Elizabeth Holmes Defends Having 2 Babies on Her Path to Prison: 'I Know How the Optics Look' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Elizabeth Holmes with her partner Billy Evans and two children at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. March 24, 2023.Photo:Philip Cheung for The New York Times/Redux

Philip Cheung for The New York Times/Redux

Critics have long accused her of using her status as a mother to avoid jail time and gain sympathy — but in her first interview from prison, Holmes insists to PEOPLE that parenthood wasn’t a ploy.

Elizabeth Holmes PEOPLE COVER Feb. 2025.Philip Cheung/The New York Times/Redux

Philip Cheung/The New York Times/Redux

Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford University to create Theranos at age 19, built the company to a $9 billion valuation and became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire—but her rise to fame ended in disgrace after it was revealed that her company’s much-hyped blood-testing technology produced inaccurate results.

In 2018, she andRamesh “Sunny” Balwani, her onetime business and romantic partner, were indicted after misrepresenting the capabilities of their devices to investors. Both pleaded not guilty.

Pregnant Elizabeth Holmes with partner Billy Evans and child William in San Diego in 2023.

Holmes’s trial, which had already been delayed three times due to theCOVID-19 pandemic in 2020, was pushed back again when her legal team requested a delay due to her first pregnancy. Assistant U.S.Attorney Robert Leach, who was prosecuting the case, said it was“frustrating and disappointing” tolearn of the delay at that point.

A month later, she welcomed her first childWilliam— known as Wills — just weeks before her fraud trial began. Holmes had met Evans, an hotel chain heir, at a rooftop charity event in October 2017 and he proposed a year later in August 2018. 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,” Holmes recalls. “There were a million reasons why not.”

Pregnant Elizabeth Holmes gives a bath to son William in San Diego in 2023.

Holmes was tried on 11 counts of fraud and found guilty of four of the charges — three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Convicted in January 2022, and with her sentencing scheduled former November, Holmes revealed that she was pregnant again with a daughter whom she would name Invicta, Latin for “invincible.”

Pregnant Elizabeth Holmes in San Diego in 2023.

Holmes' defense team cited her “two very young children” in its argument in Feb. 2023 for why she was not a flight risk and should remain out of prison while she appealed her fraud conviction, which was denied. She was scheduled to begin serving her sentence on April 27, 2023, but it was pushed back a month whenshe gave birth to her daughter.

Elizabeth Holmes and partner Billy Evans at federal court in San Jose, California on, Nov. 18, 2022.Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty

Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty

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When Holmes was finally driven up to the prison gates in a Ford Expedition in May, she was using a high-tech breast pump to ­collect milk for then-3-month-old Ivy. Upon surrendering, she explained to 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."

Elizabeth Holmes poses on Marh 24, 2023.Philip Cheung for The New York Times/Redux

Looking back, Holmes says, “I received a considerable amount of time I wasn’t expecting. I always wanted a big family, Billy wanted even more kids. It was such a beautiful experience in such a horrible time,” she adds.

“It pains me that I am behind bars and I’m not there for all the moments that matter in their life. People can think what they’d like about me, but it just happened and it’s the happiest moments in my life. I love them.”

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

source: people.com