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Who Killed Jane Stanford?

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Jane Stanford death mask

Jane Stanford, the wife of Leland Stanford and one of the richest women in California, was the co-founder of Leland Stanford Jr. University, which was a monument to their dead son. In 1905 she ingested strychnine twice within six weeks. The second dose at the Moana Hotel in Hawaii, where she had gone to flee her attacker, killed her.

In his talk, Richard White, author and the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus, discusses the reasons why so many people had a reason to kill Jane Stanford, how Gilded Age Stanford and San Francisco allowed the investigation of the murder to be dropped, and why the murder was covered up.

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Image credit: Jane Stanford's death mask. (Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries)