Elizabeth Holmes’ prison nurse spills secrets of working with fraudster behind bars

Elizabeth Holmes’ prison nurse spills secrets of working with fraudster behind bars The former prison nurse said Elizabeth Holmes’ kids were ‘everything to her’ - Bookmark Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in A former prison nurse has spoken out about working with Elizabeth Holmes at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas — divulging how she joked with the fraudster and listened to her gush over her children. Noella Turnage, a nurse and the prison’s de facto phlebotomist, was assigned to help Holmes pump because she was still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter when she arrived at FPC Bryan in May 2023. Turnage told The Daily Beast that she “spent a lot, lot of time” with Holmes, who was convicted in January 2022 and sentenced to 11 years in prison after defrauding investors out of millions of dollars over lies about her biotech company, Theranos’, blood-testing capabilities. Turnage recalled asking Holmes if she could ask her a question, about making her fraudulent claims into a reality for medical professionals: “I said, ‘When you get out of here, can you make that s*** work, so I don’t have to do this anymore?” “You could tell she was taken aback for a second. And then she just, you know, busted out laughing,” Turnage said. Holmes has made headlines in recent weeks as the subject of Nathan Fielder’s new documentary, You Can See Everything. The documentary, filmed in secret over the course of three years, follows Holmes in the weeks before she went to prison. Turnage described Holmes fighting for the right to freeze her breast milk to give to her family when they visit. “There’s a reason people say that [Bureau of Prisons] stands for ‘Backwards on Purpose.’ They were like, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ And she fought like hell for that, to be able to do it. So they can actually get a space for inmates to be able to pump, and make arrangements for these women to be able to send that breast milk home to their children,” Turnage said. Holmes would talk constantly about her two children, her newborn daughter, Invicta, and 3-year-old son, William, Turnage said. “When she would get new pictures of them, she would come and show them to me,” Turnage said. “Those kids are everything (to her).” Turnage told the outlet she was eventually reassigned to the phone room after reporting what she felt was medical neglect and abuse at the facility. The Independent has reached out to the Bureau of Prisons for comment. With her new assignment, she would monitor the phone calls and conversations inmates had over email. She told the outlet she came to “love” reading Holmes’ emails “because they were some of the more intelligent ones that I ran across.” Turnage also got to read emails from a new inmate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for recruiting and grooming young women and girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting his own trial on trafficking charges. After reading Maxwell’s emails and learning she was granted a slew of special privileges, Turnage wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, reporting that prison staff was waiting “hand and foot” on Maxwell. Turnage was fired immediately, and the Bureau of Prisons has been trying to revoke her nursing license—though the issue remains unresolved. The former prison nurse went to see Holmes’ documentary, telling The Daily Beast that the Holmes depicted on screen was much like the one she came to know in prison. “I know my opinion of her is not exactly the popular one, but I like the woman,” she said. Holmes’ listed release date at the Federal Bureau of Prisons is currently March 19, 2032.