Elizabeth Holmes defends ‘optics’ of having 2 babies on her way to jail (exclusive)

For two years, Elizabeth Holmes has been in a Texas prison, while her children – son William, 3 and daughter Invicta, 2 – are raised near their father, Holmes Partner Billy Evans.

The disgraceful founder of the blood test company Theranos turned in on May 30, 2023 to begin to serve her 11.25-year-old prison sentence-delighted Holmes her fraud and criminal offense as both her pregnancies coincided with her criminal prosecution in 2021 to 2022 .

Critics have long accused her of having used her status as a mother to avoid prison time and gain sympathy – but in her first interview from prison, Holmes insists on people that parenthood was not a fuck.

“I know what the optics look like, but I’ve always wanted to be a mother,” she says while sitting in a blue plastic chair inside Federal Camp camp in Bryan, Texas, her home for the next 7 years. “I wanted children, be a mother. I really didn’t think I would ever be convicted or found guilty. I continued to talk to my lawyers and they also assured me that we would never get that far. “

“It wasn’t planned and I can’t worry about what others think,” adds Holmes, whose children will be 10 and 9 years old when she is intended for release in 2032. (Her judgment has been reduced by 2 years for good behavior.) “It’s just when the timing happened.”

Holmes, who fell out of Stanford University to create Theranos at the age of 19, built the company for a valuation of 9 billion -hyped blood testing technology produced inaccurate results.

In 2018, she and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her once business and romantic partner, were indicted after wrong representation of their devices to investors. Both did not plead guilty.

Holmes’ trial, which had already been delayed three times due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, was pushed back again when her legal team requested a delay due to her first pregnancy. Assisting US lawyer Robert Leach, who accused the case, said it was “frustrating and disappointing” to learn about the delay at the time.

While eight months pregnant, Holmes attended an experimental conference on June 15, 2021. At that time, US district judge Edward Davila said he would give a quiet space to Holmes and the baby she expected during the breaks in the trial.

A month later, she greeted her first child William – known as Wills – just weeks before her scam trials began. Holmes had met Evans, a hotel chain heritage, at a charity event in the roof in October 2017, and he suggested a year later in August 2018. Together they decided to start a family despite the legal danger that Holmes would soon face. “I asked him 20 times if he would spend his life with me,” Holmes recalls. “There were a million reasons why not.”

Holmes was tried with 11 counts of fraud and found guilty of four of the charges – three counts of wire fraud and a counting of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Sentenced in January 2022, and with her criminal sentence scheduled earlier November, Holmes revealed that she was again pregnant with a daughter whom she would name Invicta, Latin for “Invincible.”

In a letter to the judge obtained by people, Evans talked about how Holmes’ trial had affected their lives and asked for a lighter judgment and said his fiancé would miss at milestone. “My heart is broken with the idea of ​​spending some days away from Liz, for a future where my son grows up with a relationship with her mother on the other side of glass armed by guards,” the letter reads. “The gravity of time without her is hard for me to understand.”

Holmes’ defense team quoted her “Two very young children” in her argument in February 2023 as to why she was not a risk of flight and had to stay out of prison while appealing her fraud -overdoing, which was denied. She was scheduled to begin to set off her verdict on April 27, 2023, but it was pushed back a month when she gave birth to her daughter.

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When Holmes was finally driven up to prison gates in a Ford expedition in May, she used a high-tech breast pump to collect milk for the then 3-month-old EFVY. After surrender, she explained to the guards that she was still breastfeeding her daughter and was then allowed to have two pumps with her. “I wanted my daughter to have her mother’s milk,” she says. “It was important to me because it was a way to love her in here.”

When I look back, Holmes says, ”I received a significant amount of time that I did not expect. I always wanted a big family, Billy wanted even more kids. It was such a beautiful experience in such a terrible time, ”she adds.

“It hurts me that I am behind pillars and I am not there in all the moments that mean love them.”

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