Justine Musk: Tragic Details

The first of Justine and Elon Musk’s children didn’t live to see his first birthday. In 2002, the Musks’ first son, Nevada Alexander, suffered a tragic death from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at just 2 months old. “Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. He was 10 weeks old, the age when male infants are most susceptible to SIDS,” Justine shared in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire.

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He didn’t die right away, but it was too late to save him. “By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead,” she penned. After three days on life support, Justine and Elon let him go. “I held him in my arms when he died,” she wrote. This last assertion became a point of contention in 2022 because Elon claimed he was the one who held Nevada during his last moments.

When Elon defended the suspension of Alex Jones from X for spreading a conspiracy theory about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, he cited his kid’s death. “My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat,” he tweeted. “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.” But Justine wanted to set the record straight. “Not that it matters to anyone except me … but I was the one who was holding him,” she tweeted.

Justine Musk struggled to cope with the death of her firstborn. Because Elon Musk preferred not to talk about Nevada and what had happened to him, she had no option but to grieve in silence. “Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets, and I sold three novels to Penguin and Simon & Schuster,” she wrote in the Marie Claire piece. It looked like the Musks had moved on. But Justine hadn’t and her solitary grieving took a toll on her mental health.

She believes her symptoms would have continued to worsen if someone hadn’t intervened. “Nevada’s death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression and distraction that would be continuing today if one of our nannies hadn’t noticed me struggling,” she continued. The nanny suggested Justine see a therapist to help her deal with the loss of her son and even connected her with one. “Dubious, I gave it a shot. In those weekly sessions, I began to get perspective on what had become my life,” she wrote.

Years later, Elon continued to defend his approach to suffering in silence. “Wallowing in sadness does no good for anyone around you,” he told Ashlee Vance in her 2015 biography, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” (via The New Yorker). It also didn’t prevent him from suffering from depression himself. But instead of seeking a therapist, Elon has opted to treat his mental health condition with ketamine.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Elon Musk was one man to Justine Musk during their courtship — and a completely different one during their marriage. When they met, he was supportive of her dreams and aspirations. He was impressed when she told him she wanted to become a published author. “It was the first time that a boy found my sense of ambition—instead of my long hair or narrow waist—attractive,” she wrote for Marie Claire, citing how previous boyfriends had criticized her competitiveness.

He slowly changed his tune. With his rising fortune, Elon began to question his wife’s decisions. “Elon started to say that I ‘read too much,’ shrugging off my book deadlines. This felt like a dismissal, and a stark reversal from the days when he was so supportive,” she shared. Her husband also started controlling her appearance, pushing her to be thinner and blonder. It all caught her off guard.

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But in hindsight, Justine realized the signs had always been there. “As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, ‘I am the alpha in this relationship.’ I shrugged it off,” she wrote. “Just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement.” The latter point became a big issue when they filed for divorce in 2008 and were trying to settle. “A cynical person — which I am not — might suggest that my husband went into the marriage already planning for the divorce,” she argued in her essay for The Times.

Divorce is rarely smooth, but Justine and Elon Musk’s was aggravated by several factors. When they wed in 2000, Elon wasn’t a billionaire or even associated with Tesla or SpaceX. But he began to make his fortune early in their relationship, selling Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in 1999. “Elon Musk wasn’t a billionaire when I met him. He was a university student one year older than me who had emigrated from South Africa with $300 in his pocket,” she noted in The Times piece.

In 2002, he snagged a $1.5 billion deal when he sold PayPal to eBay — and his fortune only went up from there. Given her husband’s wealth, Justine’s role in the divorce was dissected early on. “When the subject of my divorce came up with male friends, I noticed flashes of hostility towards me. One said accusingly: ‘So you think you deserve half?’ Another: ‘How much do you think you’ve actually earned?'” Justine penned.

But not everyone was against Justine. In fact, some accused Elon of crying poverty to get out of his obligations to the mother of five of his children. He took issue with that. “What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife’s divorce lawyers,” he wrote in a 2010 Business Insider retort. Justine eventually settled for $6 million and 10% of his SpaceX stock.

Elon Musk filed for divorce from Justine Musk in the spring of 2008. Elon became engaged to Talulah Riley (seen above) a month later. “Six weeks [after filing for divorce], he texted me to say he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s who had moved to Los Angeles to be with him,” she wrote of the “Pride and Prejudice” actor in the Marie Claire essay. It stung, but it helped clarify a few things in her mind. “My life with this man had devolved to a cliché,” she wrote. “At least she wasn’t blonde. I found that refreshing.”

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As hurt as she was, Justine didn’t blame Riley for her split from Elon. Divorce is more complicated than that. “[She is] about as personally responsible for the death of my marriage as she is for the dynamic that played out inside it. In other words, not very,” she wrote in her blog, highlighting that she had only heard positive things about Riley (via GQ). Even though she didn’t attack her, and her relationship with her ex, Elon, had issues with how their romance was portrayed.

In his Business Insider essay, Elon clarified he met Riley only after he filed for divorce in June 2008. “The fact of the matter is that Talulah and I lived on opposite sides of the world and hadn’t even known of each other’s existence before the marriage with Justine ended,” he wrote.