Jane Stanford, widow of Leland Stanford and co-founder of Stanford University, was murdered in Hawaii in 1905. According to the Honolulu coroner's jury, she was a victim 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. Richard White provides the first full account of Jane Stanford's murder and its cover-up
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