WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD
The Gilded Age murder of a university benefactor was the cold-case crime of the century
JANE Stanford’s death was one of the most sensational of the 20th century — and now, more than 100 years later, a new book offers enough proof to call it murder. Stanford, beloved by her community, survived the deaths of her husband and son while keeping her family’s namesake university afloat with her own money.
She seemed like the unlikeliest of murder victims when she died in Hawaii, poisoned by strychnine.
Who would want to kill a generous old lady?
Plenty of people, according to a new book by veteran historian Richard White.
There are so many possible suspects in “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” (W.W. Norton) that the book reads like a game of “Clue” — among them, a disgruntled university president, an overworked personal assistant, a recently fired “man servant” and a handful of aggrieved housekeepers.
White scoured the archives in search of answers. “Rarely have I encountered more documents that have vanished and more collections and reports that have gone missing than in this research,” writes White.
Luckily for readers, White has solved the mystery and the record can finally set straight on this century-old cold case.
(Be warned: Spoilers abound.)
LELAND Stanford made his money in railroads — and according to White, this wasn’t a clean way of building capital. It took a fair share of “lying, cheating, self-dealing, and backstabbing.” The idea for a university came after the death of his son, who died of typhoid before his 16th birthday. According to lore, Leland Stanford Jr. asked his father to start one on his deathbed. The Stanfords were far from intellectuals — Leland Stanford was known for using his library as a place to nap — but they followed through and opened Leland Stanford Junior University to men and women in 1891. Two years later, Leland Stanford died. From that point on until Jane Stanford’s death in 1905, the university was hers. “She commissioned the statue of her family; she built the arch and church. She dedicated the church to Leland Stanford — ‘my husband,’ ” writes White. She even successfully combated a legal challenge to the Stanford estate that put university funds in jeopardy. As the wife of the school’s president and a future murderer suspect would later say, Stanford would have “given her life, if necessary, to save the university.”
An apt statement if there ever was one.
THE first sign of something amiss came on Jan. 14, 1905. Jane Stanford went to bed early in one of the 19 bedrooms of her 41,000square-foot mansion in San Francisco. She was reportedly the wealthiest of all her moneyed neighbors.
Stanford drank from a bottle of Poland Spring Water, which claimed to cure all manners of nervous illnesses and diseases. When Stanford took a sip, she vomited. The water was bitter. She called out for help and a maid named Elizabeth Richmond came. Her personal secretary, Bertha Berner, who slept on the floor above Stanford, followed.
Stanford wretched and spasmed that night, but pulled through. The next day Stanford sent the bottle away to be tested for poison. It came back positive for strychnine — in a readily available and highly bitter form used as rat poison. This was bewildering to Stanford.
“I did not think anyone wished to hurt me. What would it benefit anyone?”
THE reality was that she had made many enemies. Her maid had recently threatened to quit over mistreatment. Another staff member, Ah Wong, held a grudge because Stanford owed him money.
And then there was her personal secretary.
Berner had worked with Stanford since the death of Leland Stanford Jr. and the two were close. Stanford considered her relationship with Berner to be “one that cannot be bought, it is God-giving.”
In fact, Berner had nearly walked away from the job several times after quarreling with her boss; one regular source of strife was that Stanford would often not allow Berner to visit her ailing mother.
Other arguments involved men. Berner,
a young, attractive woman in her thirties, had many admirers and an active social life — too active for Stanford’s tastes. When Stanford insisted that Berner live with her in her Nob Hill mansion, it made “her relationship with Mrs. Stanford even more claustrophobic.”
These were just the people under her roof. Others included a “man servant” named Albert Beverly who had traveled with Stanford until he was cut loose for inflating his bills and skimming off the money for himself.
And then there was the friction between Stanford and the university’s president, David Starr Jordan, who disagreed with Stanford on almost everything about the school.
Despite the long list of possible leads, the San Francisco Police Department was as flummoxed by the poisoning as Stanford was. Berner was cleared of any wrongdoing and the maid Elizabeth Richmond was fired. No arrests were made.
BUT the story doesn’t end there. A little over a month later, Stanford died in Hawaii with Bertha Berner by her side. They were in Hawaii on their way to Japan. Berner, whose mother was seriously ill, did not want to go. “She was not eager to be dragged off to Asia in the company of an imperious and rich woman,” writes White.
Before they left San Francisco, Berner visited a pharmacy and bought three ounces of bicarbonate soda, a treatment for indigestion that Stanford often used.
In Honolulu on Feb. 28, 1905, Stanford had a picnic before retiring to her room to lie down. She requested the bicarbonate soda, which Berner brought to her. Later she called Berner to her room. “I am so sick,” she said, wracked with spasms. Berner called for a doctor. “This is a horrible way to die,” Stanford said before she stopped breathing.
The Hawaii police department, physician and chemist announced that Stanford had been poisoned — this time with a more potent form of strychnine that could only be purchased at a pharmacy.
THE press had a field day with the death — producing lurid front pages of the various murder suspects. Meanwhile, the Hawaii side of the investigation continued. They discovered that Berner would receive $15,000 from Stanford’s will. Berner also had a relationship — likely romantic — with Beverly, who had been fired for getting kickbacks that Berner also got a piece of.
But powerful people didn't want the charges to stick. No one in the administration wanted the university’s dirty laundry aired. University president Jordan became the face of the counternarrative that Stanford died of “natural causes.” Jordan introduced his own physician to the evidence who produced “evidence” that showed that Stanford likely died from “angina pectoris,” or overeating.
Berner’s account changed, too. Instead of rigid, Stanford was now slumped over. She “passed away peacefully,” Berner said. Despite a coroner’s report that found poison in her system, Jordan announced that she died from “advanced age, the unaccustomed exertion, a surfeit of unsuitable food, and the unusual exposure of the picnic party.” Detectives dropped the case.
Jordan worked at Leland Stanford Jr. University for 11 more years. And although a cloud of suspicion hung around Berner, she lived comfortably in Menlo Park thanks to the $15,000 Stanford inheritance. In 1935, Stanford University published Berner’s story called “Mrs. Leland Stanford: An Intimate Account.” The book is riddled with inaccuracies, and became key to White’s case against her.
“Berner’s lies and omissions did not spring from forgetfulness,” Write writes. Particularly, Berner’s omission of the pharmacy stop was particularly “critical to the mystery,” White writes. “Two poisonings, two doses of strychnine, Berner the only person present both times, plus her purchase of the bicarbonate that later contained the poison: all this spells trouble for Bertha Berner,” he writes. This along with their rocky relationship led White to conclude: “I think she was a murderer, but up until the moment of the murder, I can’t help sympathizing with her.”
White discovered an unexplored lead: Palo Alto pharmacist PJ Schwab who sold her the bicarbonate soda. Schwab, who had been accused of another financial crime, was located close to Berner’s mother’s house. Berner and Schwab both spoke German and were linked romantically. “He becomes for me the key to the whole mystery. Insert him in the narrative and things start to click into place.”
Now that we can track the murder weapon to Berner is the case closed? Did she act alone? Not exactly. White believes that the university’s president was involved — he didn’t poison Stanford, but instead was an “accessory after the fact.” Jordan convinced Berner to change her description of Stanford’s death. “Jordan saved Berner because he had to in order to save himself, the will, the trust documents, and ultimately the university,” writes White.
“In an age of surreal conspiracy theories, it is a reminder that conspiracies can be quite real.”