The Murder of Jane Stanford

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: "The Murder of Jane Stanford" (February 24, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this True Crime Murder Mystery edition, hosts Josh and Chuck dive deep into the mysterious and unsolved 1905 death of Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University. Long shrouded by rumor, cover-ups, and institutional myth, Jane Stanford’s demise raises questions about power, legacy, toxic ambition—and perhaps the perfect crime. The episode weaves together the Gilded Age origin story of Stanford University, Jane's challenging personality, and the tangled web of suspects, culminating in an exploration of modern attempts to finally solve her murder.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Who Was Jane Stanford?

[01:51–04:26]

• Jane Stanford, Gilded Age heiress from Albany, NY, married to Leland Stanford, one of the infamous railroad robber barons.
• Described as “the prototypical Gilded Age wife… sort of entertaining, keeping up with large residences when you have tons of money,” but later a “very demanding lead trustee at Stanford…a micromanager.” (Chuck, 03:47)
• She was “very definite” about her ideas for Stanford and “had the money to back it up.” (Josh, 04:30)

2. Leland Stanford & the University's Origins

[04:39–15:19]

• Leland Stanford, a store owner who made his fortune by "selling shovels, not prospecting," became one of the “Big Four” railroad barons, amassing significant wealth through questionable practices.
  • “The Stanfords made their money in very questionable ways...some guy fails upward and becomes super, super wealthy.” (Josh, 07:05–08:17)
• The tragic death of their only son, Leland Jr., at age 15, led to the couple's embrace of spiritualism and, eventually, the founding of Stanford University.
• Founding stories differ: did the idea come to Leland in a dream, or was it relayed via a séance?
  • “I want to make it a co-ed school… not associated with a church, non-denominational Christian school.” (Chuck, 15:18–15:32)
  • Notably, tuition was free at founding and the university welcomed a diverse pool of students.

3. Jane’s Grip on Stanford & Internal Friction

[18:29–24:53]

• Jane Stanford exerted enormous control as sole surviving founder after Leland Sr.’s death.
• Capped women’s enrollment at 500 despite promoting co-education, in part to avoid it becoming a “women’s college.”
  • “She also stuck with that [cap]… I don’t think it was until the 30s where they finally were like, we can’t just keep it at 500.” (Josh, 24:29)
• Friction with university president David Starr Jordan (“pretty gross views on things,” including eugenics and scientific racism, a "vocal pacifist" for racist reasons—19:17–20:07), over the university’s direction between liberal arts and science/research.

4. The Deteriorating Relationship with Staff

[11:14–13:05, 25:41–27:10]

• Critical figure: her personal secretary, Bertha Berner—extremely close, overworked, and ultimately a major beneficiary in the will.
  • “She would be with her until the day she died. Put a pin in that.” (Chuck, 12:29)
  • Berner received $15,000 ($500k in today’s money), much more than other staff.
• Jane’s micromanagement extended to direct influence over faculty appointments and firings, resulting in a public scandal about academic freedom.

5. The Murders: Two Attempts

[27:10–32:05]

Attempt 1 — January 1905, San Francisco:

• Jane’s nightstand water tasted strange; she had herself vomit, had Berner taste it, and sent it to the pharmacy—found to contain rat poison (strychnine).
• After confirmation, Jane retreated to Hawaii for safety.

Attempt 2 — February 28, 1905, Honolulu:

• While staying at the Moana Hotel, Jane fell ill after ingesting baking soda and water prepared by Berner.
• Local doctor recognized signs of classic strychnine poisoning; Jane died ~30 minutes after the onset of symptoms.
  • Notable quote: “Her last words were, ‘This is a horrible death to die.’” (Chuck, 32:42)

6. The Cover-Up & Aftermath

[32:48–39:48]

• David Starr Jordan rushed to Hawaii with a trustee, aiming to "control the narrative," as did two investigators hired by the university.
• Hawaiian coroner’s jury declared it murder by poisoning after only two minutes of deliberation.
• Jordan immediately commissioned his own doctor (Waterhouse), claiming heart failure due to overeating and hysteria—not poisoning.
  • “That’s how she died. That’s basically what President Jordan came back and told the world. And it actually worked.” (Josh, 35:03–35:45)
• Jordan publicly exonerated Berner and attacked the credibility of Hawaiian authorities.

7. Modern Investigations & Continuing Mystery

[39:48–43:39]

• Official narrative held for nearly 100 years until 2003, when Stanford professor and neurologist Robert Cutler published The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford, vindicating the original Hawaiian medical team and confirming strychnine death.
  • “You could not do a better job of handling a suspected murder poison case than these guys did in Hawaii.” (Josh, 38:33)
• Cutler suggested Berner had opportunity but not clear motive; Jordan had motive for cover-up but not the act; could they have been in cahoots?
• In 2021, Stanford historian Richard White published Who Killed Jane Stanford?, further implicating Berner:
  • Motives: faster inheritance, relief from lifelong servitude, and possible tensions in their relationship.
  • The case remains unsolved—murder, but by whose hand?

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Murder Foretold:
  • “This is Stuff You Should Know True Crime Murder Mystery Edition… we do not know who did it. Sorry, who done it.” (Josh, 01:51)
• On the Gilded Age legacy:
  • “It’s such a great example of American myth making where some guy just basically fails upward… and then very shortly… becomes lionized as this… builder of America.” (Josh, 07:05)
• Stanford’s Founding Spirit:
  • “I want to make it a co-ed school… not associated with a church.” (Chuck, 15:18)
• On Strychnine's Effects:
  • “Strychnine interferes with your nerve receptors…you’re having massive, violent, involuntary muscle clenching…Jane was following these.” (Josh, 31:10)
• Jane’s Alleged Last Words:
  • "This is a horrible death to die." (Chuck, 32:42)
• On the Cover-Up:
  • “The reason he [Jordan] was a pacifist… war promoted racial degradation, because you send the fittest young men off to die, that leaves the weak to stay home and procreate and it degenerates the race or society back home.” (Josh, 19:38–20:07)
  • “He was a white man in a prominent position, and people just listened to him...” (Josh, 35:45)
• Ultimate Unsolvability:
  • “Probably never be solved. Jordan continued to work there as university president until 1913. Berner lived pretty well…until she died in 1945.” (Chuck, 43:03)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Background on Jane & Leland Stanford: 01:51–09:50
• Spiritualism & Founding of Stanford: 09:50–15:19
• Early Years & University Politics: 15:19–24:53
• Jane’s Micromanagement & Scandals: 24:53–27:10
• Poisoning Attempts: 27:10–32:05
  • First Attempt (San Francisco, rat poison): 27:10–28:41
  • Second Attempt (Hawaii, fatal): 30:15–32:05
• Death & Cover-up: 32:42–39:48
• Modern Takes & Continuing Mystery: 39:48–43:39

---

Conclusion

The case of Jane Stanford’s death remains one of the most chilling unsolved murders in American academic history. The episode artfully exposes how power, money, and legacy can warp the pursuit of justice—and how century-old cover-ups can withstand even modern scrutiny. Through snappy banter, historical context, and a healthy dose of cynicism about Gilded Age myth-making, Josh and Chuck invite listeners to consider whether the truth will ever out or whether the murder of Jane Stanford is truly a mystery for the ages.

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Further Listening:
If you’re fascinated by unsolved mysteries, university intrigue, or American history through a true crime lens, check out other Stuff You Should Know episodes on the Gilded Age, spiritualism, and historical cover-ups.

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Transcript

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Josh]

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

Yep.

[Chuck]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff youf Should Know True Crime Murder Mystery Edition. Like in the purest form in that we do not know who did it. Sorry, who done it.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And we may never know. We probably will never know. Even though we kind of know it seems like.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I don't think we'll ever know. This was a listener suggestion.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Chuck]

And I actually from. From a year ago almost to the day.

[Josh]

Oh, that's creepy.

[Chuck]

Sometimes we like to do that, you know.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Chuck]

It's like, yeah, great idea. We'll do it in one year.

[Josh]

Yeah, we're like, great idea.

[Chuck]

So this has been sitting in the kitty for a while. This is from Samuel Kroll, and Olivia helped us out. And it's a real banger about the history of, in a way, the history of Stanford University.

[Josh]

It really is.

[Chuck]

And one of its co founders and her pretty obvious murder.

[Josh]

Yeah. And the Stanfords were very much intertwined with the early years of Stanford University, because, after all, you can't spell Stanford without Stanford. And the reason that this is a murder mystery is because one of the Stanfords dies mysteriously. We're not going to say who. You'll figure it out toward the end. I think I'm done, but sure. I say we jump in and just start talking about Jane Stanford, who is, for the most part, the star of our show.

[Chuck]

That's right. Because she was murdered, man. I had already said that was the big twist. Did you not hear me or are you just. Is this all a bit.

[Josh]

It's a bit. Okay, I didn't hear you, but it is still a bit. What did you say that was so pivotal?

[Chuck]

I said that she was murdered, and then he said, we're not going to say he was murdered right afterward.

[Josh]

Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I see. Yeah. Well, we'll just edit all this out.

[Chuck]

No, we should leave it. So Jane Stanford was, you know, she was sort of the prototypical Gilded Age wife at the time, supporting her husband. That was kind of a job. Not kind of. It was like a real job, sort of entertaining, keeping up with, like, large residences when you have tons of money, that kind of thing. But she would go on to be a. She was a very demanding person, it seems like I want to go on to be a very demanding kind of lead trustee at Stanford University and some might even say a micromanager.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah, I think she definitely fits that mold, for sure.

[Chuck]

But as a micromanager, she would just say, I just want to make sure it's done right.

[Josh]

Right, right. She had some very distinct ideas that she wanted fulfilled with Stanford. And she had the money to back it up, basically.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. But she was born a little background here in upstate New York in Albany in 1828, one of seven kids. She was born wealthy, her parents were shopkeepers, and she would eventually marry a guy named Leland Stanford. She was born Jane Lathrop and then would be Jane Stanford or Jane Lathrop Stanford. He was also from upstate New York, and he was an attorney practicing in Wisconsin. I Keep. Want to say winsconson.

[Josh]

You can say that. It's all right. People in Wisconsin don't care.

[Chuck]

Well, we're going to Madison in April. I can't say that in front of them.

[Josh]

I think you can. I really think they'll support it.

[Chuck]

They are nice people.

[Josh]

Yes, pretty much to a person. Except for that one.

[Chuck]

She was. They knew who they are. Jane was 22 at the time and they were apart for the beginning of their marriage though, right? Geographically, yeah.

[Josh]

Jane moved back to Albany after they got married and they were living in Wisconsin. She wanted to care for her father, which put that just off to the side. It's not a huge thing, but she. She cared for her father until his death. After he died, she joined her husband, Leland, out west. He was a gold prospector. Well, actually, I don't think he ever got into prospecting. He was a goods dry goods shop owner who outfitted prospectors. And he fulfilled like the quintessential golden rule of business in a gold brush. Don't prospect, sell shovels. That's exactly what he did.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Because you know what? You may not find gold, but you can always sell a shovel to a gold miner.

[Josh]

That's precisely right. I speculate when you can, I don't know, regulate.

[Chuck]

I was about to say, man, if you don't rhyme that thing, I know, I don't even know who you are.

[Josh]

I still didn't do a very good job, but at least it rhymed.

[Chuck]

I thought it was pretty good. So he made some pretty good money doing that. But he really, really got rich when he became one of the Big Four robber barons that put their money forth to finance the Central Pacific Railroad in 1861. And all of a sudden they had this big life as wealthy people. And he said, well, why not just get into politics as well?

[Josh]

Well, the Big Four basically got him into politics to represent their interests. Basically. Like, they put up some of their money, but for the most part, they used Leland Stanford's run as the governor of California and then later on as a senator in the United States Senate to basically lean on the government to get the government to underwrite the building of the railroad, to make connections so that you could bribe people more easily. Like it was a swindle. That's how those dudes made that railroad. They ended up with the monopoly. They secretly bought the Southern Pacific Railroad. And all of a sudden Leland Stanford's the president of that now too. So just to just kind of like just paint it with a big brush. The Stanfords made their Money in very questionable ways. So just, just remember that because this is like such a. It's such a great example of American myth making where some guy just basically fails upward and becomes super, super wealthy. And then, you know, very shortly after that he becomes lionized as like this great heroic builder of America. And that's just, I'm just so sick of that. It still goes on today.

[Chuck]

I mean, haven't most of the robber barons been kind of kneecapped?

[Josh]

Yeah, I think so, but I think at least some of them were legitimately philanthropists. I don't think Leland Stanford was legitimately a philanthropist. I get the impression, or I've actually seen it written that basically they laundered their ill gotten gains through the university to leave a prestigious legacy for themselves instead.

[Chuck]

All right, well, they were smart for the first 18 years of their marriage and did not have kids. And then they ruined that all kind of later in life for them when little Leland Jr. Was born. Jane was 39 at the time, which is especially for the time, a bit of an advanced age to give birth, certainly not without risk. And Leland Sr. Was like you said, he got involved in politics. They also, I mean they had their fingers in a lot of pies. They ran a few wineries, they raised horses. This is just a little kind of fun side note that Livia dug up. But you know the very famous Eduard Muybridge, his early motion picture film, when he set up 24 cameras and showed like a horse running, which a said like, hey, we can have something called motion pictures. And also said, hey look, that horse has all of its four feet off the ground at the same time. That was done on their property, the Palo Alto Stock farm. So just a fun little thing. And that's where Stanford University eventually would be.

[Josh]

Did you ever see the Jordan Peele movie? Nope. Yep, I thought that was a cool little. Just a little line. Yapp. Where the. Oh, I don't remember his name, but he was also in get out too. The main guy?

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Josh]

Where he, he's. His character is descended from the jockey that rode that horse.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I thought that was cool too. Daniel something, right?

[Josh]

I don't remember. I feel like a total jerk, but.

[Chuck]

Well, you know, you can't remember everything

[Josh]

off the dome, but it turns out in real life that jockey's name was Dom. D O M M. They think maybe Gilbert Dom.

[Chuck]

So you know his name?

[Josh]

Yeah, but I looked it up this morning, so. All right, that's it, smart guy. Here we go.

[Chuck]

I'm glad everybody knows that guy's name.

[Josh]

Here we go.

[Chuck]

So, sadly, Leland Jr. Would not live very long. He died at 15. He went to Europe with his mom. And it was pretty sad thing, obviously a tragedy for the family. But a very interesting thing happened at the funeral when a young woman named Bertha Berner was there and met Jane. Would later write her a letter and say, hey, I think you could use a person like me in your life. We'll call it personal secretary or whatever, but basically your right hand person to kind of help you with everything that you need.

[Josh]

Yeah, like you said, like the. Just the classic Gilded Age wife, Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Chuck]

Along with a little spiritualism thrown in.

[Josh]

Yeah, that was a big one. And you know, that gets kind of tossed around quite a bit that the Stanfords, in particular Jane, were really heavy into spiritualism. Well, a lot of people were heavy into spiritualism at this time. So it was generally looked down upon from the halls of academia. So in a way it was a little awkward for the university for their founders to have been into spiritualism. But it wasn't just completely out of left field.

[Chuck]

No, not, not, you know, among. Especially among sort of wealthy elites. They were into that kind of thing.

[Josh]

And also, I mean, there was a. That the death of Edward or the Death of Leland Jr. Was a really huge turning point. Apparently they were kind of dabbling in it. But after that, she kind of devoted herself to getting a message from, or getting in contact, I guess, with Leland Jr. Again. And she tried for a long time and then I think in the end she was dissatisfied. She couldn't find anybody that she considered legitimate enough to actually do it. Even though she believed it was possible. She found that everyone she came in contact with was a fraud or huckster.

[Chuck]

So. And she's probably right. So Burner gets this job. You know, people from the outside were like, man, she really works hard for Jane Stanford. Like, she doesn't seem to have any time off. She kind of is run by Jane Stanford. But they were very close and she would be with her until the day she died. Put a pin in that. And in fact would get quite rich from her death. I think she got 15 grand. The other household staff got $1,000 each in the will, but Berner got 15 grand, which is about half a million today. So not too bad.

[Josh]

No, not bad at all. Also, I just want to say before we move on, the actor's name is Daniel Kaluuya.

[Chuck]

Great. So it was Leland Jr's death that actually inspired the founding of Stanford University. There are a couple of stories about how that might have happened. I think Leland took maybe the more acceptable mainstream version, which is, hey, it came to me in a dream after my son's death. But there was a medium, Maude Lord Drake, who said, no, that actually happened in a seance with me. It was a visitation from the afterworld that I mediated. And he just doesn't want to say that out loud so he just called it a dream.

[Josh]

Yeah. Her famous quote was, who has two thumbs? And was the medium who got Leland Jr. To tell his parents that he wanted them to found a university. And she said, me? Yeah.

[Chuck]

Maud Lord Drake.

[Josh]

So yeah, you could actually make a case that if the university was true to form at the time, it's quite possible that the Stanfords claim that it was from this seance, but the university just basically whitewashed that over and it became a dream instead.

[Chuck]

That's right.

[Josh]

So Chuck, regardless of how it came about, the Stanfords said that although they had lost their son, now the children of California would become their children. And to do that they founded Stanford University. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's one of the most prestigious universities in the world as far as I know. Certainly in the US it was the cradle for our current tech explosion. And it's just a really great university. Its official name is Leland Stanford Junior. University after Leland Stanford Junior still today. That's what it's called. And if you look at the details of how it was founded and what its mission was when it was open, it's a, like the, the Stanfords definitely did a good job of opening a public university.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it was pretty unique. Tuition was free first of all. So that was fairly unique. So it, you know, they let in students that couldn't afford to go to college otherwise.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Jane said, I want to make it a co ed school. There were just a handful of those in the, in the United States at the time.

[Josh]

And also I'm doing Sergio.

[Chuck]

You're what?

[Josh]

I'm doing Sergio.

[Chuck]

Jane said, oh, I gotcha. The other sort of odd thing was that it was not associated with a church, it was a Christian university. But it wasn't like, you know, Jane again was dabbling in the occult, so she had sort of loose, sort of a loose association with particular denominations. So it was a non denominational Christian school. Very much kind of a liberal arts thing at first. It would later and in fact, you know, it was part of the friction between Jane and the eventual president on what kind of school it would be. She wanted it more liberal arts and he Wanted it more science and research based.

[Josh]

Yeah. But even out of the gate, apparently it was for preparing students for personal success and direct usefulness in life. One of the things they did was they created an extension service for local farmers to find out the latest agricultural techniques. They accepted high school shop classes as credits, like they were. It wasn't just this. It wasn't an elite institution meant to create a new generation of elites like, say, Harvard was at the time. Just at the time.

[Chuck]

By the way, in my defense, I didn't recognize your Jane's Addiction line because I think that lyric is wrong. I think it's, I'm done with Sergio.

[Josh]

Oh, I think that's the second verse. Is it? I will say anything to make myself right. Okay.

[Chuck]

I just. When he said doing Sergio, I was like, who the hell is Sergio?

[Josh]

She was Sergio. That's the point. He treated her like a rag doll.

[Chuck]

Well, see, now you're getting back on the good side of history. Well done.

[Josh]

Thanks.

[Chuck]

All right, so Stanford is opening up. It's October 1st, 1891. Leland gives a great speech. Leland Sr. Of course. And Jane apparently had a real banger of a speech written. And she said that she didn't have the courage to actually do it, but had she, it would have gone over pretty well, I think, because in it there was a plea to the students like, hey, we're a new school, you know, got to work out the kinks here, maybe be a little patient. And hey, if you're a young male student here, you know, you have girls around, please treat these young ladies with great deference. And you might have some kids who don't come from wealthy backgrounds because it's a free school, and maybe treat them well as well. So, you know, she has this great letter written and never says it publicly, unfortunately.

[Josh]

No, But I mean, all of these points support our overall point, like we said, which is they did a pretty good job of founding a university. Like, the mission was great. The details were pretty great.

[Chuck]

Better than we've done for sure.

[Josh]

Ours is still kind of getting off the ground. It's just basically a grift right now.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

But hopefully we'll be able to build it into something real.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

There is a. An issue with finding a president. Apparently the presidents they were looking for were like, I'm good here. I don't feel like moving out west. I think that was a big part of it. Like, California was not like California as it is now. The Stanford University helped make Northern California what it is now. So it was still rugged, you know, they couldn't get any, just any Eastern college president to hop from his college out to Stanford. They finally found a former president of Indiana University named David Starr Jordan who was also an ichthyologist by training and trade. He finally took them up on the offer.

[Chuck]

That's right. And he also had a lot of pretty gross views on things.

[Josh]

Yeah. Like super.

[Chuck]

In retrospect, he was into eugenics. He thought scientific racism was pretty great and that if you're unfit, like if you're disabled or if you're in prison, maybe we should just sterilize you. And yeah, women should get educated, but just so they can be smarter in the home as homemakers.

[Josh]

He was also like a vocal pacifist, which you're kind of like, oh, okay, that's not bad. The reason why he was a pacifist was because he felt war promoted racial degradation. Because you send the fittest young men off to die, that leaves the weak to stay home and procreate and it degenerates the race or society back home. That was the reason he was a pacifist and anti war. Yeah. There was nothing he could do. Right. Basically with that set of views.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I agree. I think we should probably take a break.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Set the stage for Stanford's founding.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Chuck]

And we'll be right back with more on Jane Stanford.

[Josh]

If you want to know. Then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

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[Josh]

should know stuff you should know. Okay, so we're whittling down the people who could possibly have been murdered because Leland Jr. S dead now. Now Leland Sr. Dies. There are very few people left of the Stanfords to have been the murder victim. Now it's just Jane, if that gives anything away.

[Chuck]

That's right. So Jane was left as the basically the only trustee of the early university and she had a situation going on with the US government where they were like, it was a lawsuit. 15 million bucks in $1893. And the kind of central point of it was the government was like, hey, because you were or your husband and your family was part, you know, like founded and has ownership stairs of the Central Pacific Railroad Company. You should also be responsible for that company's debts. And we helped finance this thing. So like you need to pay us back for these bonds that we sold.

[Josh]

That's right.

[Chuck]

And she actually won that case, which all of a sudden, you know, they kind of had frozen her assets. So all of a sudden these assets were open and she gave a huge chunk of $1,899 to Stanford to the tune of 10 million bucks.

[Josh]

Yeah. And we should say to her credit before that. So this went on for six years. From what I can tell during that six year time, the court gave her a 300 in today's dollars, about a $365,000 a month allowance. And she spent most of it. She gave most of it to Stanford to run Stanford with. So she wasn't just like, well, I'm good, good luck Stanford. And then yeah, after her assets weren't frozen, she was like, hey, how about $10 million? And everyone's saying, God, this is great, how wonderful. And she's like, wait a second, there's a couple of strings I'm going to attach to this. And they were strings that you would find hard to swallow. Like the kind of strings you would put down your nose and pull out your mouth at the same time, back and forth. They were those kind of strings.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean she, she basically had total and complete control of what happened there, including like how many trustees there would even be so she wouldn't get a lot of pushback. Like I said, she was a micromanager. But not to her, to her. She just wanted things done right. And she basically had complete control over the university, said, you know, like who could get in, who could get out, what teachers they could hire as staff. She said that they capped, even though it was her idea to make it a co ed school. Which is great. She capped it at 500 women because she didn't want it. She thought after that people may think it's a women's college and that men might stop applying. And that cap was in place for a while, even after she died, until they got rid of it.

[Josh]

Yeah. I read that she also had been told rumors that the men students were being distracted by the women students. And Susan B. Anthony wrote her and was just appalled and was like, what are you doing? She stuck with it. She was very adamant about that. And like you said, I don't think it was until the 30s where they finally were like, we can't just keep it at 500. So they lifted that.

[Chuck]

Yeah. So Starr, the president did not like this at all. He didn't like having someone sort of that much in the business. It seems like they had a pretty friction riddled relationship.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Especially, you know, she tried to get some of the spiritualism in there. I mentioned before that she wanted to focus on the liberal arts, but she also wanted to create an academic chair in psychic psychology. She also tried to hire this philosopher named William James, who was a guy who was very much involved in the paranormal as a visiting professor.

[Josh]

Yeah. He was also the father of psychology, so he would have been quite a catch. But I think just his association with the paranormal made Jordan kind of like dismiss everything else.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I could see that she finally got this guy named Julius Goebbels. Not Goebbels. I don't know if he dropped that S or not. Or I guess this was pre World War II, so he didn't even know yet. But it seems like he was hired basically to kind of look out over the shoulder of David Starr Jordan, which he certainly didn't appreciate.

[Josh]

No. And he reported back to Jane Stanford that Jordan was basically a patron of the science department and anti liberal arts departments and that he was basically running the university. Like that he was going behind Jane Stanford's back to win that argument over whether it should be a science or a liberal arts college. And then one thing that really kind of made huge waves as far as her micromanagement went. You said that she wanted to have control over who was hired. She also felt like she was totally within her rights to say fire that guy for whatever reason. And there was a professor named Edward A. Ross who was a social scientist and he was very much vocal in his support for William Jennings Bryant, who was a Democrat. And she did not like that. She was not in favor of William Jennings Bryant. So she told Jordan to fire him and Jordan eventually buckled under pressure and this became like a national scandal about whether there was academic freedom at all at Stanford. It was a huge deal.

[Chuck]

Well, I think everyone sees where this is headed. And this I guess we'll just classify as murder attempt number one. In January of 1905, there was a servant that put some water on her nightstand before Jane Stanford was going to bed in there in San Francisco. She drank some of it, said, this doesn't taste quite right. So she went and gagged herself and made herself throw up and then gave it to her secretary and said, here, you try this. She tried it and was like, yeah, this doesn't taste right. So they sent it to a pharmacy and found that it in fact was poison. It was, it was rat poison. Not, not full strychnine, but just sort of over the counter rat poison.

[Josh]

Yeah. Which is bad enough. I mean, it can kill you for sure. So this is, I mean, I can't imagine that, like if, if somebody had put rat poison in your water. So she was like, I'm, I'm getting out of here. I guess after the, the report came back a few weeks later that it was rat poison, she went to Hawaii. I read that she was ultimately on her way to Japan and that Hawaii was just a stop. I also read that she was trying to get out of Dodge and get away from having been poisoned. And so news of this poisoning started to spread and Jordan, president of Stanford, was like, nope, no scandals, please. We just had that huge deal with firing Edward A. Ross. There was no poisoning. Jane Stanford doesn't think she was poisoned. It's all just some, you know, misunderstanding. So nothing to see here, everybody.

[Chuck]

Right. So the media is not fully buying this. At least the local media, they continue to kind of speculate and write about it and investigate, you know, people that were on the scene, notably the servants that were in the house at the time. For a little while, they kind of cooked up a case because it seems like fully about anti Chinese prejudice going on in California at the time of her Chinese cook. But there was no motive, no evidence at all. So that kind of went away. And then the police did come in. They questioned some of the servants, but everybody was exonerated by the cops in the end.

[Josh]

Yeah, every single one. So Stanford also hired Stanford, the university, I guess, through Jordan, hired a private detective and he did an investigation and basically was like, okay, sure, there was rat poison in the water. It was added after the fact for one servant to frame another. And I don't think any of the servants were Named. It was just a theory. That was, like, good enough. We're not even going to publicize that one. Let's just let this die. Meanwhile, Jane Stanford has gone to Hawaii. Remember, she's in Waikiki at the Moana Hotel, which is still there. And she's taken two people with her. Bertha Berner, the secretary who's been with her for years now, who. She was like, here, you taste this. And a new maid, May Hunter, who was not, I don't believe, even on the staff at the time of that first poisoning attempt, she took both of them to Hawaii with her.

[Chuck]

Yeah. So she's holed up there. We should point out that Berner did not want to go. She had an ill mother in California and she wanted to stay and be with her. Jane Stanward said, nope, you're coming to Hawaii with me.

[Josh]

Yeah. That's why I pointed out how Jane Stanford went back to Albany to care for her father until he died.

[Chuck]

That's right. So a couple of weeks into Hawaii, this is February 28th. We'll call this murder. Well, successful murder, not murder attempt number two. She said, hey, I got a little upset. Tum Tum, go get me some baking soda and water. And Berner went and did that. And around 11 o', clock, she's not feeling too good. She was like, I'm really, really sick. I think I've been poisoned again. And they call in a local doctor, Francis Humphris, who came to the hotel room. And by that time, Jane Stanford was in pretty bad shape.

[Josh]

Yeah, she was showing some telltale signs of strychnine poisoning. Remember, somebody put rat poison in her Poland Springs water. That's strychnine. And if you take strychnine, some very, very telltale things take place over your body, because strychnine interferes with your nerve receptors, or your muscle receptors, I guess, along your spinal column, and you suddenly are having, like, massive, violent, involuntary muscle clenching, and they follow, like, certain patterns or whatever. And Jane was following these. These the same, I guess, progression of strychnine poisoning is certainly what it looked like. And ultimately, she died with her body clenched still. And I think she died at 11:40, about a little over 30 minutes after she had gotten up and said she thought she'd been poisoned.

[Chuck]

Uh, yeah. And. Well, I think that's a perfect time, actually, for act three to resume.

[Josh]

Yeah, this is where the gun goes off.

[Chuck]

All right, right after this. We'll be right back.

[Josh]

If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh And Chuck. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should.

[Chuck]

All right, so Jane Stanford is now dead. Her last words were, this is a horrible death to die.

[Josh]

That's terrible.

[Chuck]

Allegedly. And Jordan was like, all right, this is no good. You know, it's no good if she was murdered. It's no good if it was suicide. Like, this is all just bad news. We have to kind of get this thing taken care of so the university can not be tainted by the death of this woman. And he gets a trustee, he flies out there with this guy, Timothy Hopkins to Hawaii. They said they were going to get the body. And there was also a couple of San Francisco police detectives that went. A guy named Harry Reynolds and Jules Callenden of the Morse Detective Agency. They go there, obviously, to investigate this death. Because at the time, Hawaii is. It's a very rural sort of. I think there wasn't a lot of trust in like, either the. Well, both the local cops and the local doctors.

[Josh]

Yeah, I think it'd been a territory for either three years or five years. At that point. It was considered a backwater, essentially. I think also Jordan was getting there so he could do whatever he could to control the narrative. And those two detectives were working at the behest of the university, essentially, not the public. So a coroner's jury was convened on March 8th. Remember, she died on February 28th, so about a week later. And they heard three days of testimony. And after the three days of testimony, they adjourned for two minutes before they came back and said she was murdered by poison.

[Chuck]

That's right. But that was no good for Stanford University. So Jordan was like, all right, let me see if I can rewrite this narrative. He gets another physician in there, a guy named Dr. Waterhouse has his own separate private investigation. Waterhouse doesn't examine the body. He just goes on the description of events as they happened. He heard Berner say, hey, you know, when we were at this picnic, she really ate a lot and she had tummy trouble. That's why I was getting her that soda water at the end of the night. And he put out a four page report that said that was fully announced to the media, that, no, it was not poisoning. She died of heart failure. And the local doctor and the local cops were pretty furious.

[Josh]

Yeah. So this is what Waterhouse came up with. And this is what Jordan took back to the mainland and presented to everybody and said, this is what really happened. This doctor said so that she had overeaten tongue sandwiches, undercooked gingerbread, lots of coffee, Bunch of chocolate candy, had basically indigestion and made herself hysterical from the indigestion and got so hysterical that her heart stopped. That's how she died. That's basically what President Jordan came back and told the world. And it actually worked. It worked because he was a white man in a prominent position, and people just listened to him, because who are you going to listen to? This guy or the Hawaii authorities?

[Chuck]

Yeah. And, you know, the media was covering. In Hawaii, the media was covering kind of their side of things. But in the lower 48, especially in San Francisco, that Jordan narrative was the one that got out. He was criticizing the local doctors. He was criticizing the local cops. He said, in fact, he flat out accused the local doctor there of adding strychnine after the death to make it look like a murder and said Berner was a very close friend. There's no way that she would have been any part. You know, she was her trusted secretary for years. There's no way that she had any part in any of this.

[Josh]

And again, the San Francisco PD and the public and the press were like, okay, good enough for us. You said that the one person who was present at both poisonings is a. Okay in your book. Great. She's off the hook. We're not even going to investigate her thoroughly.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And it kind of went away from there for a little while. The local papers in San Francisco covered it. They said that there was still investigations ongoing and that people would be brought in and arrested or at least investigated. And that lasted for about a month, and no charges were ultimately filed at all. And it was kind of like that's the way it went until the early 2000s. It just kind of went cold until a writer named Robert W.P. cutler, who was a neurology professor at Stanford and a physician, put out a book called the Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford.

[Josh]

Yeah. And this was a big deal to question the orthodoxy, which was, like you said for a century, that she died of natural causes. That's just what the official line was. And that's, you know, the idea that she'd been poisoned just completely fell out of the public awareness or imagination until Cutler brought it back in 2003. And he was a neurology professor from Stanford. So he had, like, a certain amount of medical background that he applied into this research. And one of the first things he did was investigate whether Robert Starr Jordan had any basis in questioning the qualifications of Dr. Humphreys and the other doctors that were there. And he found that, no, actually, they did a really good job of trying to revive her. And then once they. Once she was dead, preserving the evidence because it was so clear to these guys that it was strychnine poisoning because she was showing all the telltale signs. So they preserved evidence in the. In the room with her. They preserved the sodium bicarbonate, I guess, jar, the spoon, the glass that had been served in the chamber pot, and some vomit of hers.

[Chuck]

That's gross.

[Josh]

It is gross. But not only did they preserve it, they got a judge to come in who served as a witness while they handed it over to the sheriff. Then the judge accompanied the sheriff while he took this evidence to the chief sanitary officer at the Board of Health for Hawaii. And when they carried out this autopsy, there were seven doctors and a toxicologist who worked on this autopsy. Three of the doctors hadn't been at the scene, so they hadn't. They hadn't seen. They were just working with just the body and the evidence that they got from the body. And they had a mortician and a morgue assistant act as witnesses. Essentially, you could not do a better job of handling a suspected murder poison case than these guys did in Hawaii.

[Chuck]

Yeah. He also found a letter from Jordan to the president of the board of trustees that had, you know, just a lot of different explanations. He said if the tonic theory of strychnine is not acceptable, you have the other that it was put in by the doctor just to bolster up his case. And after he had time to read up on the symptoms a little. He's a man without professional or personal standing. So he was. It seems like it was just such a clear cover up that he was offering up all these different theories of what could have happened. Besides the obvious.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

And Cutler was like, you know, it is super obvious he didn't come out and, like, accuse anyone. But he did sort of offer some ideas. Maybe Burner, the personal secretary, maybe she was there and had the opportunity to do something, even though she didn't have much of a motive. Jordan certainly had the motive, but he wasn't there. So maybe those two were in cahoots or something.

[Josh]

Yes. So that's kind of where it sat. This 2003 book, the Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford, it got some pretty good press that's still around today that, you know, book reviews and stories and stuff like that, and that just kind of faded away again. Even though he had kind of upset the balance that had been around for 100 years, there wasn't anything major about it until about 20 years later, another book from another Stanford professor A historian named Richard White came out, and he just came out and said it. Who Killed Jane Stanford was the title of his book. And he, like Cutler, did a really good job of digging into the story and finding new evidence that, as far as he's concerned, pointed to the murderer.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, he said that Jordan definitely covered this thing up. But he said, I don't know if he would have been the murderer, though, because just her dying period was not good for the university. You know, either way, if it was suicide, that's no good. If it's murder, that's certainly no good. So he didn't think that Jordan would have gone that far, because Jordan really wanted to protect Stanford at all costs.

[Josh]

Yeah. And you might be like, well, what's the problem with that? Well, the murder, that's a scandal. The suicide was a legal problem because it would call into question her. Her mental fitness at the time that she had offered that grant. And so all of a sudden, heirs, people connected to him, relatives, would have come out of the woodwork challenging that $10 million grant and saying, no, that money's supposed to go to us instead. So he really did have every reason to cover this up. And it definitely seems that that's. That was his motivation. He. But like you said, he probably had nothing to do with the murder. Instead, Richard White trains his spotlight on Bertha Berner, and he disagrees with Cutler, who. Cutler was like, she didn't really have a motive, even though she had opportunity. He was like, they weren't the best motives, but there are a couple of motives that she had. One, she knew that she was getting an inheritance, and maybe she wanted it sooner than later. And two, she could have just gotten sick of basically being. Having to devote her life to Jane Stanford because that's what was expected of her.

[Chuck]

Yeah. The job that she voluntarily asked for.

[Josh]

Yes. But Jane Stanford, like, tried to keep her from having any kind of personal life, and that was not the kind of person Bertha Berner was. So that was just a constant source of tension between them. And who knows? Supposedly both of them were like, no, we're actually good friends. But there were people on the outside who were like, it's kind of. I'm not sure if they're actually friends.

[Chuck]

That's right. So that's it. That's the death of Jane Stanford. Probably never be solved. Jordan continued to work there as university president until 1913. Berner lived pretty well, you know. Cause she had all that dough from the will, and she, you know, people were suspicious of her, but she Basically lived a pretty decent life until she died in 1945.

[Josh]

Yeah, she wrote two biographies on Jane Stanford before she died, and neither one of them revealed much of anything, so it's almost teasing. Tantalizing, if you will. That's it, Wilson.

[Chuck]

Josh said, that's it. It's time for listener mail.

[Josh]

You bet.

[Chuck]

I'm gonna call this weird coincidence because we have these episodes that come out from time to time that line up with the news. And that's what happened with our lasers episode. It came out in real time today. The day after we learned that a laser was used to shoot down a drone at the El Paso airport and close the airport down.

[Josh]

Wow.

[Chuck]

So this is Josh in Chucker's equal deep state secures. Chinstrap to my tinfoil hat. I'm officially onto you guys. You release an episode about lasers the day after the FAA closes the El Paso airport in. Their cover story is they had to shoot drones with their new lasers. You might slip this one past some of the other sheep listening, but, oh, no, not this guy. I want to know who you really work for, guys. Is it Jerry, or does it go all the way to the top? Well, consider not blowing the whistle on this conspiracy if you did an episode on bicycles or the history of mountain biking. Those are my demands. And that is from Dan.

[Josh]

Yes, Dan. We work for Jerry. Jerry's actually an acronym like Style Specter, but we're not at liberty to say what it stands for.

[Chuck]

I love it.

[Josh]

Thanks a lot, Dan. You got us figured out. We're going to have some goons come to your house, and it's not going to be pleasant for you. Maybe that'll teach you not to email and shoot off your big mouth. From now on, if you want to be like Dan and have things happen to you, you can send us an email, too. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Narrator/Announcer]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.