The ‘defiant’ name Elizabeth Holmes gave newborn daughter while preparing to leave her

In a controversial New York Times profile published Sunday, writer Amy Chozick briefly addresses Elizabeth Holmes’ choice to twice get pregnant — the first time after the Theranos founder was indicted in “one of the most notorious fraud cases in recent history,” and the second time after she was found guilty on four counts of swindling investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and faced the possibility of going away to prison for many years.

Holmes chalks up her curious family planning choices to “just bad timing,” while writer Amy Chozick said the disgraced tech mogul and her partner Billy Evans believed she could be immune to consequences. “They did not anticipate that she would be indicted,” Chozick wrote. “They did not anticipate that she would be sentenced to 11 years. They always wanted a big family.”

But as Holmes was preparing to leave her 3-month-old daughter and 20-month-old son to spend more than a decade in prison, she gave the girl a name she may think will help her endure the potential life-long trauma of being separated from her mother at such a young age.

The New York Times confirms that Holmes named the baby Invicta, which the Times and the Daily Beast said is a feminized version of  the Latin word meaning “invincible” or “unconquered.” In the Daily Beast report, cultural reporter Helen Holmes (no relation) said that the name choice is “about as acute a display of narcissism as one’s ever likely to see.”

Many criticized the Times’ sympathetic treatment of Holmes in the story’s comments section. They said the convicted fraudster, who has reportedly abandoned her throaty low voice, expresses no remorse for the crimes she committed. Holmes admits she made “many mistakes,” echoing one of her attorneys, Lance Wade, who agreed that his client “made mistakes, but mistakes are not crimes.”

Holmes also has done all she can to push back against prison time. As the Times story was being written, Holmes was getting ready to report to a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas, on April 27. But she avoided going into prison on April 27 with a successful, last-minute request to stay out of prison pending an appeal on the reporting date. Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford University’s law school, told this news organization last month that he expected Holmes would lose her appeal.

But after Holmes won that last-minute request, the Daily Mail first reported that she had named her newborn Invicta. That choice struck many as a sign that Holmes doesn’t just remain defiant but arrogant.

“What’s the opposite of remorse? Yeah that,” tweeted Bijan Salehizadeh last month. He’s an investor at Highland Capital Partners who passed on investing in Theranos in 2006 when Holmes couldn’t answer his questions, the Daily Beast reported. “Naming a kid after a poem that political and war prisoners often cite is precious. The demons of denial are raging.”

Daily Mail reporting that Elizabeth Holmes named her daughter… Invicta https://t.co/CRYAsqIAFo

— erin griffith (@eringriffith) April 25, 2023

It could also be said that Holmes, as a celebrity, is following an age-old tradition among certain famous people who give their kids the most unusual, pretentious or plain weird names possible. In this way, Invicta follows in the footsteps of Blanket, Apple, Jermajesty, Blue Ivy, Kal-El and the Kardashian universe of names like North, West, Chicago, Psalm, True and Stormi. At least Invicta is much easier to pronounce than the names Elon Musk gave to two of his most recent offspring: X AE A-XII and Exa Dark Sideræl.

Meanwhile, Chozick’s Times profile barely touches on a much more serious issue: What does Holmes think will happen to her daughter and son, Invicta and William, when she goes to prison? How will they cope? Chozick quotes Holmes during a visit to the San Diego Zoo with her children, contemplating: “How would you spend your time if you didn’t know how much time you had left? It would be the kind of things we’re doing now because they’re perfect. Just being together.”

The black turtlenecks are gone. So is the voice. As the convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes awaits prison, she has adopted a new persona. https://t.co/8YfM0Z3E2S

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2023

There’s plenty of data available on what happens to children who can longer be “together” with a mother or father who goes to prison. Studies show that children and adolescents who experience parental incarceration are more likely to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, anger, aggression, and isolating and self-harming behaviors.

Evans, a hotel heir, comes across as a doting father whose family wealth means their children won’t suffer the poverty and housing instability that’s often the case for children with incarcerated parents. Evans also has the means to fly William and Invicta from San Diego, where the family now lives, to Texas to visit their mother as much as possible. Still, those visits will only occur on weekends and take place in a prison visiting room where there is limited physical contact, with the amount depending on the guards on duty. Formerly incarcerated women have told this news organization, “You can’t mother from prison.”

“Her kids are definitely going to need therapy, and she will need therapy,” Starling Thomas told this news organization. She served a year at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in 2017 and 2018 before her money-laundering conviction was thrown out on appeal. “It’s going to be very difficult for her children. It’s really going to take a toll on them.”