Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should know True crime Murder Mystery edition, like in the
Speaker 2: purest form in that we do not know who did it? Sorry?
Speaker 2: Who done it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And we may never know. We probably will never know,
Speaker 2: even though we kind of know.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, I don't think we'll ever know.
Speaker 3: This was a listener.
Speaker 1: Suggestion, okay, and I actually from a year ago, almost
Speaker 1: to the day.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's creepy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we like to do that, you know. Sure, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: great idea, We'll do it.
Speaker 3: In one year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like, great idea.
Speaker 3: So this has been sitting in the kitty for a while.
Speaker 1: This is from Samuel Krohle, and Olivia helped us out,
Speaker 1: and that's it's a real banger about the history of
Speaker 1: in a way, the history of Stanford University. It really is,
Speaker 1: and one of its co founders and her pretty obvious murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Stanfords were very much intertwined with the
Speaker 2: early years of Stanford University, because, after all, you can't
Speaker 2: spell Stanford without Stanford. And the reason that this is
Speaker 2: a murder mystery is because one of the Stanfords dies mysteriously.
Speaker 2: We're not going to say who. You'll figure it out
Speaker 2: towards the end, and I say, we jump in and
Speaker 2: just start talking about Jane Stanford, who is for the
Speaker 2: most part the star of our show.
Speaker 3: That's right, because she was murdered.
Speaker 2: Man, that was the big twist.
Speaker 3: Did you not hear me or are you just is
Speaker 3: this all a bit?
Speaker 2: Uh? It's a bit Okay, I didn't hear you, but
Speaker 2: it is still a bit. What did you say that
Speaker 2: was so pivotal?
Speaker 3: I said that she was murdered, and he said, we're
Speaker 3: not going to say he was murdered.
Speaker 2: Right afterward, Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I see, Yeah,
Speaker 2: well we'll just edit all this up now.
Speaker 3: We should leave it. So Jane Stanford was.
Speaker 1: You know, she was sort of the prototypical Gilded age
Speaker 1: wife at the time, supporting her husband. That was kind
Speaker 1: of a job and not kind of it was like
Speaker 1: a real job, sort of entertaining, keeping up with like
Speaker 1: large residences when you have tons of money, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But she would go on to be a
Speaker 1: she was a very demanding person. It seems like I
Speaker 1: want to go on to be a very demanding kind
Speaker 1: of lead trustee at Stanford University. And some might even
Speaker 1: say a micromanager.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think she definitely fits that mold for sure.
Speaker 3: But as a micromanager, she would just say, I just
Speaker 3: want to make sure it's done.
Speaker 2: Right, right right. She had some very distinct ideas that
Speaker 2: she wanted fulfilled with Stanford, and she had the money
Speaker 2: to back it up.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: But he was born a little background here in upstate
Speaker 1: New York in Albany in eighteen twenty eight. One of
Speaker 1: seven kids. She was born wealthy. Her parents were shopkeepers,
Speaker 1: and she would eventually marry a guy named Leland Stanford.
Speaker 1: She was born Jane Lathrop and then would be Jane
Speaker 1: Stanford or Jane Lathrope Stanford. He was also from upstate
Speaker 1: New York and he was an attorney practicing in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: I keep want to say, Wisconsin, you can.
Speaker 2: Say that's all right. People in Wisconsin don't care.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to Madison in April. I can't say
Speaker 1: that in front of them.
Speaker 2: I think you can. I really think they'll support it.
Speaker 3: They are nice people.
Speaker 2: Yes, pretty much too of herson, except for that one
Speaker 2: she was.
Speaker 3: They knew who they are.
Speaker 1: Jane was twenty two at the time, and they were
Speaker 1: a part for the beginning of their marriage.
Speaker 2: Though right geographically, yeah, Jane moved back to Albany after
Speaker 2: they got married and they were living in Wisconsin. She
Speaker 2: wanted to care for her father, which put that just
Speaker 2: off to the side. It's not a huge thing, but
Speaker 2: she cared for her father until his death. After he died,
Speaker 2: she joined her husband, Leland out west. He was a
Speaker 2: gold prospector. Well, actually, I don't think he ever got
Speaker 2: into prospecting. He was a goods dry goods shop owner
Speaker 2: who outfitted prospectors, and he fulfilled like the quintessential Golden
Speaker 2: rule of business in a gold brush, don't prospect, sell shovels.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know what, you may not find gold,
Speaker 1: but you can always sell a shovel to a gold miner.
Speaker 2: That's precisely right. But I speculate when you can. I
Speaker 2: don't know regulate.
Speaker 1: No, I was about to say, Man, if you don't
Speaker 1: rhyme that thing, I know, I don't even know who
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 2: I still didn't do a very good job, but at least.
Speaker 3: No I thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: So he made some pretty good money doing that. But
Speaker 1: he really really got rich when he became one of
Speaker 1: the Big four robber barons that put their money for
Speaker 1: it to finance the Central Pacific Railroad in eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, they had this big life
Speaker 1: as wealthy people, and he said, well, why not just
Speaker 1: get into politics as well?
Speaker 2: Well, the Big Four basically got him into politics to
Speaker 2: represent their interests, basically, like they put up some of
Speaker 2: their money, but for the most part, they used Leland
Speaker 2: Stanford's ron as the governor of California and then later
Speaker 2: on as a senator in the United States Senate to
Speaker 2: basically lean on the government to get the government to
Speaker 2: underwrite the building of the railroad to make connections so
Speaker 2: that you could bribe people more easily. Like it was
Speaker 2: a so windle. That's how those dudes made that railroad.
Speaker 2: They ended up with a monopoly. They seek really bought
Speaker 2: the Southern Pacific Railroad, and all of a sudden, Leland
Speaker 2: Stanford's the president of that now too, So just to
Speaker 2: just kind of like just painted with a big brush
Speaker 2: the Stanford's made their money in very questionable ways. So
Speaker 2: just just remember that because this is like such a
Speaker 2: it's such a great example of American myth making where
Speaker 2: some guy just basically fails upward and becomes super super wealthy,
Speaker 2: and then you know, very shortly after that he becomes
Speaker 2: lionized as like this great heroic builder of America. And
Speaker 2: that's just I'm just so sick of that it still
Speaker 2: goes on today.
Speaker 3: I mean, haven't most of the Robber Baron's been kind
Speaker 3: of kneecapped.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I think so. But I think at least
Speaker 2: some of them were legitimately philanthropists. I don't think Leland
Speaker 2: Stanford was legitimately a philanthropist. I get the impression. I've
Speaker 2: actually seen it written that basically they laundered their ill
Speaker 2: gotten gains through the university to leave a prestigious legacy
Speaker 2: for themselves instead.
Speaker 1: All right, well, they were smart for the first eighteen
Speaker 1: years of their marriage and did not have kids, and
Speaker 1: then they ruined that all kind of later in life
Speaker 1: for them. When little Leland Junior was born. Jane was
Speaker 1: thirty nine at the time, which is especially for the time,
Speaker 1: a bit of an advanced stage to give birth certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, not without risk. And Leland Senior was, like
Speaker 1: you said, he got involved in politics. They also, I mean,
Speaker 1: they had their fingers in a lot of pies. They
Speaker 1: ran a few wineries, they raised horses. This is just
Speaker 1: a little kind of fun side note that Livia dug up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know the very famous Edward Moybridge his
Speaker 1: early motion picture film when he set up twenty four
Speaker 1: cameras and showed like a horse running, which a said like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can have something called motion pictures and also said, hey,
Speaker 1: look that horse has all of its four feet off
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 3: At the same time. That was done on their.
Speaker 1: Property, the Palo Alto Stock Farm. So just a fun
Speaker 1: little thing, and that's where Stanford University eventually would be.
Speaker 2: Did you ever see the Jordan Peele movie. Nope, yep,
Speaker 2: I thought that was a cool little just a little
Speaker 2: line yap where the oh I don't remember his name,
Speaker 2: but he was also in Get Out to the main Guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah where he he's his character is descended from the
Speaker 2: jockey that rode that horse.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought that was cool too, Daniel something right.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I feel like a total jerk, but.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you can't remember everything off the dome.
Speaker 2: But it turns out in real life that jockey's name
Speaker 2: was Dom do o m m. They think maybe Gilbert Dom.
Speaker 3: So you know his name?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I looked it up this morning. So all right,
Speaker 2: that's it. Smart guy. Here.
Speaker 3: We're glad everybody knows that guy's name.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: So sadly, Leland Junior would not live very long. He
Speaker 1: died at fifteen. He went to Europe with his mom
Speaker 1: and it was pretty sad thing, obviously a tragedy for
Speaker 1: the family. But a very interesting thing happened at the
Speaker 1: funeral when a young woman named Bertha Berner was there
Speaker 1: and met Jane. Would later write her a letter and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think you could use a person like me in
Speaker 1: your life. We'll call it personal secretary or whatever, but
Speaker 1: basically your right hand person to kind of help you
Speaker 1: with everything that you need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, just the classic Gilded Age wife, right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Along with a little spiritualism thrown in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big one. And you know that
Speaker 2: gets kind of tossed around quite a bit that the Stanfords,
Speaker 2: in particular Jane, were really heavy into spiritualism. Well, all
Speaker 2: out of people were heavy into spiritualism at this time,
Speaker 2: so it was generally looked down upon from the halls
Speaker 2: of academia. So in a way it was a little
Speaker 2: awkward for the university for their founders to have been
Speaker 2: into spiritualism. But it wasn't just completely out of left field.
Speaker 3: No not.
Speaker 1: You know, among especially among the sort of wealthy elites,
Speaker 1: they were into that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And also I mean there was the death of Edward
Speaker 2: or the death of Leland Junior was a really huge
Speaker 2: turning point. Apparently they were kind of dabbling in it.
Speaker 2: But after that she kind of devoted herself to getting
Speaker 2: a message from or getting in contact I guess with
Speaker 2: Leland Junior again. And she tried for a long time,
Speaker 2: and then I think in the end she was she
Speaker 2: was dissatisfied. She couldn't find anybody that she considered legitimate
Speaker 2: enough to actually do it, even though she believed it
Speaker 2: was possible. She found that everyone she came in contact
Speaker 2: with was a fraud or huckster.
Speaker 1: So and she's probably right. So Berner gets this job.
Speaker 1: You know, people from the outside were like, man, she
Speaker 1: really works hard for Jane Stanford, like she doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have any time off. She kind of is run
Speaker 1: by Jane Stanford, but they were very close and she
Speaker 1: would be with her until the day she died. Put
Speaker 1: a pen in that and in fact would get quite
Speaker 1: rich from her death. I think she got fifteen grand.
Speaker 1: The other household staff got a thousand dollars each in
Speaker 1: the will, but Berner got fifteen grand, which is about
Speaker 1: half a million today.
Speaker 3: So not too bad, No, not bad at all.
Speaker 2: I Also, I just want to say before we move on,
Speaker 2: the actor's name is Daniel Caluja.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: So it was Leland Junior's death that actually inspired the
Speaker 1: founding of Stanford University.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of stories about how that might
Speaker 3: have happened.
Speaker 1: I think Leland took maybe the more acceptable mainstream version,
Speaker 1: which is, hey, it came to me in a dream
Speaker 1: after my son's death. But there was a medium, maud
Speaker 1: Lord Drake, who said, no, that actually happened in a
Speaker 1: seance with me. It was a visitation from the afterworld
Speaker 1: that I mediated, and he just didn't want to say
Speaker 1: that out loud, so he just called it a dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Her famous quote was who has two thumbs? And
Speaker 2: was the medium who got Leland junior to tell his
Speaker 2: parents that he wanted them to found a university, and
Speaker 2: she said me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maud Lord Drake.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you could actually make a case that if
Speaker 2: the university was true to form at the time, it's
Speaker 2: quite possible that they the Stanford's claimed that it was
Speaker 2: from this seance, but the university just basically whitewashed that
Speaker 2: over and it became a dream instead. That's right, so, Chuck,
Speaker 2: Regardless of how it came about, the Stanfords said that
Speaker 2: although they had lost their son, now the children of
Speaker 2: California would become their children, and to do that, they
Speaker 2: founded Stanford University. For those of you who aren't familiar,
Speaker 2: it's one of the most prestigious universities in the world
Speaker 2: as far as I know, certainly in the US. Is
Speaker 2: the cradle for our current tech explosion, and it's just
Speaker 2: a really great university. Its official name is Leland Stanford
Speaker 2: Junior University after Leland Stanford Junior. Still today, that's what
Speaker 2: it's called. And if you look at the details of
Speaker 2: how it was founded and what its mission was when
Speaker 2: it was open, it's like the Stanford's definitely did a
Speaker 2: good job of opening a public university.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty unique. Tuition was free first of all,
Speaker 1: so that was fairly unique. So it you know, they
Speaker 1: led in students that couldn't afford to go to college otherwise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jane said, I want to make it a co ed school.
Speaker 1: There were just a handful of those in the in
Speaker 1: the United States at the time.
Speaker 2: And also, I'm doing Sergio, You're what I'm doing, Sergio,
Speaker 2: Jane said.
Speaker 3: Oh, I got you.
Speaker 1: The other sort of odd thing was that it was
Speaker 1: not associated with a church. It was a Christian university,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like, you know, Jane again was dabbling
Speaker 1: in the occult, so she she had sort of loose,
Speaker 1: sort of a loose association with particular denominations. So it
Speaker 1: was a non denominational Christian school, very much kind of
Speaker 1: a liberal arts thing at first. It would later and
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, it was part of the friction
Speaker 1: between Jane and the eventual president on what kind of
Speaker 1: school it would be. She wanted it more liberal arts
Speaker 1: and he wanted it more science and research, research based.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but even out of the gate, apparently it was
Speaker 2: for preparing students for personal success and direct usefulness in life.
Speaker 2: One of the things they did was they created an
Speaker 2: extension service for local farmers to find out the latest
Speaker 2: agricultural techniques. They accepted high school shop classes as credits.
Speaker 2: Like it they were. It wasn't just this. It wasn't
Speaker 2: an elite institution meant to create a new generation of
Speaker 2: elites like say Harvard was at the time, just at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: By the way, in my defense, I didn't recognize your
Speaker 1: Jane's addiction line because I think that lyric is wrong.
Speaker 1: I think it's I'm done with Sergio.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the second verse, is it. I
Speaker 2: will say anything to make myself right.
Speaker 3: Okay, I just wouldn't. He said. Doing Sergio was like,
Speaker 3: who the hell is Sergio?
Speaker 2: She was? That's the point.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: He treated her like a rag doll.
Speaker 3: Well see now you're getting back on the good side
Speaker 3: of history.
Speaker 1: Well die, thanks all right. So Stanford is opening up.
Speaker 1: It's October first, eighteen ninety one. Leland gives a great
Speaker 1: speech Leland senior, of course, and Jane apparently had a
Speaker 1: real banger of a speech written, and she said that
Speaker 1: she didn't have the courage to actually do it, but
Speaker 1: had she, it would have gone over pretty well, I think,
Speaker 1: because in it there was a plea to the students, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're a new school. You know, got to work out
Speaker 1: the kinks here. Maybe be a little patient, and hey,
Speaker 1: if you're a young male student here, you know you
Speaker 1: have girls around, Please treat these young ladies with great deference.
Speaker 1: And you might have some kids who don't come from
Speaker 1: wealthy backgrounds because it's a free school, and maybe treat
Speaker 1: them well as well. So you know, she has this
Speaker 1: great letter written and never says it publicly, unfortunately, No.
Speaker 2: But I mean all of these points support our overall point,
Speaker 2: like we said, which is they did a pretty good
Speaker 2: job of founding a university. Like to mission was great.
Speaker 2: The details are pretty.
Speaker 3: Great, better than we've done.
Speaker 2: For sure. Ours is still kind of getting off the ground.
Speaker 2: It's just basically a grift right now, right, but hopefully
Speaker 2: we'll be able to build it into something real. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there is an issue with finding a president. Apparently the
Speaker 2: presidents they were looking for were like, I'm good here,
Speaker 2: I don't feel like moving out west. I think that
Speaker 2: was a big part of it. Like CALIFORNI you was
Speaker 2: not like California as it is now. The Stanford University
Speaker 2: helped make northern California. What it is now, so it
Speaker 2: was still rugged. You know. They couldn't get any just
Speaker 2: any Eastern college president to hop from his college out
Speaker 2: to Stanford. They finally found a former president of Indiana
Speaker 2: University named David Starr Jordan, who was also an ichthyologist
Speaker 2: by training and trade. He finally took them up on
Speaker 2: the offer.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And he also had a lot of pretty gross views
Speaker 1: on things, yeah, like super in retrospect. He was into eugenics.
Speaker 1: He thought scientific racism was pretty great in that if
Speaker 1: you're unfit, like if you're disabled or if you're in prison,
Speaker 1: maybe we should.
Speaker 3: Just sterilize you.
Speaker 1: And yeah, women should get educated, but just so they
Speaker 1: can be smarter in the home as homemakers.
Speaker 2: He was also like a vocal pacifist, which you're kind
Speaker 2: of like, oh, okay, that's not bad. The reason why
Speaker 2: he was a pacifist was because he felt war promoted
Speaker 2: racial degradation because you send the fittest young men off
Speaker 2: to die, that leaves the week to stay home and procreate,
Speaker 2: and it degenerates the racer society back home. That was
Speaker 2: the reason he was a pacifist in anti war. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was nothing he could do right basically with that
Speaker 2: set of views.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I think we should probably take a break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, set the stage for Stanford's founding. Sure, and we'll
Speaker 3: be right back with more on Jane Stanford.
Speaker 2: If you want to know then you're in luck. Just
Speaker 2: listen to joshcher Suffus stuffus. No, Okay, So we're whittling
Speaker 2: down the people who could possibly have been murdered because
Speaker 2: Leland Junior's dead. Now, now Leland Senior dies, there are
Speaker 2: very few people left of the Stanfords. Two have been
Speaker 2: the murder victim. Now it's just Jane. If that gives
Speaker 2: anything away, that's right.
Speaker 1: So Jane was left as the basically the only trustee
Speaker 1: of the early university, and she had a situation going
Speaker 1: on with the US government where they were like it
Speaker 1: was a lawsuit fifteen million bucks and eighteen ninety three dollars,
Speaker 1: and the kind of central point of it was they
Speaker 1: the government was like, hey, because you or your husband
Speaker 1: and your family was part you know, like founded and
Speaker 1: has ownership stairs of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, you
Speaker 1: should also be responsible for that company's debts and we
Speaker 1: helped finance this thing, so like you need to pay
Speaker 1: us back for these bonds that we sold, right, and
Speaker 1: she actually won that case, which all of a sudd
Speaker 1: and you know, they kind of had frozen her assets.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, these assets were open, and
Speaker 1: she gave a huge chunk of eighteen ninety nine dollars
Speaker 1: to Stanford and to the tune of ten million bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say to her credit before that.
Speaker 2: So this went on for six years. From what I
Speaker 2: can tell. During that six year time, the court gave
Speaker 2: her a three hundred in today's dollars about a three
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a month allowance, and
Speaker 2: she spent most of it. She gave most of it
Speaker 2: to Stanford to run Stanford with. So she wasn't just like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm good, good luck Stanford. So and then yeah, after
Speaker 2: her assets were on frozen, she was like, hey, how
Speaker 2: about ten million dollars? And everyone said, God, this is great,
Speaker 2: how wonderful. And she's like, wait a second, there's a
Speaker 2: couple of strings I'm going to attach to this. And
Speaker 2: they were strings that you would find hard to swallow,
Speaker 2: like the kind of strings you would put down your
Speaker 2: nose and pull out your mouth at the same time,
Speaker 2: back and forth, they were those kind of strings.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean she basically had total and complete control of
Speaker 1: what happened there, including like how many trustees there would
Speaker 1: even be, so she wouldn't get a lot of pushback.
Speaker 1: Like I said, she was a micromanager, but not to her.
Speaker 1: To her, she just wanted things done right, and she
Speaker 1: basically had complete control over the university, said, you know,
Speaker 1: like who could get in, who could get out, what
Speaker 1: teachers they could hire as staff.
Speaker 3: She said that they capped.
Speaker 1: Even though it was her idea to make it a
Speaker 1: co ed school, which is great, she capped it at
Speaker 1: five hundred women because she didn't want it. She thought
Speaker 1: after that people may think it's a women's college and
Speaker 1: that men might stop applying, and that cap was in
Speaker 1: place for a while even after she died, until they
Speaker 1: got rid of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read that she also had been told rumors
Speaker 2: that the men students were being distracted by the women's students,
Speaker 2: and Susan B. Anthony wrote her and was just appalled
Speaker 2: and was like, what are you doing. She stuck with it.
Speaker 2: She was very adamant about that, and like you said,
Speaker 2: I don't think it was until the thirties where they
Speaker 2: finally were like, we can't just keep it at five hundred,
Speaker 2: so they lifted that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Star the President did not like this at all.
Speaker 1: He didn't like having someone sort of that much in
Speaker 1: the business. It seems like they had a pretty friction
Speaker 1: riddled relationship. Yeah, especially you know, she tried to get
Speaker 1: some of the spiritualism in there. I mentioned before that
Speaker 1: she wanted to focus on the liberal arts, but she
Speaker 1: also wanted to create an academic chair in psychic psychology.
Speaker 1: She also tried to hire this philosopher named William James,
Speaker 1: who was a guy who was very much involved in
Speaker 1: the paranormal as a visiting professor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was also the father of psychology, so he
Speaker 2: would have been quite a catch. But I think just
Speaker 2: his association with the paranormal made Jordan kind of like
Speaker 2: dismiss everything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see that she finally got this guy
Speaker 1: named Julius Gerbel, not Goebels. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: dropped that s would or I guess this was pre
Speaker 1: World War two so he didn't even know yet, but
Speaker 1: he it seems like he was hired basically to kind
Speaker 1: of look out over the shoulder of David Starr Jordan,
Speaker 1: which he certainly didn't appreciate.
Speaker 2: No, and he reported back to Jane Stanford that Jordan
Speaker 2: was basically a patron of the science department and anti
Speaker 2: liberal arts departments, and that he was basically running the
Speaker 2: university like that. He was going behind Jane Stanford's back
Speaker 2: to win that argument over whether it should be a
Speaker 2: science or a liberal arts college. And then one thing
Speaker 2: that really kind of made huge waves as far as
Speaker 2: her micromanagement went. You said that she wanted to have
Speaker 2: control over who was hired. She also felt like she
Speaker 2: was totally within her rights to say fire that guy
Speaker 2: for whatever reason. And there was a professor named Edward A.
Speaker 2: Ross who was a social scientist, and he was very
Speaker 2: much vocal in his support for William Jennings Bryant, who
Speaker 2: was a Democrat, and she did not like that. She
Speaker 2: was not in favor of William Jennings Bryant, so she
Speaker 2: told Jordan to fire him, and Jordan eventually buckled under pressure,
Speaker 2: and this became like a national scandal about whether there
Speaker 2: was academic freedom at all at Stanford. It was a
Speaker 2: huge deal.
Speaker 1: Well, I think everyone sees where this is headed, and this,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll just classify as murder attempt number one
Speaker 1: in January of nineteen oh five. That was a servant
Speaker 1: that puts some water on her nightstand before Jane Stanford
Speaker 1: was going to bed, and there in San Francisco, she
Speaker 1: drank some of it, said this doesn't taste quite right.
Speaker 1: So she went and gagged herself and made herself throw up,
Speaker 1: and then gave it to her secretary and said, here,
Speaker 1: you try this. She tried it and was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this doesn't taste right. So they sent it to a
Speaker 1: pharmacy and found that, in fact, was poison. It was
Speaker 1: it was rat poison, not full Strych nine, but just
Speaker 1: sort of over the counter rat poison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is bad enough. I mean, it could kill
Speaker 2: you for sure. So this was I mean, I can't
Speaker 2: imagine that, like if somebody had put rat poison in
Speaker 2: your water. So she was like, I'm getting out of here.
Speaker 2: I guess after the report came back a few weeks
Speaker 2: later that it was rat poison. She went to Hawaii.
Speaker 2: I read that she was ultimately on her way to
Speaker 2: Japan and that Hawaii was just a stop. I also
Speaker 2: read that she was trying to get out of Dodge
Speaker 2: and get away from having been poisoned, and so news
Speaker 2: of this poisoning started to spread and Jordan, president of Stanford,
Speaker 2: was like, nope, no scandals please. We just had that
Speaker 2: huge deal with firing Edward A. Ross. There was no poisoning.
Speaker 2: Jane Stanford doesn't think she was poisoned. It's all just
Speaker 2: some you know, misunderstanding. So nothing to see here, everybody.
Speaker 1: Right, So the media is not fully buying this, at
Speaker 1: least the local media. They continue to kind of speculate
Speaker 1: and write about it and investigate, you know, people that
Speaker 1: were on the scene, notably the servants that were in
Speaker 1: the house at the time.
Speaker 3: For a little while, they kind of cooked up a
Speaker 3: case because.
Speaker 1: It seems like fully about anti Chinese prejudice going on
Speaker 1: in California at the time of her Chinese cook. But
Speaker 1: there was no motive, no evidence at all, So that
Speaker 1: kind of went away. And then the police did come in.
Speaker 1: They questioned some of the servants, but everybody was exonerated
Speaker 1: by the cops in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every single one. So Stanford also hired Stanford the university,
Speaker 2: I guess through Jordan hired a private detective and he
Speaker 2: did an investigation and basically was like, okay, sure, there
Speaker 2: was rat poison in the water. It was added after
Speaker 2: the fact for one servant to frame another. And I
Speaker 2: don't think any of the servants were named. It was
Speaker 2: just a theory that was like, good enough, We're not
Speaker 2: even going to publicize that one. Let's just let this die. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Jane Stanford has gone to Hawaii. Remember she's in Waikiki
Speaker 2: at the Mowana Hotel, which is still there, and she's
Speaker 2: taken two people with her. Bertha Berner, the secretary who's
Speaker 2: been with her for years now, who she was like, here,
Speaker 2: you taste this, and a new maid, May Hunter, who
Speaker 2: was not I don't believe even on the staff at
Speaker 2: the time of that first poisoning attempt. She took both
Speaker 2: of them to Hawaii with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's holed up there. We should point out
Speaker 1: that Bernard did not want to go. She had an
Speaker 1: ill mother in California and she wanted to stay and
Speaker 1: be with her. Jane Standard said, nope, You're coming to
Speaker 1: Hawaii with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I pointed out her. How Jane Stanford
Speaker 2: went back to Albi need to care for her father
Speaker 2: until he died.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So a couple of weeks into Hawaii. This is February
Speaker 1: twenty eighth. We'll call this a murder, well successful murder,
Speaker 1: not murder attempt number two. She said, hey, I got
Speaker 1: a little upset, Tom Tum, go get me some baking
Speaker 1: soda and water. And Berner went and did that, and
Speaker 1: around eleven o'clock she's not feeling too good. She was like,
Speaker 1: I'm really really sick. I think I've been poisoned again.
Speaker 1: And they call in a local doctor, Francis Humphress, who
Speaker 1: came to the hotel room. And by that time, Jane
Speaker 1: Stanford was in pretty bad shape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, her, her, she was showing some telltale signs of
Speaker 2: Stryck nine poisoning. Remember the somebody put rat poison in
Speaker 2: her Poland springs water. That's Stryck nine. And if you
Speaker 2: take Strick nine, some very very telltale things uh take
Speaker 2: place over your body because Strick nine interferes with your
Speaker 2: nerve receptors or your muscle receptors, I guess, along your
Speaker 2: spinal column and you suddenly are having like massive, violent,
Speaker 2: involuntary muscle clanching. And they followed like certain patterns or whatever.
Speaker 2: And Jane was following these these the same I guess
Speaker 2: progression of strychnine poisoning is certainly what it looked like.
Speaker 2: And ultimately she died with her body clenched still. And
Speaker 2: I think she died at eleven forty about but a
Speaker 2: little over thirty minutes after she had gotten up and
Speaker 2: said she thought she'd been poisoned.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And well I think that's a perfect time
Speaker 1: actually for back to three to resume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where the gun goes off.
Speaker 3: All right, right after this, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
Speaker 2: listen to johch Seffus no stuffuse no.
Speaker 1: All right, So Jane Stanford is now dead. Her last
Speaker 1: words were this is a horrible death to die, allegedly,
Speaker 1: and Jordan was like, all right, this is no good.
Speaker 1: You know, it's no good. If she was murdered, it's
Speaker 1: no good. If it was suicide, Like, this is all
Speaker 1: just bad news. We have to kind of get this
Speaker 1: thing taken care of so the university can not be
Speaker 1: tainted by the death of this woman. And he gets
Speaker 1: a trustee. He flies out there with this guy, Timothy Hopkins,
Speaker 1: to Hawaii. They said they were going to get the body,
Speaker 1: and there was also a couple of San Francisco police
Speaker 1: detectives that went, a guy named Harry Reynolds and Jules
Speaker 1: Callendon of the Morse Detective Agency. They go there obviously
Speaker 1: to investigate this death because at the time, Hawaii is
Speaker 1: very rural sort of. I think there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of trust and like either the well both the local
Speaker 1: cops and the local doctors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've been a territory for either three
Speaker 2: years or five years. At that point, it was considered
Speaker 2: a backwater essentially. I think also Jordan was getting there
Speaker 2: so he could do whatever he could to control the narrative.
Speaker 2: And those two detectives were working at the behest of
Speaker 2: the university essentially, not the public. So a coroner's jury
Speaker 2: was convened on March eighth. Remember she died on February
Speaker 2: twenty eighth, so about a week later, and they heard
Speaker 2: three days of testimony. And after the three days of testimony,
Speaker 2: they adjourned for two minutes before they came back and
Speaker 2: said she was murdered by poison.
Speaker 1: That's right, But that was no good for Stanford University.
Speaker 1: So Jordan was like, all right, let me see if
Speaker 1: I can rewrite this narrative. He gets another physician in there,
Speaker 1: a guy named doctor Waterhouse, has his own and separate
Speaker 1: private investigation. Waterhouse doesn't examine the body. He just goes
Speaker 1: on the description of events as they happened. He heard
Speaker 1: Berner say, hey, you know, when we were at this picnic,
Speaker 1: she really ate a lot and she had tummy trouble.
Speaker 1: That's why I was getting her that soda water at
Speaker 1: the end of the night. And he put out a
Speaker 1: four page report that said that was fully announced to
Speaker 1: the media, that no, it was not poisoning. She died
Speaker 1: of heart failure, and the local doctor and the local
Speaker 1: cops were pretty furious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is what Waterhouse came up with, And
Speaker 2: this is what Jordan took back to the mainland and
Speaker 2: presented to everybody and said, this is what really happened.
Speaker 2: This doctor said so that she had overeaten tongue sandwiches,
Speaker 2: under cooked gingerbread, lots of coffee, bunch of chocolate candy,
Speaker 2: had basically indigestion, made herself hysterical from the indigestion, and
Speaker 2: got so hysterical that her heart stopped. That's how she died.
Speaker 2: That's basically what President Jordan came back and told the world,
Speaker 2: and it actually worked. It worked because he was a
Speaker 2: white man in a prominent position, and people just listened
Speaker 2: to because who are you going to listen to this
Speaker 2: guy or the Hawaii authorities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the media was covering in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: the media was covering kind of their side of things.
Speaker 1: But in the lower forty eight, especially in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: that Jordan narrative was the one that got out. He
Speaker 1: was criticizing the local doctors, he was criticizing the local cops.
Speaker 1: He said, in fact, he fled out, accused the local
Speaker 1: doctor there of adding strick nine after the death to
Speaker 1: make it look like a murderer, and said, you know,
Speaker 1: Berner was a very close friend. There's no way that
Speaker 1: she would have been any part. You know, she was
Speaker 1: her trusted secretary for years. There's no way that she
Speaker 1: had any part in any of this.
Speaker 2: And again the San Francisco PD and the public and
Speaker 2: the press were like, Okay, good enough for us. You
Speaker 2: said that the one person who was present at both
Speaker 2: poisonings is aoka in your book, Great, she's off the hook.
Speaker 2: We're not even going to investigate her thoroughly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they kind of went away from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for a little while, the local papers in San
Speaker 1: Francisco covered it, you know, they said that there was
Speaker 1: still investigations ongoing and that people you know would be
Speaker 1: brought in and arrested or at least you know, investigated,
Speaker 1: And that lasted for about a month and no charges
Speaker 1: were ultimately filed at all, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: like that's the way it went until the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: It just kind of went cold until a writer named
Speaker 1: Robert W. P. Cutler, who was a neurology professor at
Speaker 1: Stanford and a physician, put out a book called The
Speaker 1: Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was a big deal to question the orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: which was, like you said, for a century that she
Speaker 2: died of natural causes. That's just what the official line was,
Speaker 2: and that's you know, the idea that she'd been poisoned
Speaker 2: just completely fell out of the public awareness or imagination
Speaker 2: until color brought it back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: And he was a neurology professor from stanf so he
Speaker 2: had like a certain amount of medical background that he
Speaker 2: applied into this research. And one of the first things
Speaker 2: he did was investigate whether Robert Starr Jordan had any
Speaker 2: basis in questioning the qualifications of doctor Humphres and the
Speaker 2: other doctors that were there, and he found that no, Actually,
Speaker 2: they did a really good job of trying to revive her,
Speaker 2: and then they once she was dead, preserving the evidence
Speaker 2: because it was so clear to these guys that it
Speaker 2: was strychnine poisoning, because she was showing all the telltale signs.
Speaker 2: So they preserved evidence in the in the room with her.
Speaker 2: They preserved the sodium bicarbonate I guess jar, the spoon,
Speaker 2: the glass that had been served in the chamber pot,
Speaker 2: and some vomit of hers.
Speaker 3: That's gross, it is gross.
Speaker 2: But not only did they preserve it, they got a
Speaker 2: judge to come in who served as a witness while
Speaker 2: they handed it over to the sheriff. Then the judge
Speaker 2: accompanied the sheriff well. He took this evidence to the
Speaker 2: chief sanitary officer at the Board of Health for Hawaii.
Speaker 2: And when they carried out this autopsy, there were seven
Speaker 2: doctors and a toxicologist who worked on this autopsy. Three
Speaker 2: of the doctors hadn't been at the scene, so they
Speaker 2: hadn't seen They were just working with just the body
Speaker 2: and the evidence. That they got from the body, and
Speaker 2: they had a mortician and a morge assistant act as witnesses. Essentially,
Speaker 2: you could not do a better job of handling a
Speaker 2: suspected murder poison case than these guys did in Hawaii. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also found a letter from Jordan to the president
Speaker 1: of the Board of trustees that had, you know, just
Speaker 1: a lot of different explanations. He said, if the tonic
Speaker 1: theory of strychnine is not acceptable, you have the other
Speaker 1: that it was put in by the doctor just to
Speaker 1: bolster up his case and after he had time to
Speaker 1: read up on the symptoms a little. He's a man
Speaker 1: without professional or personal standing, so he was It seems
Speaker 1: like it was just such a clear cover up that
Speaker 1: he was offering up all these different theories of what
Speaker 1: could have happened besides the obvious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Cutler was like, you know, it is super obvious.
Speaker 1: He didn't come out and like accuse anyone, but he
Speaker 1: did sort of offer some ideas. Maybe Berner, the personal secretary,
Speaker 1: maybe she was there and had the opportunity to do something,
Speaker 1: even though she didn't.
Speaker 3: Have much of a motive.
Speaker 1: Jordan certainly had the motive, but he wasn't there, So
Speaker 1: maybe those two were in cahoots or something.
Speaker 2: Yes, So that's kind of where it's sa at. This
Speaker 2: two thousand and three book, The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford,
Speaker 2: it got some pretty good press that's still around today
Speaker 2: that you know, book reviews and stories and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and that just kind of faded away again. Even though
Speaker 2: he kind of upset the balance that had been around
Speaker 2: for one hundred years, there wasn't anything major about it
Speaker 2: until about twenty years later. Another book from another Stanford professor,
Speaker 2: a historian named Richard White, came out, and he just
Speaker 2: came out and said it Who Killed Jane Stanford was
Speaker 2: the title of his book, and he, like Cutler, did
Speaker 2: a really good job of digging into the story and
Speaker 2: finding new evidence that, as far as he's concerned, pointed
Speaker 2: to the murderer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he said that Jordan definitely covered this
Speaker 1: thing up. But he said, I don't know if he
Speaker 1: would have been the murderer though, because just her dying
Speaker 1: period was not good for the university. You know, either way,
Speaker 1: if it was suicide, that's no good. If it's murder,
Speaker 1: that's certainly no good. So he didn't think that Jordan
Speaker 1: would have gone that far because Jordan really wanted to
Speaker 1: protect Stanford at all costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you might be like, well, what's the problem
Speaker 2: with that, Well, the murder, that's a scandal. The suicide
Speaker 2: was a legal problem because it would call into question
Speaker 2: her mental fitness at the time that she had offered
Speaker 2: that grant, and so all of a sudden, airs people
Speaker 2: connected to him, relatives would have come out of the
Speaker 2: woodwork challenging that ten million dollar grant and saying, no,
Speaker 2: that money's supposed to go to us instead. So he
Speaker 2: really did have every reason to cover this up, and
Speaker 2: it definitely seems that that was his motivation, But like
Speaker 2: you said, he probably had nothing to do with the murder. Instead.
Speaker 2: Richard White trains his spotlight on Bertha Burner and he
Speaker 2: disagrees with Cutler who Cutler was like, she didn't really
Speaker 2: have a motive, even though she had opportunity. He was like,
Speaker 2: they weren't the best motives. But there are a couple
Speaker 2: of motives that she had. One, she knew that she
Speaker 2: was getting an inheritance and maybe she wanted it sooner
Speaker 2: than later. And two, she could have just gotten sick
Speaker 2: of basically being having to devote her life to Jane
Speaker 2: Stanford because that's what was expected of her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the job that she luntarily asked for.
Speaker 2: Yes, but Jane Stanford like tried to keep her from
Speaker 2: having any kind of personal life, and that was not
Speaker 2: the kind of person Bertha Berner was. So that was
Speaker 2: just a constant source of tension between them, and who knows.
Speaker 2: Supposedly both of them were like, no, we're actually good friends,
Speaker 2: but there were people on the outside who were like,
Speaker 2: it's kind of I'm not sure if they're actually friends.
Speaker 1: That's right, So that's it. That's the death of Jane
Speaker 1: Stanford probably never be solved. Jordan continued to work there
Speaker 1: as university president until nineteen thirteen. Berner lived pretty well,
Speaker 1: you know, because she gotd all that dough from the
Speaker 1: will and she you know, people were suspicious of her,
Speaker 1: but she basically lived a pretty decent life until she
Speaker 1: died in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she wrote two biographies on Jane Stanford before she died,
Speaker 2: and neither one of them revealed much of anything. So
Speaker 2: it's almost teasing, tantalizing, if you will.
Speaker 3: That's it, Well, sist Josh said, that's it. It is
Speaker 3: time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: You bet, I'm going to call this weird coincidence because
Speaker 1: we have these episodes that come out from time to
Speaker 1: time that line up with the news, and that's what
Speaker 1: happening with our lasers episode. It came out in real
Speaker 1: time today, the day after we learned that a laser
Speaker 1: was used to shoot down a drone at the El
Speaker 1: Paso Airport and close the airport down.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So this is Josh and Chucker's equal deep state secures
Speaker 1: chin strap to my tinfoil hat.
Speaker 3: I'm officially onto you. Guys.
Speaker 1: You release an episode about lasers the day after the
Speaker 1: FAA closes the El Paso Airport and their cover story is.
Speaker 3: They had to shoot drones with their new lasers.
Speaker 1: You might slip this one past some of the other
Speaker 1: sheep listening, but oh no, not this guy.
Speaker 3: I want to know who you really worked for.
Speaker 1: Guys, Is it Jerry or does it go all the
Speaker 1: way to the top? Well, consider not blowing the whistle
Speaker 1: on this conspiracy. If you did an episode on bicycles
Speaker 1: or the history of mountain biking. Those my demands, and
Speaker 1: that is from Dan.
Speaker 2: Yes, Dan, we work for Jerry. Jerry's actually an acronym
Speaker 2: like Specter, but we're not at liberty to say what
Speaker 2: it stands for.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Dan, you got us figured out. We're
Speaker 2: going to have some goons come to your house and
Speaker 2: it's not going to be pleasant for you. Maybe that'll
Speaker 2: teach you not to email and shoot off your big
Speaker 2: mouth from now on. If you want to be like
Speaker 2: Dan and have things happen to you, you can send
Speaker 2: us an email too. Send it off to stuff Podcasts
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
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