pain’ and ‘torture’


People Magazine has a cover interview with convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes, who perpetrated one of the biggest frauds in history through her blood testing company, Theranos. Holmes is currently in a Texas federal prison, where she has served two years out of a now nine year sentence. In People, Holmes comes across as a defensive self-pitying narcissist who believes she can still revolutionize healthcare while single-handedly reforming the American criminal justice system. It’s very on-brand for her, as is a major celebrity publication giving a platform to a white woman who stole over $500 million and continues to lie about it. People has some choice quotes from Holmes along with a look at her average days in prison, which include exercising, working with inmates on their resumes and speaking to her family twice a day. Holmes claims that getting pregnant twice while awaiting trial for fraud was just her way of starting a family when she could, and that she never expected to serve time. I’m going to quote from a couple of different stories on People here.

On how hard it is to only see her children every weekend
Her young children — son William, 3, and daughter Invicta, 2 — are being raised nearby by their father, Holmes’s partner Billy Evans, 33, but visit their mother at the dormitory-style correctional facility every weekend.

“It’s been pure pain since I’ve been here,” says Holmes, who opens up about her life behind bars and being separated from her family in this week’s PEOPLE cover story. “It’s been torture.”

Why she had kids while awaiting trial
Although the start of her prison sentence was postponed, Holmes says she still wasn’t mentally prepared to serve time as a mother with two babies. She gave birth to her first child, William, just weeks before her fraud trial began. Evans, whom she met at a rooftop charity event in Oct. 2017 during the Theranos scandal, presented a silver snake ring bought at a Taylor Swift Reputation Tour concert when he proposed to her a year later.

Together they decided to start a family despite the legal jeopardy that Holmes was soon to face. “I asked him 20 times if he wanted to spend his life with me,” she recalls. “There were a million reasons why not.” (Although Evans is an heir to the Evans Hotel Group, his family hasn’t contributed to Holmes’s legal defense. )

A year later Holmes was pregnant again with daughter Invicta (Latin for “invincible”), which delayed her prison start by a month. “I always wanted to be a mother,” she explains. “I truly did not think I would ever be convicted or found guilty.”

She’s going to reform the criminal justice system
Scheduled for release on April 3, 2032, Holmes says she hopes to travel with her family and to fight for reform of criminal justice system. She recently drafted an American Freedom Act bill — a seven-page handwritten document— to bolster the presumption of innocence and change criminal procedure. “This will be my life’s work,” says Holmes, adding that she is speaking out now as part of her mission to advocate on behalf of incarcerated persons and those ripped away from their children.

She doesn’t think she did anything wrong
While she defiantly maintains her innocence, Holmes admits, “I replayed mistakes I made a million times in my mind, burning them into my body.” But when asked to specify the “mistakes” she made, Holmes declines to answer, saying only, “Theranos failed. I take responsibility for that failure. Failure is not fraud…”

And, despite her global reputation as a biotech con artist who put lives at risk, she says she’s continuing to write patents for new inventions and plans to resume her career in healthcare technology after her release. “There is not a day I have not continued to work on my research and inventions,” she says. “I remain completely committed to my dream of making affordable healthcare solutions available to everyone.”

[From two stories on People]

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The Today Show has a brief interview with the People journalist who met with Holmes, Danielle Bacher. Bacher says that Holmes speaks in a normal voice now and that she won’t admit she’s done anything wrong. It sound like she’s painting herself as a victim for facing even this small sliver of a consequence. Holmes gets to see her kids and husband every weekend, she speaks to her family twice a day, she gets therapy once a week and is doing work she describes as meaningful. She’s still getting positive press and a platform for her lies too. It’s jaw-droppingly delusional and maddening, but I guess that’s just this woman’s whole personality. The minute Holmes gets out of prison in six years she’s going to start grifting again. She’ll probably be successful since she’s an expert at scamming old white Republican men.

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