SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – In the months following Jane Stanford's death, the doctors who were at her side and the media covering the incident refused to buy into the narrative that she had died form natural causes.
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Despite the bumbling efforts of the president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan, to eclipse the truth, it seemed this story refused to be silenced.
That is, until April 18, 1906. San Francisco and much of the rest of the Bay Area would be decimated by the earthquake. The destruction that followed would be made worse by several fires that broke out in the city.
As media coverage turned towards memorializing those who'd been lost and the efforts to rebuild, Jane's story faded into the periphery.
Those under suspicion would grapple with Jane's death for the rest of their lives, in one case even writing about their relationship to her in a memoir.
But as the case around her death ends, I decide to travel to her last home still standing in Sacramento.
The Leland Stanford Mansion resides just a block or so away from the California State Capitol, and has been lovingly preserved from when the Stanfords lived there.
This is the home where Jane gave birth to her son, Leland Jr., where she raised him into a toddler. After spending so much time on her murder, it was a way to say goodbye to her as a person, and come to terms with her life as well as her death.
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