Elizabeth Holmes Breaks Her Silence in First Interview from Prison: ‘It’s Been Hell and Torture’ (Exclusive)

• Disgraced former CEO Elizabeth Holmes speaks to PEOPLE in her first interview since being found guilty of fraud in the collapse of Theranos, her billion-dollar tech start-up

• Holmes maintains her innocence and says being separated from her two young children ‘shatters her world’
• Her daily routine includes a workout, largely vegan meals, teaching French to other inmates and working on her campaign to reform the criminal justice system

Twice a week, for a few fleeing hours, life is sweet for 41-year-old Elizabeth Holmes. It’s when her kids William, 3, and Invicta, 2, snuggle in her lap and talk excitedly about insects, ant farms and sea creatures. Her son builds Legos, and her daughter dismantles them.

Seemingly unaware of the beeping of metal detectors and the watchful eyes of guards at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, the children and their father, Holmes’s partner Billy Evans, 33, enjoy each moment together. And like always, their most recent visit ended with a ritual when their time was up: The children pressed their fingers together to make a heart sign, saying in unison, “Mommy, this is our love.” To which their mother responded, “Our love is a superpower.”

Watching them leave through the secured glass door that separates her from freedom “shatters my world every single time,” says Holmes. “The people I love the most have to walk away as I stand here, a prisoner, and my reality sinks in.”

Of course, Holmes is no superhero, and the tough reality of her life today is a nightmare of her own making. After serving nearly two years of an 11.25-year sentence (reduced to nine years for good behavior) for fraud and conspiracy over the collapse of Theranos — the billion dollar biotech corporation she founded — she is speaking out for the first time in a prison interview, conducted in a cold visitation room furnished with vending machines and blue plastic chairs.

Gone are the black turtlenecks and crimson lipstick she wore when she dazzled Silicon Valley, and the national media, as the bold CEO of a start-up. Her company promised to revolutionize the health care industry with cheap diagnostic testing and devices able to screen patients for hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood.

Now she wears drab khaki prison garb, with her blonde hair pulled back, bare makeup and a silver cross around her neck— speaking in a voice notably softer than the throaty baritone she was known for.

“I’m not the same person I was back then,” says Holmes, who pleaded not guilty at her trial and maintains her innocence today, albeit while vaguely acknowledging “there are things I would have done differently” on her path to lockup.

“It’s surreal. People who have never met me believe so strongly about me. They don’t understand who I am. It forces you to spend a lot of time questioning belief and hoping the truth will prevail. I am walking by faith and, ultimately, the truth. But it’s been hell and torture to be here.”

At 20, she dropped out of Stanford University in her sophomore year to focus on developing health care technology with a mission to save lives. In 2003, she launched her blood-testing start-up Theranos in 2003, which soared to a $9 billion valuation in a decade. Hailed as the next Steve Jobs, and backed by investors such as Rupert Murdoch and the family behind Walmart, Holmes became the nation’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2014.

But following the publication of an exposé in The Wall Street Journal that questioned the accuracy of the company’s testing technology, a federal probe led to the indictment of Holmes and Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani — her secret boyfriend at the time — on charges of misleading investors and defrauding them along with patients for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Holmes’s rise to fame and fall from grace were depicted in Hulu’s miniseries The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried — which Holmes says she found “difficult” to watch.

Holmes is still processing the downfall that wiped away her entire fortune— and she considers her trial and conviction in a San Jose courtroom in 2022 to be a miscarriage of justice. “First it was about accepting it happened,” says Holmes about her relationship with Balwani. “Then it was about forgiving myself for my own part. [And] I refused to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit. Theranos failed. But failure is not fraud.”

On the stand, doctors and patients testified that the blood tests Holmes developed and marketed were a health care scam: One woman claimed test results showed she’d had a miscarriage when she was actually pregnant; another patient was told he might have prostate cancer when he didn’t; a third received a false HIV diagnosis. Holmes was acquitted of the fraud charges related to patient and is waiting an appeal verdict for her convictions before a panel of three federal judges.

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.”

When the time to turn herself in finally arrived on May 30, 2023, she approached the prison gates in a Ford Expedition while hurriedly using a high-tech Elvie breast pump to collect milk for the 3-month-old Invicta in the back seat. Upon surrendering, she told guards that she was breastfeeding her child, and was allowed to bring two pumps with her into detention.

Over the next week, she collected a small amount of milk in a plastic bag. “I wanted my daughter to have her mother’s milk,” she recalls. “It was important to me because it was a way to love her in here.” Later, Holmes spoke to the prison’s warden about allowing women to breastfeed privately and authorities eventually built multiple lactation rooms in the housing units in 2023. One dimly lit lactation station features a large mural of a mother holding her baby, alongside a freezer to store the milk for the next visit.

While Holmes shivers from the frigid air conditioning and picks the nuts out of a bag of trail mix, she says she has settled into the dormitory-style prison’s routine. Each morning she wakes just after 5 a.m., eats fruit for breakfast, then does a 40-minute daily workout—lifting weights, rowing and running on a track.

By 8 a.m. she’s at the education building, earning 31 cents an hour as a reentry clerk, helping women slated for release to write résumés and prepare to apply for tax credits and other government benefits.

“So many of these women don’t have anyone, and once they’re in there, they’re forgotten,” she says. Between roll calls five times a day, Holmes also works as a law clerk, helping women to secure compassionate release and their court cases, as well as teaching French classes.

Holmes says she was raped at a college fraternity party and testified at her Theranos trial that she had been sexually abused and manipulated by her codefendant Balwani (he denied it). She claimed he controlled everything from the food she ate to her daily schedule and kept her away from her family.

“I wish that I left, or I had seen the abuse or understood it — and why I didn’t — and I’m finding peace with that. It can break a lot of people, and I was able to rise through it as best I can.” Balwani’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Once a week, Holmes attends cognitive and behavioral therapy for PTSD overseen by a psychiatrist. She also counsels inmates who are rape survivors. It helps her to find meaning in her incarceration. “Human beings are not made to be in cells,” she says. ” It goes so far beyond understanding. I’m trying really hard not to tear up right now. I’m trying to grow, as every moment matters. And if one person’s life can be touched trying to help them in a crisis, it matters.”

For lunch and dinner, Holmes sticks to a largely vegan diet, although she has added salmon and tuna after becoming anemic in her first year in prison. In her spare time she immerses herself in books—the ancient Chinese divination manual I Ching, the Harry Potter series, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and Zen teacher Cheri Huber’s The Fear Book: Facing Fear Once and for All are titles she has recently read. She is allocated 300 minutes on the phone every month, often waiting an hour in line for the twice-daily calls she usually makes to her family.

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.

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.”

For now, however, she is sustained by weekend visits from her family, when she can cuddle Invicta, watch William gather acorns in the prison yard and hold Evans’s hand and briefly hug and kiss. (Conjugal visits are not allowed.)

“It kills me to put my family through pain the way I do,” she says. “But when I look back on my life, and these angels that have come into it, I can get through anything. It makes me want to fight for all of it.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

For more on Elizabeth Holmes, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.