WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD?

Historical true-crime tale involving an unsolved murder and the tumultuous early years of a prestigious university.

An award-winning historian and MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow, White became intrigued by the unsolved mystery of the death of Jane Stanford (1828-1905), who, with her husband, railroad magnate Leland Stanford, founded a university to memorialize their dead son. When Jane died suddenly in Honolulu, witness statements and an autopsy indicated poisoning, but by the time her body arrived in San Francisco, the notion of a crime had been quashed. White uses the coverup to create a lively detective story exposing “the politics, power struggles, and scandals of Gilded Age San Francisco,” including those that roiled the Palo Alto campus. Jane was wealthy, impetuous, and domineering. The university, intellectually mediocre and struggling financially, “was for all practical purposes” whatever the Stanford family wanted it to be, and its faculty and administration were harassed by Jane’s “whims, convictions, resentments,” and her ardent belief in spiritualism. She was surrounded by bickering servants, duplicitous lawyers, and rivalrous family members, but university trustee George Crothers, Jane’s confidant and legal adviser, worked assiduously to prevent her from undermining her own interests and the future of the university. He agreed with others that a murder trial “could reveal the controversies within the university, resurrect old scandals, and reveal new ones. All this would embarrass and threaten important people and institutions.” Indeed, White believes that Stanford’s death may have saved the university and certainly the job of its president, David Starr Jordan, whom Jane wanted to fire. “Jordan never mastered Jane Stanford while she lived,” writes the author, “but death made her malleable.” He eulogized her with praise. White identifies many individuals with a motive to poison Jane; advised by his brother, Stephen, a writer of crime fiction, he homes in on one culprit. Although at times White’s impressive findings slow the pace, he fashions an engaging narrative.

An entertaining tale of money, power, and malfeasance.