Elizabeth Holmes' Husband Billy Evans: The Trial, Prison & Nathan Fielder’s Documentary

Summary · 4 min read

Billy Evans is married to Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder now serving a prison sentence in Texas. He says he previously worked on lidar and helped build Luminar. He now runs Hamanthus, which builds sensors using Raman spectroscopy.

Evans gives his account of his relationship with Holmes, from meeting her in October 2017 through the indictment, the trial and her imprisonment. He argues that the press portrayed her unfairly and that her decision to stay silent while the case ran was her biggest mistake. He describes the verdict and sentencing as driven by conspiracy and loss calculations, and says the Nathan Fielder documentary aims to let viewers see her as a person. He ends by describing Hamanthus and rejecting the label Theranos 2.0.

Minute by minute

1. 1:21

   Evans challenged the podcast's Holmes coverage. Evans says he approached Friedberg at a party around F1 in Austin and told him the podcast had the Holmes story wrong. Friedberg then spoke with him by phone and flew to Texas to spend a day with Holmes, her parents and the kids in prison. Evans says Holmes follows rules to the letter and never spoke to the media while the case ran.

2. 3:32

   They met at a party in 2017. Evans says he met Holmes at a Fleet Week party in San Francisco on October 7, 2017, before her indictment, and at first knew her only as Elizabeth. They talked for hours and learned their offices were two doors apart on Page Mill Road. They stayed friends for about six months before the relationship turned romantic.

3. 8:28

   The indictment came weeks into dating. Evans says Holmes was indicted about three weeks after they started dating and that he did not know what an indictment was. He says she believed in her innocence and had been told she would not be indicted. He met her parents the night of the indictment, and says she avoided reading press coverage.

4. 11:07

   Trial preparation and eight months in an RV. Evans describes a long run-up to trial, with Holmes working late through hundreds of thousands of records. He says they spent eight months traveling in an off-road RV with their husky, Balto. He says constant recognition and judgment in San Francisco restaurants was part of the reason to leave.

5. 13:18

   Evans rejects the manipulation narrative. Evans calls the idea that Holmes manipulated investors with her blue eyes and deep voice sexist, and says a man who raised $100 million in a 45-minute meeting would be praised. He argues the missed revenue numbers came from Walgreens contract obligations that Walgreens defaulted on after the press coverage. He says the company's work involved hundreds of employees over 16 years.

6. 16:37

   Trial days with a newborn. Evans says their son was born on July 10, 2020, and was three months old when the trial began. He says the family woke at 4:30 each morning, and that Holmes pumped milk during court breaks in a bag disguised as a non-diaper bag. Evans sent the milk home by Uber. He says the jury never saw her in a weak moment.

7. 19:19

   Verdict, counts and sentence math. Evans says Holmes ran about 12.5 million tests over 18 months and was acquitted on the four patient-fraud counts. She was convicted of defrauding three investors and of conspiracy. He says the conspiracy conviction and later added investors raised her sentence to 135 months, or 11 and a quarter years.

8. 23:34

   Staying silent was her biggest mistake. Evans says the judge told the trial team the case would play out in court and not the press. He says Holmes' power was in telling her own story, so staying silent was the single biggest mistake she made. He ties her rule-following and idealism to parents who worked in government and talked about service at dinner.

9. 26:36

   Life with Holmes in federal prison. Holmes called during the interview and said hello to the audience, though Evans said speakerphone use could send her to the solitary housing unit. He says she has been at Bryan Federal Prison Camp, which holds 800 women, for 1,205 days. He says the children get honest answers about where she is, and recalls her saying "now we are free" at the prison gate.

10. 31:30

    The documentary aims to show her as a person. Evans says the Nathan Fielder documentary is meant to let people see Holmes and make up their own minds, not to relitigate the case. He says it was filmed while she could not talk about the case and during a stressful stretch of birth, IVF and reporting to prison. He has not seen it and says he has some concern about the edit, which has taken three years.

11. 35:45

    Release timeline and restitution math. Evans says the First Step Act lets Holmes earn 16 days off for every 30 days of programming, so she could reach a halfway house in the second quarter of next year. She owes $435 million in restitution, and 70% of commissary deposits is taken. He argues that ten investors were added to raise her sentence and says she recently got a one-year reduction.

12. 39:12

    Hamanthus is not Theranos 2.0. Evans says Hamanthus builds sensors using Raman spectroscopy, which shines light through biological samples to identify chemical structures. He says the devices used in labs cost millions of dollars and are many feet long, and he wants to make them cheaper and widely distributed. The aim is to give AI deep biological data sets. He says the Theranos 2.0 label sells better than a nerdy sensor company.

Published Oct 15, 2026.