As a journalist, she had covered his arrest, then his sentence to seven years in prison, before falling in love with him and giving up everything: the love story of Christie Smythe and Martin Shkreli, a time nicknamed “the man America’s most hated, ”went viral in the United States on Monday.
The story came out in the magazine on Sunday She – which Smythe confided in – then was taken up and commented extensively on Monday by several American media and on social networks, some denouncing the lack of “ethics” of the journalist, while others showed their sympathy.
Christie Smythe told her story in great detail: from her first meeting with this young pharmaceutical manager in January 2016, until she turned her life upside down for him from July 2018.
In March of that year, he was sentenced to seven years in prison in Brooklyn federal court for securities fraud and stock manipulation.
Many applauded this condemnation: Martin Shkreli, then 34-year-old autodidact, had become the embodiment of the supposed cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry, plus extravagance.
The facts for which he had been convicted were nevertheless unrelated to what had earned him intense media attention: the 55-fold increase – from $ 13.50 to $ 750 per pill – in the price of the drug Daraprim, used against malaria and AIDS, by his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, in 2015.
In She, Smythe explains how their relationship gradually evolved: how she felt “flattered” the day he asked her to suggest a lawyer, how she got down to a book about him before becoming his friend and visit him in prison – until the day when she declares her love for him in the visiting room.
In the meantime, she resigns to her employer, the Bloomberg agency, after several warnings about conduct deemed unprofessional. With her husband, they also divorce by mutual agreement.
A posteriori, she underlines that, in the coverage of legal cases, “one never gives the point of view of the accused”.
And although Martin Shkreli cut ties with her upon learning of the article’s release, according to She, Christie Smythe says she is ready to wait until her release from prison, scheduled for September 2023.
Despite the criticism of which she was the subject on the networks, she said she was happy to have “made public” her story, “after having kept it to herself. […] for years”.
“I strongly believe in free speech, my skin is tough, so go for it,” she said in one of her many tweets on Monday.