Elizabeth Holmes Spent 6 Months in RV Sleeping in Walmart Parking Lots
Elizabeth Holmes gave a series of pre-prison interviews to the New York Times in an attempt to rehabilitate herself.
She said she spent six months in 2019 sleeping in an RV with her partner while building her defense.
Holmes and Billy Evans, who was a fixture during her trial, welcomed their second child earlier this year.
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Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes gave a series of bizarre pre-prison interviews to the New York Times in an attempt to salvage her public image.
In a May 7 profile in The Times, Holmes admitted she had built a persona that wasn't "authentic" – wearing black turtlenecks, red lipstick, messy blonde hair, and using (as it turns out, false) a masculine voice.
The founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos is trying to portray herself as the "real Elizabeth" who wants to be called "Liz" – not as the person who was convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy, and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
People flocked to social media, including Twitter, to stress that Holmes "is a convicted felon." Former CNN host Soledad O'Brien wrote: "Nice to be a pretty white lady working your charm on a nyt reporter."
Once the youngest self-made female billionaire, Holmes was due to report to prison last month, but filed a last-minute appeal that bought her more time.
Among the various topics she discussed with The Times' Amy Chozick, Holmes said that when District Judge Edward J. Davila set a date for her criminal trial in 2019, she and her partner, Billy Evans, spent six months on the road in an RV while prosecutors were working on her case.
And before the trial even began, the couple slept in campgrounds and Walmart parking lots during these months of traveling the country, while working on her legal defense between outdoor yoga and hikes.
"Even though that period was a crisis and Theranos was my life and like my child, I gave everything I had to it," Holmes told The Times. Once it was gone, "I also became free," she added.
Holmes and Evans met in 2017 and reportedly got married in 2019. He has been seen by her side throughout her criminal trial.
Holmes's profile in The Times wherein she's described as a loved-up mother of two who wears a "bucket hat and sunglasses" and walks about the San Diego Zoo echoes arguments she's used to stay out of prison.
She previously cited her two young children, a son who is almost two years old and an infant whose gender isn't known but was born earlier this year, as part of her plea to the judge. Her attorney Amy Mason Saharia also cited a list of other attributes, including that she volunteered for a rape crisis hotline, in the motion requesting a delay.
Holmes' several interviews with The Times as an attempt for rehabilitation, however, are likely to be stymied by her conviction.
Source: Business Insider
