February 28, 1905.
The Moana Hotel.
Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii.
The hotel stood close to Waikiki Beach, years before Waikiki became the dense resort district known around the world today.
Jane Stanford was staying in Room 120.
Her longtime secretary Bertha Berner was traveling with her.
A newer maid, May Hunt, was also part of the party.
That afternoon they had traveled over the Pali and gone on a picnic.
Contemporary Hawaiian newspaper testimony described Jane as enjoying herself and eating well.
She returned to the Moana during the late afternoon.
By evening she was back in her room.
Jane often used bicarbonate of soda to settle her stomach.
It was ordinary sodium bicarbonate.
Baking soda.
There was nothing inherently mysterious about taking it.
The danger was not the bicarbonate itself.
The danger was what someone had apparently put into the container.
Bertha prepared a portion for Jane.
According to testimony later given at the inquest, Jane did not swallow it immediately.
She eventually took the dose and went to sleep.
For a while, the hotel remained quiet.
Then, around 11:15 p.m., Bertha heard Jane calling.
Jane appeared at the doorway in obvious distress.
She said she felt terribly ill.
She had lost control of her body.
And then she said something that immediately connected Honolulu to San Francisco.
She believed she had been poisoned again.
Bertha and May moved to help her.
A doctor was called.
Dr. Francis Howard Humphris, who was living at the Moana, arrived.
Jane's symptoms were severe.
Her muscles began contracting.
Her jaw became rigid.
Her body went into violent spasms.
She remained conscious during much of what was happening.
Humphris attempted treatment and summoned additional medical help.
Another physician was asked to bring equipment for pumping the stomach.
But the illness moved extremely quickly.
Within minutes, Jane Stanford was dead.
The suddenness alone was suspicious.
But the doctors had seen something more important.
The pattern of muscular rigidity and convulsions strongly suggested strychnine.
And the people in Jane's room knew that only six weeks earlier she had survived a confirmed strychnine poisoning in San Francisco.
That changed how everyone treated the scene.
Humphris and the other doctors preserved what Jane had consumed.
The glass.
The spoon.
The bicarbonate.
Other medicines nearby.
Material from Jane's stomach was retained.
The evidence was turned over to local authorities with witnesses present, creating a documented chain of custody. Later Stanford research emphasized how carefully the Honolulu doctors handled these materials.
An autopsy followed.
Doctors found physical findings consistent with the violent spasms they had witnessed.
Chemical testing detected strychnine.
Most importantly, investigators tested the bicarbonate itself.
It contained poison.
The second incident now looked very different from the first.
In San Francisco, the poison in Jane's water appeared to have come from a preparation containing strychnine and related compounds consistent with commercial rat poison.
In Honolulu, historians examining the surviving records have described the poison in the bicarbonate as a purer form of strychnine.
Someone appeared to have improved the method.
That made the two events difficult to dismiss as coincidence.
January 14.
Poison in bedside water.
Jane survives.
February 28.
Poison in digestive powder.
Jane dies.
Two poisonings.
Two different locations.
The same victim.
The same toxic substance.
The Hawaii authorities convened a coroner's inquest.
Doctors testified.
Bertha Berner testified.
The earlier poisoning was discussed.
The bicarbonate bottle was examined.
After hearing the evidence, the coroner's jury reached an unusually direct conclusion.
Jane Stanford had died from strychnine placed into the bicarbonate with criminal intent by an unknown person or persons.
In other words:
Murder.
The mystery should now have become a major homicide investigation.
Instead, something extraordinary happened.
Before investigators could identify the poisoner, the president of the university Jane Stanford had created began telling the public that she had not been poisoned at all.
David Starr Jordan left California for Hawaii.
Officially, he was coming to deal with Jane's death and return her remains home.
But once he arrived, he began challenging the medical findings.
Jordan was not the doctor who watched Jane convulse.
He had not performed the autopsy.
He had not conducted the chemical testing.
Yet he became one of the loudest voices arguing against the Honolulu physicians.
He hired another physician, Ernest Waterhouse, to examine the medical evidence and develop an alternative explanation.
The alternative was radically different.
Jane Stanford had not been murdered.
She had died naturally.
Perhaps indigestion.
Perhaps excessive food.
Perhaps heart trouble.
Jordan publicly attacked the poisoning conclusion and questioned the competence of the Honolulu doctors.
Stanford Magazine's later examination of the case found that Jordan even accused Dr. Humphris of possibly introducing strychnine into the evidence after Jane's death, an extraordinary accusation against the physician who had tried to save her.
The Honolulu coroner's jury had said poison.
Jordan said heart failure.
And because Jordan controlled one of the most powerful institutions in California, his version began spreading.
The woman at the center of the case could no longer argue.
Jane Stanford was dead.
And now the fight was no longer only about who had killed her.
It was about whether the public would even be allowed to call her death a murder.