Why is this story on HN? It might well be true for all we can know about it, but how exactly does this pointless gossip "gratify intellectual curiosity"?
This being, IMO, the most important part. Holmes is not a Martian; she's a product of SV culture. While her scam was particularly brazen, I saw a ton of small things in _Bad Blood_ that I also saw in various founders and execs in startups I've worked for.
The disturbing thing is that her behavior, while extreme, is just that - an extreme on a fairly smooth gradient. A lot of successful firms have people who have done some nasty, gross stuff to get there.