Elizabeth Holmes Details Her Daily Life in Prison, from Helping Inmates Launch Careers to Facing 'Pure Pain' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

ForElizabeth Holmes— the incarcerated former CEO ofTheranos, a billion-dollar healthcare start-up that collapsed in a fraud scandal in 2022 — life these days is a monotonous routine.

“I wake up just after 5 a.m. every day. At 6 a.m., the compound opens and 6:30 a.m. is breakfast. I usually eat pieces of fruit,” says Holmes, 41. “Then I work out every day for 40 minutes, lifting weights, rowing. I lift 20-lb. weights, I run track and do body weight exercises to keep my body and mind sound.”

For the last two years, home for Holmes has been afederal prison camp in Bryan, Texas,where she is serving an11.25-year sentence(reduced to 9 years for good behavior) for her role in a healthcare scam that cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars.

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

Philip Cheung/The New York Times/Redux

“It’s been pure pain since I’ve been here,” says Holmes, who opens up about her life behind bars and being separated from her family in this week’sPEOPLE cover story. “It’s been torture.”

Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Bryan, Texas on May 30, 2023.Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty

Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty

During visitation hours on Saturdays and Sundays — the highlight of Holmes’s week — she has an opportunity to cuddle with William and Invicta (Latin for “invincible”) in a bare room furnished with blue plastic chairs and vending machines, or to watch them search for insects in the prison yard.

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

Philip Cheung for The New York Times/Redux

Weekdays are workdays at the prison. By 8 a.m. Holmes, once hailed as the next Steve Jobs, is at the facility’s education building, where she earns 31 cents an hour as a reentry clerk, helping inmates slated for release to write résumés and prepare to apply for tax credits and other government benefits.

Between roll calls five times a day, she also works on her recently launched campaign to reform the criminal justice system. She has drafted a bill — a seven-page handwritten document titled the American Freedom Act — which she says would change criminal procedure, with the goal of bolstering the presumption of innocence.Legal expertNeama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, says Holmes’s proposal for major changes to the justice system “has no real chance of passing.” He points out that she was convicted of one of the biggest frauds in American history and argues that “Holmes should accept responsibility for her actions and stop trying to deflect the blame on our criminal justice system.”

Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans outside federal court in San Jose, Calif.Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty

Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty

While she defiantly maintains her innocence, Holmes admits, “I replayed mistakes I made a million times in my mind, burning them into my body.” But when asked to specify the “mistakes” she made, Holmes declines to answer, saying only, “Theranos failed. I take responsibility for that failure. Failure is not fraud.”

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“So many of these women don’t have anyone," she says, “and once they’re in there, they’re forgotten.”

Scheduled for release onApril 3, 2032, Holmes says she hopes to continue her fight for the rights of defendants in the justice system — and, of course, to spend as much time as possible with her family.Although no decorations are allowed inside her dormitory, she says keeps photos of her children and fiancé in a badge she wears around her neck. “I tape their pictures in all my books, and I lay them out in front of me as I work,” she says. “They are what I live and fight for.”

For more on Elizabeth Holmes and her life in prison, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

source: people.com