Who Killed Jane Stanford?

A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University

By: Richard White

Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown

In 1885, Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner's jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university's lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked.

Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford's murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city's machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White's search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford's imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means.

©2022 Richard White (P)2022 Tantor

More than just Jane Stanford

This is clearly a well researched account of Jane Stanford’s death. It’s also a fascinating story for its setting that includes local California politics, law enforcement, and a look inside the founding of what’s become one of the USA’s stellar universities. The cast of characters around the quixotic Jane Stanford fill out the trappings of the gilded age in the Bay Area. Good read.

Glad it’s over

Well researched, well written, well read. So why did I find it so boring? My fault, I’m sure.

A bit Redundant

The book was historically interesting to me but a bit of a nod due to unnecessary redundancy.

A riddle wrapped around the early days of Stanford University

A historical review of the origins of the Stanford fortune and the crimes behind it. We learn a little about Leland Stanford jr and his death in Florence Italy.
The bigger story is that of the founding of Stanford University and the uncertainties underlying its financial foundation.
That all provides the backdrop for examining the death of the widow Jane Sanford. The author prevents overwhelming evidence that she died of strychnine poisoning. It was clearly diagnosed by those with her at the time of death and apparently later covered up to prevent her will and bequests to the university from being contested.
The evidence presented seems conclusive. There may be evidence elsewhere to raise doubts but that seems unlikely.

? Demise of Stanford founder

Story was a bit tedious to listen to because so many details were introduced. But, nevertheless, a slice of history that many people have not heard. I recommend it to anyone who attended Stanford the founding of this institution is far more complicated and worth historical note.