On February 28th, 1905, in a luxury suite at the Moana Hotel in Honolulu, 76-year-old Jane Stanford mixed a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into a glass of water and drank it before bed. Minutes later, her screams pierced the tropical night. “I have no control of my body,” she cried out to her secretary. “I think I have been poisoned again.
” A physician staying at the hotel rushed to her room and found her undergoing full body titanic spasms, the signature of stricknine poisoning. Unlike typical seizures, stricknine causes simultaneous contraction of every muscle while the victim remains fully conscious, experiencing excruciating pain. At 11:30 p.m.
, Jane Stanford shuddered once more and died. A coroner’s jury took 2 minutes to reach their unanimous verdict. Murder by stricken poisoning administered with felonious intent by persons unknown. It was the second attempt on her life in 2 months. And in an even more sinister revelation, Jane Stanford was the sole owner of one of America’s most prestigious universities.
And the man who would lead the alleged cover up of her murder was the university’s own president, a leading eugenicist whose theories would later inspire Nazi Germany. This is the tale of how Northern California’s greatest institution was founded on tainted money and how its co-founders murder was concealed to protect that legacy.
In today’s episode of Old Money Empires, we examine the Stanford Dynasty, railroad robbers, grieving parents, spiritualists, and killers. In 1876, Leland Stamford stood at top Knob Hill in San Francisco, surveying his $2 million mansion, a monument to one of history’s most audacious robberies. The railroad baron had transformed government bonds and land grants worth over $100 million into a private fortune so vast that contemporary critics called him and his partners the most accomplished body of thieves America has
ever known. Stanford’s personal take from the Central Pacific Railroad alone netted him $13 million. And when he died in 1893, he was worth at least $30 million, equivalent to approximately 1.8 8 billion today. For context, California’s entire state budget in 1886 to 1887 was merely $6 million. The Stanford properties told the story of American wealth at its most concentrated.
The Knobill mansion featured basalt and granite walls topped with rod iron fencing, a fortress befitting one of America’s wealthiest women. The PaloAlto stock farm sprawled across 8,000 acres of prime California land where Stanford pioneered motion photography by commissioning Edward Moubridge to prove that all four of a horse’s hooves leave the ground during a gallop.
The Vener Ranch in Tahama County encompassed 55,000 acres and produced more wine than any other vineyard in the world. And then there was the university itself, founded with a $20 million endowment that dwarfed the resources of most American colleges combined. The main quad alone with its Romanesque sandstone colonades and its red tile roofs announced that this was no ordinary school.
Jane Stanford later added the memorial church, its Byzantine mosaics and Venetian inspired stained glass windows, a monument to her son and her spiritualist beliefs. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake would devastate most of the campus, but the church’s facade with 28 inscriptions from Jane’s own spiritual writings carved into the stone survived largely intact.
And the psychology driving such empire building and the family structures required to contain it receives extended treatment in our free Substack newsletter, where dynasties too complex for documentary format reveal what inherited ambition actually costs. You can find that by visiting the first link in the video description below.
And the Stanford story belongs in that company. But the fortune that built these monuments carried a stain that Jane Stanford spent her final years trying to wash clean. Her husband had exploited Chinese laborers, corrupted state legislatores, and converted public money into private wealth on a scale that shocked even during the guilded age.
She had watched her only son die at 15. She had turned to spiritualism, holding seances to contact him from beyond the grave. She had clashed bitterly with the university president she was planning to fire. And someone in her inner circle had tried to kill her twice. The question of who murdered Jane Stanford would haunt Northern California for over a century.
And it took 117 years for a Stanford historian to finally name her killer. Now Leland Stamford’s path to power began modestly. Born in 1824 in Waterleet, New York, he was one of eight children in a family of inkeepers and farmers. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1848. But his practice in Port Washington, Wisconsin failed to thrive.
When a fire destroyed his law library, Stanford saw it as a sign. His five brothers had already ventured to California during the gold rush and in 1852 Leland followed them. He didn’t dig for gold. Instead, he opened a merkantile business in Sacramento, selling picks, shovels, and supplies to miners set marked up prices. It was a California tradition.
The merchants who supplied the prospectors often grew richer than the prospectors themselves. But Stanford’s true genius wasn’t in selling picks and shovels. It was in exploiting government for personal gain. In 1861, Stanford orchestrated his election as California’s governor while simultaneously becoming president of the Central Pacific Railroad.
This dual role allowed him to personally lobby the state legislature for bonds and subsidies to fund his own railroad. A conflict of interest so blatant it would scandalize even modern politics. As one of the infamous big four railroad magnates along with Kalisp Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker, Stanford mastered the art of converting public money into private wealth.
And the scale of the fraud was staggering through a dummy company called the contract and finance company. The big four awarded themselves construction contracts at wildly inflated prices. The federal government paid them $16,000 to $48,000 per mile of track, depending on the terrain. The actual construction cost was often half that amount.
[music] The big four pocketed the difference. The human cost was equally staggering. By 1867, more than 90% of Central Pacific’s workforce, between 10,000 and 15,000 workers at any given time, were Chinese laborers. So, the irony was cruel. Stamford, who in his 1862 gubernatorial inaugural address had promised to protect California from the dregs of Asia, became utterly dependent on Chinese labor for his economic empire.
These workers were paid $27 to $30 per month compared to $35 for Irish laborers. Unlike European workers who received board, Chinese laborers had to provide their own food, tools, and sometimes lodging. Historians estimate over 1,000 Chinese workers died blasting tunnels through the Sierra Nevada and laying track across scorching deserts.
Their names were never recorded and their bodies were often left where they fell. Many say Stanford built his fortune on their unmarked graves, and in 1868, when Chinese workers organized a strike demanding wages equal to European laborers, Crocker and Stanford crushed it by cutting off food supplies to the remote mountain camps.
The workers returned to the tunnels within a week, and this was the money that would build Stamford University. The Stamford dynasty seemed invincible until 1884. During a grand tour of Europe, their only child, 15-year-old Leland Stamford Jr., fell ill with typhford fever in Athens. His desperate parents rushed him from Naples to Rome to Florence, seeking treatment.
But the boy died on March 13th, 1884. Naturally, the grief shattered Jane and Leland Stanford. Jane, already inclined towards spiritualism, a popular Victorian era belief system centered on communicating with the dead, began holding seances attempting to contact her son. According to family lore, Leland told Jane, “After one such spiritual encounter, the children of California shall be our children.
” In 1885, the Stanfords founded Leland Stanford Jr. University as a memorial to their deceased son, conveying approximately $20 million to establish the institution. The university opened its doors in October 1891 with an ecumenical co-educational vision unusual for its time. Leland Stanford hired David Star Jordan, a 40-year-old eichthologist from Indiana University, as the new school’s first president.
But when Leland Stanford died suddenly in 1893, just 2 years after the university’s founding, Jane found herself alone at the helm of an institution and a fortune under siege. The federal government sued the Stanford estate for $15 million, claiming unpaid debts from the railroad construction. Jane was forced to pay faculty salaries from her personal household budget.
She sold jewelry and mortgaged properties to keep the university afloat. For six years, she fought the federal lawsuit while personally managing every aspect of the institution. Jane Stanford’s solo stewardship from 1893 to 1905 should be remembered as extraordinary, a Victorian woman without formal academic training, single-handedly funding and operating a major university during America’s guilded age.
Instead, her legacy has been overshadowed by a murder. Jane held definite visions for the university’s future. She wanted to complete an ambitious building campaign, establish a traditional liberal arts curriculum, and ensure that moral and spiritual instruction remained central to education. To embody these values, she commissioned Stanford Memorial Church, dedicated in January 1903.
The church, built in Roman-esque form with Byzantine details inspired by Venetian cathedrals, featured extensive mosaics, stained glass windows, and most tellingly, 28 inspirational sayings from Jane’s own spiritualist writings carved into the sandstone walls. “While my whole heart is in the university, my soul is in that church,” Jane once remarked.
The building represented not just religious devotion, but her belief that education without spiritual awareness was worthless. But the university president had different ideas and their conflict would prove fatal. David Star Jordan wanted Stanford to become a modern research university focused on science and practical education.
Jane Stanford wanted it to remain a memorial to her son, grounded in moral instruction and spiritual values. Their clashing visions created a power struggle that would end in tragedy. The breaking point came in 1900 over Professor Edward Olsworth Ross, an outspoken economics professor who publicly advocated for progressive causes, including opposition to Asian immigration and municipal ownership of utilities.
Jane Stanford became incensed when Ross gave a speech calling for restrictions on Asian immigration, comparing his rhetoric to Dennis Kierney, the labor leader whose inflammatory speeches had incited violence against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. She wrote to Jordan, “He ought not to be retained at Stanford University.
” Ross had also reportedly commented in class that a railroad deal is a railroad steel. A statement that could have not pleased the widow of a railroad robber baron. Jordan recognized that dismissing Ross would damage Stanford’s academic reputation and make recruiting top scholars nearly impossible. Harvard President Charles William Elliot warned him against capitulating to donor pressure.
Jordan fired Ross anyway. He chose institutional survival over intellectual integrity, and it would not be the last time he made that calculation. The academic community erupted in outrage. Stanford history chair George Howard declared the dismissal an act which will cause the deepest grief and profoundest indignation on the part of every friend of intellectual freedom in the United States.
Seven professors resigned in solidarity. An independent panel of economists from Colombia, Yale, and Brown concluded there was no evidence Ross had been dismissed for moral defect, incompetence, or unfaithfulness, only for his opinions. The scandal became a national cause cera and helped catalyze the formation of the American Association of University Professors to Protect Academic Freedom.
What Jane Stanford likely didn’t know was that Jordan himself was one of America’s leading eugenicists. Beginning in 1898 with his book, The Blood of a Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit. Quite a title. Jordan argued that human traits were inherited and that society should prevent unfit populations from reproducing.
He served as chair of the eugenics section of the American Breeders Association, was a member of the human betterment foundation, and sat on the advisory council of the eugenics committee of the American Eugenics Society. His advocacy directly contributed to forced sterilization laws. Stanford University finally removed Jordan’s name from campus buildings in 2020, not for covering up Jane Stanford’s murder, but for his eugenics advocacy.
By late 1904, Jane Stanford had resolved to fire Jordan upon her return from an extended trip abroad, and she had communicated this intention to several confidants. Jordan’s position, his salary, his prestige, and his platform for promoting his pet project, Eugenics, depended entirely on remaining in Jane’s good graces.
He had every reason to want her gone, but she never got the chance to remove him. Now, on January 4th, 1905, Jane Stanford was staying at her Knobill mansion when her maid, Elizabeth Richmond, delivered a bottle of Poland Spring Mineral Water to her bedside, a nightly ritual. When Jane took a sip, she immediately detected an intensely bitter taste.
Acting quickly, she ran her fingers down her throat and forced herself to vomit. Richmond tasted the water and immediately spit it out, choking on the bitterness. Jane’s personal secretary, Bertha Burnerner, who had served the family since 1884, also confirmed the unusual taste. In the morning, Richmond and Burner took the bottle to Wakeley’s drugstore in the financial district for analysis.
The chemist’s diagnosis was grim. The water contained enough stricken to kill an elephant. Someone in Jane Stamford’s household had tried to murder her. The question was who? Deeply shaken, Jane quickly planned to escape to Hawaii, departing San Francisco 4 days before news of the poisoning broke. David Star Jordan gave a dismissive statement to reporters, claiming Jane had left due to pneumonia and warmer climate recommendations from her physician.
She did not think for a minute that any attempt was being made to poison her. Jordan told the press this was a lie. Jane Stanford knew exactly what had happened to her. She had fled San Francisco because she feared for her life. Six weeks later, on February 28th, 1905, Jane Stanford enjoyed a pleasant picnic and a stroll on the pier in Honolulu before retiring to her room at the Moana Hotel around 9:00 p.m.
It was a beautiful evening in paradise, but she had no idea it would be her last. Bertha Burner had laid out a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a common remedy for indigestion that Jane frequently used. Jane mixed the white powder into a glass of water and drank it before bed. Minutes later, her screams shot through the night. Dr. Francis Howard Humphre, a physician staying at the hotel, was summoned immediately.
He arrived to find Jane Stanford undergoing fullbody titanic spasms, and the slightest noise or touch triggered renewed convulsions. A stomach pump was fetched, but it was too late. At 11:30 p.m., Jane Stanford shuddered once more and died. She had been conscious throughout, aware of every spasm, every contraction of her muscles. Indeed, stricken is one of the crulest poisons ever devised. At 4:00 a.m.
on March 1st, the Honolulu Deputy Sheriff convened a coroner’s jury of six men in the Moana’s private dining room to view the body before autopsy. Dr. CB Wood performed the autopsy and testified that the symptoms were unmistakably consistent with stricken poisoning, extreme rigidity of the limbs, locked jaw, and purple discoloration of the corpse.
Chemical analysis of Jane’s organs confirmed the presence of stricken. Tests on the Cascara laxative capsules in her room also revealed the poison. After three days of hearings, the coroner’s jury deliberated for just two minutes before delivering their unanimous verdict on March 9th, 1905. Jane Leth Stanford died of stricken poisoning administered with felonious intent by some person or persons unknown.
The Pacific commercial advertiser ran the headline, “Mrs. Stanford was murdered. Back in San Francisco, David Star Jordan was already working to bury the truth. On March 4th, soon after learning of Jane’s death, Jordan boarded a steam ship for Hawaii, ostensibly to collect her remains. In reality, he was launching one of the most brazen cover-ups in American academic history.
And Jordan’s motive was transparent. Jane Stanford’s vast fortune was the university’s lifeline. A murder verdict, or worse, a self-inflicted ruling, you know, could invalidate her bequests and destroy the institution. The university had barely survived the financial crisis following Leland’s death.
It could not survive the loss of Jane’s endowment. Upon arriving in Honolulu, Jordan immediately questioned the coroner’s findings. He told the press that Stanford died of natural causes. Then he suggested the Honolulu physicians had added strict mean to the bicarbonate of soda after Jane’s death to extort additional fees from the estate.
The Honolulu doctors, respected men of high standing in their community, were understandably furious at the slander. Theyounded one physician to recant his diagnosis. He eventually fled to the British colony of Salon in relative disgrace. Jordan also publicly defended Bertha Burner’s character and proclaimed her innocence across San Francisco’s newspapers.
Stymied and out of leads, the police investigation disintegrated. An unrelated scandal shook up the police department’s leadership and Jane Stanford’s murder got lost in the confusion. The investigation focused on three servants with access to Jane Stanford’s possessions before both poisonings. Elizabeth Richmond, the British maid who delivered the poison Poland spring water, was eventually cleared.
Alfred Beverly, the former butler who had been embezzling money from Jane through a kickback scheme, had both motive and opportunity, but was also cleared. Wing, James Stanford’s Chinese cook, was singled out for harsh treatment by racist police officers despite having no apparent motive. But the evidence pointed in a different direction entirely.
Bertha Burner had served Jane Stanford for [music] 21 years, and she was the only person present at both poisoning attempts. She had purchased the bicarbonate of soda in San Francisco before their departure, the same substance that would be poisoned in Hawaii. She prepared Jane’s final dose, and she stood to inherit $15,000 from Jane’s will, equivalent to nearly 400,000 today.
The relationship between Jane and Bertha was more complex than it appeared. While Jane described Burner in her will as her secretary and devoted friend through 19 years of trial and sorrow, court documents revealed tension. Burner had contemplated leaving Jane’s service several times, clashing with her employer over personal matters, including Burner’s social life, which Jane deemed too active for a young woman.
Burner had also appeared to have a romantic relationship with the dismissed butler Beverly, the one who had been embezzling from Jane. In his 2022 book, Who Killed Jane Stanford? Stanford historian Richard White presents this conclusion. Bertha Burner murdered Jane Stanford. Perhaps motivated by the inheritance, perhaps fearing Jane would discover her financial schemes, or simply because she had reached her limit after 21 years of service.
I think she was a murderer, White writes. But right up to the moment of murder, I can’t help sympathizing with her. And the coverup succeeded. Stanford University survived and thrived, becoming one of the world’s great institutions. Jordan served as president until 1913, then as chancellor until 1916. He died in 1931, his role in the potential coverup never publicly acknowledged.
Bertha Burner collected her inheritance, lived out her days in relative comfort, and took her secrets to the grave. The context of 1905 San Francisco helps explain why justice was never served. As the writer Dashil Hammet would later document, the city’s police force was largely made up of exands who were quite as much to be feared as the robbers themselves.
Mayor Eugene Schmidz would be convicted in 1907 of extorting money from local businesses. So in this environment, a university president with powerful connections could easily derail an investigation. The parallels between the guilded age and today concentrated wealth, institutional corruption, powerful people escaping consequences make the Stanford murder mystery more than a historical curiosity.
It’s a reminder that some of America’s most prestigious institutions were literally built on getting away with murder. The Stanford name adorns one of the world’s great universities, a hospital system, a shopping center, and countless buildings around California. But Jane Stanford’s murder remains officially unsolved.
With that said, we’d love to see you in the comments. Are you a native of Northern California or a Stanford graduate? And if so, had you heard of this murder? We look forward to hearing from you below. And thanks for joining us for another episode of Old Money Empires. Cheers.
