Website recreates Elizabeth Holmes’ desk with thousands of trial documents

A newly created interactive website is allowing users to explore the digital workspace of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing company Theranos, using more than 1,000 emails, text messages, presentations and other documents released during her criminal trial.

Created by Extend engineer Bo Lau, the simulator recreates what Holmes’ desk might have looked like in 2016, offering users a virtual experience of the devices and digital files she used before the collapse of Theranos.

The website features period-accurate technology, including an iPhone with a physical home button and slide-to-unlock functionality, as well as a MacBook Air running Apple’s OS X El Capitan operating system.

Users can navigate the simulated devices and examine documents made public during the United States v. Elizabeth Holmes trial. The experience also allows them to interact with a simulation of the Theranos Edison machine, the device the company claimed could conduct extensive blood tests using just a few drops of blood.

The project offers an alternative way to explore evidence from one of the most widely followed corporate fraud cases in the technology industry, bringing thousands of court documents into a more accessible digital environment.

Rather than searching through large collections of court filings in PDF format, users can browse the material through a recreation of Holmes’ digital workspace.

Holmes founded Theranos with promises that its technology would revolutionise medical testing by performing numerous diagnostic tests from a small blood sample. The company later collapsed amid revelations that its technology could not reliably deliver on its claims.

Holmes was convicted of fraud in 2022 for defrauding investors and was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

Beyond the historical recreation, Lau’s project is also being used to promote a watch party organised by her company for Nathan Fielder’s upcoming documentary about Holmes, titled You Can See Everything.

The website also serves as a showcase for Extend, a business that develops tools for extracting, parsing and organising information from complex documents.

By combining courtroom evidence with an interactive simulation, the project offers users a different way to revisit the Theranos scandal and examine the material surrounding Holmes’ rise and eventual downfall.