Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Murder of Jane Stanford

Transcript

The Murder of Jane Stanford · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff you
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: should know True crime Murder Mystery edition, like in the
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: purest form in that we do not know who did it? Sorry?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Who done it?
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: And we may never know. We probably will never know,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: even though we kind of know.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, I don't think we'll ever know.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: This was a listener.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Suggestion, okay, and I actually from a year ago, almost
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to the day.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's creepy.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we like to do that, you know. Sure, it's like, yeah,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: great idea, We'll do it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: In one year.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like, great idea.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: So this has been sitting in the kitty for a while.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: This is from Samuel Krohle, and Olivia helped us out,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and that's it's a real banger about the history of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: in a way, the history of Stanford University. It really is,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and one of its co founders and her pretty obvious murder.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Stanfords were very much intertwined with the
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: early years of Stanford University, because, after all, you can't
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: spell Stanford without Stanford. And the reason that this is
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: a murder mystery is because one of the Stanfords dies mysteriously.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: We're not going to say who. You'll figure it out
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: towards the end, and I say, we jump in and
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: just start talking about Jane Stanford, who is for the
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: most part the star of our show.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: That's right, because she was murdered.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Man, that was the big twist.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Did you not hear me or are you just is
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: this all a bit?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Uh? It's a bit Okay, I didn't hear you, but
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: it is still a bit. What did you say that
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: was so pivotal?
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I said that she was murdered, and he said, we're
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: not going to say he was murdered.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Right afterward, Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I see, Yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: well we'll just edit all this up now.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: We should leave it. So Jane Stanford was.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: You know, she was sort of the prototypical Gilded age
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: wife at the time, supporting her husband. That was kind
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: of a job and not kind of it was like
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a real job, sort of entertaining, keeping up with like
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: large residences when you have tons of money, that kind
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of thing. But she would go on to be a
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: she was a very demanding person. It seems like I
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: want to go on to be a very demanding kind
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of lead trustee at Stanford University. And some might even
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: say a micromanager.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think she definitely fits that mold for sure.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: But as a micromanager, she would just say, I just
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: want to make sure it's done.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Right, right right. She had some very distinct ideas that
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: she wanted fulfilled with Stanford, and she had the money
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: to back it up.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, for sure.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: But he was born a little background here in upstate
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: New York in Albany in eighteen twenty eight. One of
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: seven kids. She was born wealthy. Her parents were shopkeepers,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and she would eventually marry a guy named Leland Stanford.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: She was born Jane Lathrop and then would be Jane
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Stanford or Jane Lathrope Stanford. He was also from upstate
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: New York and he was an attorney practicing in Wisconsin.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I keep want to say, Wisconsin, you can.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Say that's all right. People in Wisconsin don't care.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Well, we're going to Madison in April. I can't say
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that in front of them.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I think you can. I really think they'll support it.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: They are nice people.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, pretty much too of herson, except for that one
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: she was.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: They knew who they are.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Jane was twenty two at the time, and they were
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: a part for the beginning of their marriage.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Though right geographically, yeah, Jane moved back to Albany after
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: they got married and they were living in Wisconsin. She
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: wanted to care for her father, which put that just
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: off to the side. It's not a huge thing, but
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: she cared for her father until his death. After he died,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: she joined her husband, Leland out west. He was a
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: gold prospector. Well, actually, I don't think he ever got
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: into prospecting. He was a goods dry goods shop owner
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: who outfitted prospectors, and he fulfilled like the quintessential Golden
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: rule of business in a gold brush, don't prospect, sell shovels.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what he did.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know what, you may not find gold,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: but you can always sell a shovel to a gold miner.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: That's precisely right. But I speculate when you can. I
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: don't know regulate.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: No, I was about to say, Man, if you don't
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: rhyme that thing, I know, I don't even know who
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you are.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: I still didn't do a very good job, but at least.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: No I thought it was pretty good.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So he made some pretty good money doing that. But
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: he really really got rich when he became one of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the Big four robber barons that put their money for
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: it to finance the Central Pacific Railroad in eighteen sixty one,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, they had this big life
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: as wealthy people, and he said, well, why not just
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: get into politics as well?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Well, the Big Four basically got him into politics to
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: represent their interests, basically, like they put up some of
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: their money, but for the most part, they used Leland
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Stanford's ron as the governor of California and then later
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: on as a senator in the United States Senate to
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: basically lean on the government to get the government to
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: underwrite the building of the railroad to make connections so
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: that you could bribe people more easily. Like it was
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: a so windle. That's how those dudes made that railroad.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: They ended up with a monopoly. They seek really bought
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the Southern Pacific Railroad, and all of a sudden, Leland
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Stanford's the president of that now too, So just to
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: just kind of like just painted with a big brush
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: the Stanford's made their money in very questionable ways. So
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: just just remember that because this is like such a
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: it's such a great example of American myth making where
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: some guy just basically fails upward and becomes super super wealthy,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and then you know, very shortly after that he becomes
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: lionized as like this great heroic builder of America. And
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: that's just I'm just so sick of that it still
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: goes on today.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, haven't most of the Robber Baron's been kind
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: of kneecapped.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I think so. But I think at least
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: some of them were legitimately philanthropists. I don't think Leland
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Stanford was legitimately a philanthropist. I get the impression. I've
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: actually seen it written that basically they laundered their ill
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: gotten gains through the university to leave a prestigious legacy
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: for themselves instead.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: All right, well, they were smart for the first eighteen
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: years of their marriage and did not have kids, and
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: then they ruined that all kind of later in life
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: for them. When little Leland Junior was born. Jane was
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: thirty nine at the time, which is especially for the time,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a bit of an advanced stage to give birth certainly,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: you know, not without risk. And Leland Senior was, like
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you said, he got involved in politics. They also, I mean,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: they had their fingers in a lot of pies. They
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: ran a few wineries, they raised horses. This is just
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: a little kind of fun side note that Livia dug up.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you know the very famous Edward Moybridge his
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: early motion picture film when he set up twenty four
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: cameras and showed like a horse running, which a said like, hey,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: we can have something called motion pictures and also said, hey,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: look that horse has all of its four feet off
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the ground.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: At the same time. That was done on their.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Property, the Palo Alto Stock Farm. So just a fun
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: little thing, and that's where Stanford University eventually would be.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Did you ever see the Jordan Peele movie. Nope, yep,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: I thought that was a cool little just a little
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: line yap where the oh I don't remember his name,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: but he was also in Get Out to the main Guy. Yeah, yeah,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: yeah where he he's his character is descended from the
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: jockey that rode that horse.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought that was cool too, Daniel something right.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. I feel like a total jerk, but.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, you can't remember everything off the dome.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: But it turns out in real life that jockey's name
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: was Dom do o m m. They think maybe Gilbert Dom.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: So you know his name?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I looked it up this morning. So all right,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: that's it. Smart guy. Here.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: We're glad everybody knows that guy's name.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Here we go.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So sadly, Leland Junior would not live very long. He
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: died at fifteen. He went to Europe with his mom
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and it was pretty sad thing, obviously a tragedy for
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the family. But a very interesting thing happened at the
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: funeral when a young woman named Bertha Berner was there
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: and met Jane. Would later write her a letter and say, Hey,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I think you could use a person like me in
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: your life. We'll call it personal secretary or whatever, but
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: basically your right hand person to kind of help you
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: with everything that you need.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, just the classic Gilded Age wife, right, yeah, okay.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Along with a little spiritualism thrown in.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big one. And you know that
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: gets kind of tossed around quite a bit that the Stanfords,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: in particular Jane, were really heavy into spiritualism. Well, all
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: out of people were heavy into spiritualism at this time,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: so it was generally looked down upon from the halls
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: of academia. So in a way it was a little
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: awkward for the university for their founders to have been
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: into spiritualism. But it wasn't just completely out of left field.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: No not.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: You know, among especially among the sort of wealthy elites,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they were into that kind of thing.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: And also I mean there was the death of Edward
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: or the death of Leland Junior was a really huge
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: turning point. Apparently they were kind of dabbling in it.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: But after that she kind of devoted herself to getting
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: a message from or getting in contact I guess with
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Leland Junior again. And she tried for a long time,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: and then I think in the end she was she
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: was dissatisfied. She couldn't find anybody that she considered legitimate
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: enough to actually do it, even though she believed it
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: was possible. She found that everyone she came in contact
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: with was a fraud or huckster.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So and she's probably right. So Berner gets this job.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: You know, people from the outside were like, man, she
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: really works hard for Jane Stanford, like she doesn't seem
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: to have any time off. She kind of is run
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: by Jane Stanford, but they were very close and she
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: would be with her until the day she died. Put
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a pen in that and in fact would get quite
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: rich from her death. I think she got fifteen grand.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: The other household staff got a thousand dollars each in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the will, but Berner got fifteen grand, which is about
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: half a million today.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: So not too bad, No, not bad at all.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: I Also, I just want to say before we move on,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the actor's name is Daniel Caluja.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: So it was Leland Junior's death that actually inspired the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: founding of Stanford University.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: There are a couple of stories about how that might
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: have happened.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I think Leland took maybe the more acceptable mainstream version,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: which is, hey, it came to me in a dream
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: after my son's death. But there was a medium, maud
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Lord Drake, who said, no, that actually happened in a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: seance with me. It was a visitation from the afterworld
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that I mediated, and he just didn't want to say
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that out loud, so he just called it a dream.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Her famous quote was who has two thumbs? And
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: was the medium who got Leland junior to tell his
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: parents that he wanted them to found a university, and
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: she said me.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maud Lord Drake.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you could actually make a case that if
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: the university was true to form at the time, it's
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: quite possible that they the Stanford's claimed that it was
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: from this seance, but the university just basically whitewashed that
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: over and it became a dream instead. That's right, so, Chuck,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Regardless of how it came about, the Stanfords said that
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: although they had lost their son, now the children of
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: California would become their children, and to do that, they
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: founded Stanford University. For those of you who aren't familiar,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: it's one of the most prestigious universities in the world
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: as far as I know, certainly in the US. Is
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: the cradle for our current tech explosion, and it's just
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a really great university. Its official name is Leland Stanford
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Junior University after Leland Stanford Junior. Still today, that's what
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: it's called. And if you look at the details of
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: how it was founded and what its mission was when
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: it was open, it's like the Stanford's definitely did a
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: good job of opening a public university.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty unique. Tuition was free first of all,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: so that was fairly unique. So it you know, they
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: led in students that couldn't afford to go to college otherwise. Yeah,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Jane said, I want to make it a co ed school.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: There were just a handful of those in the in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the United States at the time.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And also, I'm doing Sergio, You're what I'm doing, Sergio,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Jane said.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, I got you.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: The other sort of odd thing was that it was
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not associated with a church. It was a Christian university,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't like, you know, Jane again was dabbling
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in the occult, so she she had sort of loose,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: sort of a loose association with particular denominations. So it
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: was a non denominational Christian school, very much kind of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: a liberal arts thing at first. It would later and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: in fact, you know, it was part of the friction
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: between Jane and the eventual president on what kind of
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: school it would be. She wanted it more liberal arts
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: and he wanted it more science and research, research based.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but even out of the gate, apparently it was
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: for preparing students for personal success and direct usefulness in life.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: One of the things they did was they created an
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: extension service for local farmers to find out the latest
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: agricultural techniques. They accepted high school shop classes as credits.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Like it they were. It wasn't just this. It wasn't
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: an elite institution meant to create a new generation of
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: elites like say Harvard was at the time, just at
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: By the way, in my defense, I didn't recognize your
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Jane's addiction line because I think that lyric is wrong.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I think it's I'm done with Sergio.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the second verse, is it. I
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: will say anything to make myself right.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Okay, I just wouldn't. He said. Doing Sergio was like,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: who the hell is Sergio?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: She was? That's the point.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: He treated her like a rag doll.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Well see now you're getting back on the good side
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: of history.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Well die, thanks all right. So Stanford is opening up.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: It's October first, eighteen ninety one. Leland gives a great
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: speech Leland senior, of course, and Jane apparently had a
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: real banger of a speech written, and she said that
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: she didn't have the courage to actually do it, but
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: had she, it would have gone over pretty well, I think,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: because in it there was a plea to the students, like, hey,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: we're a new school. You know, got to work out
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the kinks here. Maybe be a little patient, and hey,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: if you're a young male student here, you know you
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: have girls around, Please treat these young ladies with great deference.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And you might have some kids who don't come from
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: wealthy backgrounds because it's a free school, and maybe treat
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: them well as well. So you know, she has this
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: great letter written and never says it publicly, unfortunately, No.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: But I mean all of these points support our overall point,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: like we said, which is they did a pretty good
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: job of founding a university. Like to mission was great.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: The details are pretty.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Great, better than we've done.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: For sure. Ours is still kind of getting off the ground.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: It's just basically a grift right now, right, but hopefully
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: we'll be able to build it into something real. Yeah,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: there is an issue with finding a president. Apparently the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: presidents they were looking for were like, I'm good here,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like moving out west. I think that
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: was a big part of it. Like CALIFORNI you was
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: not like California as it is now. The Stanford University
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: helped make northern California. What it is now, so it
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: was still rugged. You know. They couldn't get any just
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: any Eastern college president to hop from his college out
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: to Stanford. They finally found a former president of Indiana
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: University named David Starr Jordan, who was also an ichthyologist
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: by training and trade. He finally took them up on
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the offer.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And he also had a lot of pretty gross views
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: on things, yeah, like super in retrospect. He was into eugenics.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: He thought scientific racism was pretty great in that if
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you're unfit, like if you're disabled or if you're in prison,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: maybe we should.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: Just sterilize you.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And yeah, women should get educated, but just so they
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: can be smarter in the home as homemakers.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: He was also like a vocal pacifist, which you're kind
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: of like, oh, okay, that's not bad. The reason why
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: he was a pacifist was because he felt war promoted
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: racial degradation because you send the fittest young men off
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: to die, that leaves the week to stay home and procreate,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: and it degenerates the racer society back home. That was
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the reason he was a pacifist in anti war. Yeah,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: there was nothing he could do right basically with that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: set of views.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I think we should probably take a break.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, set the stage for Stanford's founding. Sure, and we'll
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: be right back with more on Jane Stanford.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: If you want to know then you're in luck. Just
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: listen to joshcher Suffus stuffus. No, Okay, So we're whittling
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: down the people who could possibly have been murdered because
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Leland Junior's dead. Now, now Leland Senior dies, there are
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: very few people left of the Stanfords. Two have been
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: the murder victim. Now it's just Jane. If that gives
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: anything away, that's right.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: So Jane was left as the basically the only trustee
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: of the early university, and she had a situation going
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: on with the US government where they were like it
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was a lawsuit fifteen million bucks and eighteen ninety three dollars,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and the kind of central point of it was they
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the government was like, hey, because you or your husband
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and your family was part you know, like founded and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: has ownership stairs of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, you
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: should also be responsible for that company's debts and we
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: helped finance this thing, so like you need to pay
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: us back for these bonds that we sold, right, and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: she actually won that case, which all of a sudd
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and you know, they kind of had frozen her assets.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, these assets were open, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: she gave a huge chunk of eighteen ninety nine dollars
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to Stanford and to the tune of ten million bucks.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say to her credit before that.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: So this went on for six years. From what I
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: can tell. During that six year time, the court gave
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: her a three hundred in today's dollars about a three
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a month allowance, and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: she spent most of it. She gave most of it
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: to Stanford to run Stanford with. So she wasn't just like, well,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I'm good, good luck Stanford. So and then yeah, after
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: her assets were on frozen, she was like, hey, how
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: about ten million dollars? And everyone said, God, this is great,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: how wonderful. And she's like, wait a second, there's a
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: couple of strings I'm going to attach to this. And
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: they were strings that you would find hard to swallow,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: like the kind of strings you would put down your
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: nose and pull out your mouth at the same time,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: back and forth, they were those kind of strings.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I mean she basically had total and complete control of
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: what happened there, including like how many trustees there would
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: even be, so she wouldn't get a lot of pushback.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Like I said, she was a micromanager, but not to her.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: To her, she just wanted things done right, and she
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: basically had complete control over the university, said, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: like who could get in, who could get out, what
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: teachers they could hire as staff.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: She said that they capped.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Even though it was her idea to make it a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: co ed school, which is great, she capped it at
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: five hundred women because she didn't want it. She thought
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: after that people may think it's a women's college and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: that men might stop applying, and that cap was in
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: place for a while even after she died, until they
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: got rid of it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I read that she also had been told rumors
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: that the men students were being distracted by the women's students,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: and Susan B. Anthony wrote her and was just appalled
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: and was like, what are you doing. She stuck with it.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: She was very adamant about that, and like you said,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think it was until the thirties where they
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: finally were like, we can't just keep it at five hundred,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: so they lifted that.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Star the President did not like this at all.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: He didn't like having someone sort of that much in
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the business. It seems like they had a pretty friction
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: riddled relationship. Yeah, especially you know, she tried to get
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: some of the spiritualism in there. I mentioned before that
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: she wanted to focus on the liberal arts, but she
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: also wanted to create an academic chair in psychic psychology.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: She also tried to hire this philosopher named William James,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: who was a guy who was very much involved in
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the paranormal as a visiting professor.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was also the father of psychology, so he
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: would have been quite a catch. But I think just
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: his association with the paranormal made Jordan kind of like
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: dismiss everything else.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see that she finally got this guy
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: named Julius Gerbel, not Goebels. I don't know if he
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: dropped that s would or I guess this was pre
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: World War two so he didn't even know yet, but
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: he it seems like he was hired basically to kind
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of look out over the shoulder of David Starr Jordan,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: which he certainly didn't appreciate.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: No, and he reported back to Jane Stanford that Jordan
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: was basically a patron of the science department and anti
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: liberal arts departments, and that he was basically running the
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: university like that. He was going behind Jane Stanford's back
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: to win that argument over whether it should be a
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: science or a liberal arts college. And then one thing
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: that really kind of made huge waves as far as
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: her micromanagement went. You said that she wanted to have
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: control over who was hired. She also felt like she
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: was totally within her rights to say fire that guy
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason. And there was a professor named Edward A.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Ross who was a social scientist, and he was very
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: much vocal in his support for William Jennings Bryant, who
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: was a Democrat, and she did not like that. She
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: was not in favor of William Jennings Bryant, so she
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: told Jordan to fire him, and Jordan eventually buckled under pressure,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: and this became like a national scandal about whether there
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: was academic freedom at all at Stanford. It was a
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: huge deal.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I think everyone sees where this is headed, and this,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I guess we'll just classify as murder attempt number one
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: in January of nineteen oh five. That was a servant
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that puts some water on her nightstand before Jane Stanford
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: was going to bed, and there in San Francisco, she
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: drank some of it, said this doesn't taste quite right.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So she went and gagged herself and made herself throw up,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and then gave it to her secretary and said, here,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you try this. She tried it and was like, yeah,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: this doesn't taste right. So they sent it to a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: pharmacy and found that, in fact, was poison. It was
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it was rat poison, not full Strych nine, but just
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: sort of over the counter rat poison.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is bad enough. I mean, it could kill
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: you for sure. So this was I mean, I can't
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: imagine that, like if somebody had put rat poison in
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: your water. So she was like, I'm getting out of here.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I guess after the report came back a few weeks
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: later that it was rat poison. She went to Hawaii.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I read that she was ultimately on her way to
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Japan and that Hawaii was just a stop. I also
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: read that she was trying to get out of Dodge
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: and get away from having been poisoned, and so news
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: of this poisoning started to spread and Jordan, president of Stanford,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: was like, nope, no scandals please. We just had that
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: huge deal with firing Edward A. Ross. There was no poisoning.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Jane Stanford doesn't think she was poisoned. It's all just
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: some you know, misunderstanding. So nothing to see here, everybody.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Right, So the media is not fully buying this, at
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: least the local media. They continue to kind of speculate
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and write about it and investigate, you know, people that
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: were on the scene, notably the servants that were in
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the house at the time.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: For a little while, they kind of cooked up a
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: case because.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It seems like fully about anti Chinese prejudice going on
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: in California at the time of her Chinese cook. But
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: there was no motive, no evidence at all, So that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: kind of went away. And then the police did come in.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: They questioned some of the servants, but everybody was exonerated
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: by the cops in the end.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, every single one. So Stanford also hired Stanford the university,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I guess through Jordan hired a private detective and he
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: did an investigation and basically was like, okay, sure, there
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: was rat poison in the water. It was added after
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: the fact for one servant to frame another. And I
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: don't think any of the servants were named. It was
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: just a theory that was like, good enough, We're not
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: even going to publicize that one. Let's just let this die. Meanwhile,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Jane Stanford has gone to Hawaii. Remember she's in Waikiki
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: at the Mowana Hotel, which is still there, and she's
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: taken two people with her. Bertha Berner, the secretary who's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: been with her for years now, who she was like, here,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: you taste this, and a new maid, May Hunter, who
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: was not I don't believe even on the staff at
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the time of that first poisoning attempt. She took both
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: of them to Hawaii with her.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's holed up there. We should point out
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: that Bernard did not want to go. She had an
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: ill mother in California and she wanted to stay and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: be with her. Jane Standard said, nope, You're coming to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Hawaii with me.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I pointed out her. How Jane Stanford
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: went back to Albi need to care for her father
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: until he died.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So a couple of weeks into Hawaii. This is February
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: twenty eighth. We'll call this a murder, well successful murder,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: not murder attempt number two. She said, hey, I got
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a little upset, Tom Tum, go get me some baking
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: soda and water. And Berner went and did that, and
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: around eleven o'clock she's not feeling too good. She was like,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I'm really really sick. I think I've been poisoned again.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And they call in a local doctor, Francis Humphress, who
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: came to the hotel room. And by that time, Jane
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Stanford was in pretty bad shape.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, her, her, she was showing some telltale signs of
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Stryck nine poisoning. Remember the somebody put rat poison in
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: her Poland springs water. That's Stryck nine. And if you
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: take Strick nine, some very very telltale things uh take
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: place over your body because Strick nine interferes with your
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: nerve receptors or your muscle receptors, I guess, along your
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: spinal column and you suddenly are having like massive, violent,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: involuntary muscle clanching. And they followed like certain patterns or whatever.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And Jane was following these these the same I guess
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: progression of strychnine poisoning is certainly what it looked like.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: And ultimately she died with her body clenched still. And
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I think she died at eleven forty about but a
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: little over thirty minutes after she had gotten up and
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: said she thought she'd been poisoned.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And well I think that's a perfect time
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: actually for back to three to resume.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where the gun goes off.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: All right, right after this, we'll be right back.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: listen to johch Seffus no stuffuse no.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: All right, So Jane Stanford is now dead. Her last
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: words were this is a horrible death to die, allegedly,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and Jordan was like, all right, this is no good.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: You know, it's no good. If she was murdered, it's
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: no good. If it was suicide, Like, this is all
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: just bad news. We have to kind of get this
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: thing taken care of so the university can not be
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: tainted by the death of this woman. And he gets
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a trustee. He flies out there with this guy, Timothy Hopkins,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to Hawaii. They said they were going to get the body,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and there was also a couple of San Francisco police
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: detectives that went, a guy named Harry Reynolds and Jules
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Callendon of the Morse Detective Agency. They go there obviously
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: to investigate this death because at the time, Hawaii is
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: very rural sort of. I think there wasn't a lot
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of trust and like either the well both the local
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: cops and the local doctors.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've been a territory for either three
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: years or five years. At that point, it was considered
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: a backwater essentially. I think also Jordan was getting there
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: so he could do whatever he could to control the narrative.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: And those two detectives were working at the behest of
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: the university essentially, not the public. So a coroner's jury
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: was convened on March eighth. Remember she died on February
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: twenty eighth, so about a week later, and they heard
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: three days of testimony. And after the three days of testimony,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: they adjourned for two minutes before they came back and
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: said she was murdered by poison.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: That's right, But that was no good for Stanford University.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So Jordan was like, all right, let me see if
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I can rewrite this narrative. He gets another physician in there,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a guy named doctor Waterhouse, has his own and separate
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: private investigation. Waterhouse doesn't examine the body. He just goes
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: on the description of events as they happened. He heard
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Berner say, hey, you know, when we were at this picnic,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: she really ate a lot and she had tummy trouble.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: That's why I was getting her that soda water at
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the end of the night. And he put out a
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: four page report that said that was fully announced to
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the media, that no, it was not poisoning. She died
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: of heart failure, and the local doctor and the local
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: cops were pretty furious.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is what Waterhouse came up with, And
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: this is what Jordan took back to the mainland and
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: presented to everybody and said, this is what really happened.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: This doctor said so that she had overeaten tongue sandwiches,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: under cooked gingerbread, lots of coffee, bunch of chocolate candy,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: had basically indigestion, made herself hysterical from the indigestion, and
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: got so hysterical that her heart stopped. That's how she died.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: That's basically what President Jordan came back and told the world,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: and it actually worked. It worked because he was a
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: white man in a prominent position, and people just listened
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: to because who are you going to listen to this
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: guy or the Hawaii authorities.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the media was covering in Hawaii,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the media was covering kind of their side of things.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: But in the lower forty eight, especially in San Francisco,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: that Jordan narrative was the one that got out. He
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: was criticizing the local doctors, he was criticizing the local cops.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: He said, in fact, he fled out, accused the local
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: doctor there of adding strick nine after the death to
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: make it look like a murderer, and said, you know,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Berner was a very close friend. There's no way that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: she would have been any part. You know, she was
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: her trusted secretary for years. There's no way that she
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: had any part in any of this.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And again the San Francisco PD and the public and
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: the press were like, Okay, good enough for us. You
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: said that the one person who was present at both
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: poisonings is aoka in your book, Great, she's off the hook.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: We're not even going to investigate her thoroughly.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they kind of went away from there.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for a little while, the local papers in San
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Francisco covered it, you know, they said that there was
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: still investigations ongoing and that people you know would be
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: brought in and arrested or at least you know, investigated,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: And that lasted for about a month and no charges
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: were ultimately filed at all, and it was kind of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: like that's the way it went until the early two thousands.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: It just kind of went cold until a writer named
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Robert W. P. Cutler, who was a neurology professor at
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Stanford and a physician, put out a book called The
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was a big deal to question the orthodoxy,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: which was, like you said, for a century that she
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: died of natural causes. That's just what the official line was,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and that's you know, the idea that she'd been poisoned
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: just completely fell out of the public awareness or imagination
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: until color brought it back in two thousand and three.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: And he was a neurology professor from stanf so he
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: had like a certain amount of medical background that he
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: applied into this research. And one of the first things
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: he did was investigate whether Robert Starr Jordan had any
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: basis in questioning the qualifications of doctor Humphres and the
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: other doctors that were there, and he found that no, Actually,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: they did a really good job of trying to revive her,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: and then they once she was dead, preserving the evidence
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: because it was so clear to these guys that it
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: was strychnine poisoning, because she was showing all the telltale signs.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: So they preserved evidence in the in the room with her.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: They preserved the sodium bicarbonate I guess jar, the spoon,
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: the glass that had been served in the chamber pot,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: and some vomit of hers.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: That's gross, it is gross.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: But not only did they preserve it, they got a
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: judge to come in who served as a witness while
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: they handed it over to the sheriff. Then the judge
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: accompanied the sheriff well. He took this evidence to the
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: chief sanitary officer at the Board of Health for Hawaii.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And when they carried out this autopsy, there were seven
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: doctors and a toxicologist who worked on this autopsy. Three
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: of the doctors hadn't been at the scene, so they
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: hadn't seen They were just working with just the body
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: and the evidence. That they got from the body, and
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: they had a mortician and a morge assistant act as witnesses. Essentially,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you could not do a better job of handling a
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: suspected murder poison case than these guys did in Hawaii. Yeah.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: He also found a letter from Jordan to the president
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: of the Board of trustees that had, you know, just
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of different explanations. He said, if the tonic
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: theory of strychnine is not acceptable, you have the other
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that it was put in by the doctor just to
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: bolster up his case and after he had time to
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: read up on the symptoms a little. He's a man
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: without professional or personal standing, so he was It seems
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: like it was just such a clear cover up that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: he was offering up all these different theories of what
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: could have happened besides the obvious.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Cutler was like, you know, it is super obvious.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: He didn't come out and like accuse anyone, but he
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: did sort of offer some ideas. Maybe Berner, the personal secretary,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: maybe she was there and had the opportunity to do something,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: even though she didn't.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Have much of a motive.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Jordan certainly had the motive, but he wasn't there, So
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: maybe those two were in cahoots or something.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, So that's kind of where it's sa at. This
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: two thousand and three book, The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford,
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: it got some pretty good press that's still around today
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: that you know, book reviews and stories and stuff like that,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: and that just kind of faded away again. Even though
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: he kind of upset the balance that had been around
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: for one hundred years, there wasn't anything major about it
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: until about twenty years later. Another book from another Stanford professor,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: a historian named Richard White, came out, and he just
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: came out and said it Who Killed Jane Stanford was
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: the title of his book, and he, like Cutler, did
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: a really good job of digging into the story and
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: finding new evidence that, as far as he's concerned, pointed
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: to the murderer.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he said that Jordan definitely covered this
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: thing up. But he said, I don't know if he
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: would have been the murderer though, because just her dying
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: period was not good for the university. You know, either way,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: if it was suicide, that's no good. If it's murder,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: that's certainly no good. So he didn't think that Jordan
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: would have gone that far because Jordan really wanted to
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: protect Stanford at all costs.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you might be like, well, what's the problem
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: with that, Well, the murder, that's a scandal. The suicide
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: was a legal problem because it would call into question
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: her mental fitness at the time that she had offered
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: that grant, and so all of a sudden, airs people
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: connected to him, relatives would have come out of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: woodwork challenging that ten million dollar grant and saying, no,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: that money's supposed to go to us instead. So he
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: really did have every reason to cover this up, and
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: it definitely seems that that was his motivation, But like
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: you said, he probably had nothing to do with the murder. Instead.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Richard White trains his spotlight on Bertha Burner and he
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: disagrees with Cutler who Cutler was like, she didn't really
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: have a motive, even though she had opportunity. He was like,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: they weren't the best motives. But there are a couple
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: of motives that she had. One, she knew that she
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: was getting an inheritance and maybe she wanted it sooner
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: than later. And two, she could have just gotten sick
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: of basically being having to devote her life to Jane
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Stanford because that's what was expected of her.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the job that she luntarily asked for.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, but Jane Stanford like tried to keep her from
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: having any kind of personal life, and that was not
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the kind of person Bertha Berner was. So that was
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: just a constant source of tension between them, and who knows.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Supposedly both of them were like, no, we're actually good friends,
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: but there were people on the outside who were like,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: it's kind of I'm not sure if they're actually friends.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: That's right, So that's it. That's the death of Jane
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Stanford probably never be solved. Jordan continued to work there
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: as university president until nineteen thirteen. Berner lived pretty well,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: you know, because she gotd all that dough from the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: will and she you know, people were suspicious of her,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: but she basically lived a pretty decent life until she
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: died in nineteen forty five.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she wrote two biographies on Jane Stanford before she died,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and neither one of them revealed much of anything. So
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: it's almost teasing, tantalizing, if you will.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: That's it, Well, sist Josh said, that's it. It is
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: time for listener mail.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: You bet, I'm going to call this weird coincidence because
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: we have these episodes that come out from time to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: time that line up with the news, and that's what
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: happening with our lasers episode. It came out in real
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: time today, the day after we learned that a laser
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: was used to shoot down a drone at the El
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Paso Airport and close the airport down.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: So this is Josh and Chucker's equal deep state secures
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: chin strap to my tinfoil hat.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: I'm officially onto you. Guys.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: You release an episode about lasers the day after the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: FAA closes the El Paso Airport and their cover story is.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: They had to shoot drones with their new lasers.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: You might slip this one past some of the other
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: sheep listening, but oh no, not this guy.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: I want to know who you really worked for.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Guys, Is it Jerry or does it go all the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: way to the top? Well, consider not blowing the whistle
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: on this conspiracy. If you did an episode on bicycles
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: or the history of mountain biking. Those my demands, and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that is from Dan.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, Dan, we work for Jerry. Jerry's actually an acronym
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: like Specter, but we're not at liberty to say what
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: it stands for.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Dan, you got us figured out. We're
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: going to have some goons come to your house and
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: it's not going to be pleasant for you. Maybe that'll
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: teach you not to email and shoot off your big
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: mouth from now on. If you want to be like
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Dan and have things happen to you, you can send
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: us an email too. Send it off to stuff Podcasts
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.