By the time Mike Siconolfi and I had our conversation about the
ancient art of Sicilian fishing in late July, Holmes had had three
private meetings with Murdoch. The latest had taken place earlier that
month, when she’d hosted him in Palo Alto and showed him the
miniLab. During the visit, she’d raised my story, telling him the
information I had gathered was false and would do great damage to
Theranos if it was published. Murdoch had demurred, saying he
trusted the paper’s editors to handle the matter fairly.
In late September, as we were getting close to publication, Holmes
met with Murdoch a fourth time in his office on the eighth floor of the
News Corporation building in Midtown Manhattan. My desk in the
Journal’s newsroom was just three floors below, but I had no idea she
was on the premises. She brought up my story with renewed urgency,
hoping Murdoch would offer to kill it. Once again, despite the
substantial investment he had at stake, he declined to intervene.
—
WHILE HOLMES TRIED unsuccessfully to sway the Journal’s owner,
Theranos continued its scorched-earth campaign against my sources.
Boies Schiller’s Mike Brille sent a letter to Rochelle Gibbons
threatening to sue her if she didn’t cease making what he termed “false
and defamatory statements” about the company and its executives. In
Phoenix, two new patients showed up for appointments at Dr.
Sundene’s office and threw tantrums. She had to hire an attorney to
get Yelp to take down incendiary reviews they posted on the site about
her. I had managed to keep Dr. Stewart from succumbing to Balwani’s
pressure, but Theranos had convinced her practice to accept in-office
laboratory services from it to blunt her account of inaccurate test
results.
Still, other on-the-record sources such as Dr. Gary Betz, the nurse
Carmen Washington, and Maureen Glunz, the patient who had spent
hours in the emergency room on the eve of Thanksgiving, remained
impervious to the company’s intimidation tactics. And Alan Beam and
Erika Cheung continued to cooperate with the story as confidential