Kansas City native, ex-reporter reveals relationship with ‘most hated man in America’

“Your Honor, finding love with Martin was a great joy for me.”

In April, journalist and Kansas City native Christie Smythe wrote those words to a federal judge about Martin Shkreli, the widely vilified former pharmaceutical executive who is serving a seven-year sentence on a fraud conviction.

Smythe, 37, wrote to Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on April 14 as part of an emergency motion filed by Shkreli’s lawyers requesting a compassionate release. They argued that Shkreli, who gained infamy for raising the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000%, would be able to work on a cure for COVID-19 and could avoid contracting the virus himself if he were released from prison.

In the letter, an unredacted copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Smythe laid out the story of how she, a former Bloomberg News reporter who helped break the story of Shkreli’s arrest in 2015, had fallen in love with a man the BBC had called “the most hated man in America.” She asked the judge to allow Shkreli to continue serving his sentence in home confinement, at her Manhattan apartment.

“It has been a long emotional journey for me from when I first came into your courtroom as a journalist covering Martin Shkreli’s case in 2015 to the present moment, as I submit this letter to you as his girlfriend and would-be life partner,” she wrote.

The relationship between Smythe and Shkreli was revealed in an Elle magazine article Sunday.

“I started to fall for him, I think, after he got thrown in prison,” Smythe said in an interview with The Times, referring to when Shkreli’s bail was revoked and he was jailed in September 2017. “I definitely felt emotionally compromised then, but I didn’t quite know what to do about that.” Smythe left Bloomberg News in 2018 and got divorced from her husband the next year.

Shkreli’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said in an interview Monday that he was surprised by the Elle article, only to add: “Nothing about Martin or the case surprises me.”

The Elle article briefly mentions Smythe’s Kansas City area childhood:

“Growing up outside Kansas City, Missouri, Smythe ‘was terrified of the sound of my voice,’ she says, until high school, when her passion for reporting overrode her shyness. Smythe had a defiant streak, railing in her Catholic-girls’-school newspaper about fines for wearing uniforms improperly.

“When her parents asked her to take her brothers to church, ‘she would defiantly take us to McDonald’s’ instead, her brother Michael Smythe says.”

(Smythe attended St. Teresa’s Academy, and wrote and took pictures for The Star’s TeenStar section in the late 1990s.)

“Smythe attended the journalism school at the University of Missouri and worked for two small newspapers before moving to New York in 2008. After working for a legal news company, she started covering Brooklyn federal court for Bloomberg News in 2012.”

On Monday, Smythe told the New York Post that she’s now open to dating others.

She had told Elle she was going to wait for Shkreli, even after he curtly dismissed her recently via a message from his lawyers.

“Mr. Shkreli wishes Ms. Smythe the best of luck in her future endeavors,” he said via the journalist who told Smythe’s story in Elle. He had cut off communication with Smythe after he learned she was going public with their relationship history.

“He bounces between this delight in having a future life together and this fatalism about how it will never work. It’s definitely in the latter category now,” Smythe replied in the article, where she was described as “tearing up” after hearing the message. She said then that she would try to wait for him.

But on Monday night, she told the New York Post, “That was a classic break-up-slash-if-you-fire-somebody kind of line. … It was really heartbreaking and sad.”

The Post tracked down Smythe, 38, while she was out walking her dog in New York City and asked whether she was ready to date other guys. She hasn’t seen Shkreli in person in more than a year, in part because of COVID-19 restrictions at prisons.

“I’m definitely open to it,” she said. “I have been basically celibate for two years. I’m not going to sit around and wait.”

Unless, she said, Shkreli wound up being open to some sort of relationship down the line. She said she still loves him.

“I’d be interested in seeing if we can make some kind of future work, if that’s what he wants to do,” Smythe said.

In September 2015, Shkreli — who was then 32 and the chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals — hiked the price overnight of Daraprim, a drug that treats a rare, potentially fatal parasitic infection, from $13.50 to $750 a tablet. He was accused of price-gouging, and his combative, sneering responses to the criticism earned him the moniker Pharma Bro.

Shkreli will be eligible for release from prison in September 2023.

Includes reporting by the Los Angeles Times and The Star.