Former Bloomberg News reporter Christie Smythe says she “fell down the rabbit hole” in ditching her job and husband for Martin Shkreli, the reviled “pharma bro” who’s serving seven years in prison for hedge-fund fraud.
Smythe covered Shkreli’s arrest in December 2015 and told Elle in an interview published online Sunday that they began dating after he was behind bars in 2018.
“I fell down the rabbit hole,” she said. “I’m happy here. I feel like I have purpose.”
Shkreli’s infamy exploded in September 2015 when his company jacked up the price of an AIDS drug from $13.50 per pill to $750.
Smythe explained how she was charmed by a “master manipulator.” Prison visits became more intimate ― they exchanged “I love you’s,” though the two have “never slept together,” the magazine noted. Smythe even froze her eggs, though she expects a relationship with him will be “messy and difficult.”
A happily-ever-after is looking increasingly bleak. Shkreli hasn’t spoken to her since he discovered her article was in the works, and they haven’t seen each other since the coronavirus pandemic began, Elle wrote. (Shkreli was denied a prison timeout in May after he requested a three-month release to research a COVID-19 treatment.) A terse statement from him wishing Smythe luck in future endeavors didn’t exactly scream of romance, either.
But Smythe, who has sold the movie rights to her Shkreli book proposal, remained optimistic in a tweet Sunday aimed at critics after the article posted.
“A woman can choose to do something with her life (which does not affect you) that you in no way approve of,” she wrote. “But that’s OK.”
Read Elle’s entire article here.
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