On the evening of Jan. 14, 1905, Mrs. Leland Stanford was at home in her 50-room San Francisco mansion when she took a sip of the bottled water presumably left at her bedside by a member of her staff. She began vomiting and complained that the drink tasted bitter. Although she soon recovered, she requested a chemical analysis and received a shocking report: Strychnine had been found in the Poland Spring bottle. Rather than call the police, she confided in her brother. He contacted the family lawyer, who hired a private investigator.
Fearful that someone was trying to murder her, Jane Stanford, a 76-year-old widow, sailed for Honolulu several weeks later with two trusted employees. At the Moana Hotel, on the night of Feb. 28, she drank bicarbonate mixed with water and became violently ill again. The hotel’s doctor arrived within minutes, but Stanford could not be saved and suffered an agonizing death. The physicians who conducted the autopsy agreed on the cause: strychnine poisoning.
