Disgraced tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has spoken about the pain of being separated from her children while serving her prison sentence. Almost two years into her nine-year term, she says it never gets easier to say goodbye to her kids when they visit. Holmes, the founder of Theranos, told PEOPLE that parting with her three-year-old son William and two-year-old daughter Invicta twice a week is heartbreaking. “It shatters my world every single time,” she said. “As they walk away, I stand here as a prisoner, and reality sinks in.” The children make heart signs with their fingers before leaving, a gesture that Holmes says means “Mommy, this is our love.”
Holmes gave birth to her first child just before her fraud trial began. If she serves her full sentence, her children will be nine and ten years old when she is released in 2032. Despite being responsible for one of the biggest medical frauds in history, her emotional words about her children make it easy for some to feel sympathy.
Holmes insists that she is not the same person she once was. Although she pleaded not guilty and continues to claim her innocence, she admits that she could have made different choices. She describes her prison experience as surreal, noting that many people judge her without truly knowing her. She hopes that in time, the truth will come out. While she leans on her faith, she describes her situation as a personal “hell and torture.”
At one point, Holmes was seen as a rising star in the tech world. Investors like Rupert Murdoch poured money into her company, and in 2014, she became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Theranos promised to revolutionize blood testing, allowing people to test for various diseases with just a drop of blood. Due to the excitement around her invention, Holmes was often compared to Steve Jobs, and Theranos’ value soared into the billions.
However, everything fell apart when The Wall Street Journal questioned whether the technology actually worked. Patients came forward with horror stories. One woman was falsely told she had miscarried, while another man was wrongly informed he had prostate cancer. A different patient even received a false HIV diagnosis.
Holmes was also secretly dating Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, an executive at Theranos. A later investigation revealed that they had deceived investors and patients, cheating them out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Holmes is now serving her sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, as authorities continue to investigate her case.
