Everyone knows that the easiest ways to get arrested on campus are carrying a red cup out of a frat party on Mayfield and biking with both of your iPod earbuds in — a white-collar crime if there ever were one. However, what many students don’t know is that within Stanford’s hallowed halls is a legacy of spilled blood and gory crimes. A history of homicide, depravity and totally psychotic graduate students that we like to call “True Crime: Stanford.”

The Mausoleum Matriarch

Jane Stanford was the woman famous for running Stanford after her husband’s death. She shaped the University’s stance on arts education and co-ed education — but the one thing she had no control over was her own mysterious murder.

The crime went down as thus: On January 14, 1905, Jane knocked back a glass of Poland Spring Water and pronounced that it tasted queer (in the old-timey sense of the word, guys). Chemical analysis showed that the water was spiked with a fatal dose of strychnine.

Reeling from the shock, Jane took off for Honolulu and booked a room in a posh resort. Then, on February 15, Jane asked room service to send up a solution of bicarbonate of soda (apparently Tums had not yet been invented), gulped it down and promptly kicked the bucket.

Many would be prepared to chalk up the death of a 76-year-old lady to natural causes, but an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be strychnine poisoning. The real scandal, though, started when the president of the University, David Starr Jordan, convinced a roomful of doctors that she really died of heart failure.

Did President Jordan have something to hide? Did the founders of Berkeley have a bone to pick with Madame Stanford? Was it really wise to drink untested bicarbonate of soda only a month after a murder attempt? We may never know.

The Butchered Bride

This brutal 1974 slaying remains one of the most chilling unsolved mysteries in the Bay Area. One October evening, 19-year-old Arlis Perry took a walk with her husband Bruce, who was a Stanford sophomore at the time. After the couple got into a minor dispute about tire pressure, Arlis stormed off to Memorial Church to pray.

No one knows exactly what happened while she was in there, but, at 5:40 a.m., her body was discovered hidden under a pew. Her jeans and underwear had been removed, and two 24-inch altar candles had been used to sexually assault her. A 5 1/2” ice pick was driven into her head and the handle broken off so it could not be detected until the autopsy.

The only definitive evidence on the scene was a partial palm print on one of the candles. Investigators logged hundreds of hours examining suspects and evidence, and theorists came up with dozens of occult-based theories. In spite of all the talk about Satanists and “Son of Sam” serial killing connections, the crime remains unsolved.

The Grad Student Slayer

In August 1978, mathematics graduate student Theodore Streleski pled guilty to murdering his faculty advisor. Apparently Streleski was frustrated because he hadn’t received his degree after 19 years of schooling. And you thought taking nine years to get a Ph.D. was tough. But instead of giving up and getting a job as a high school calc teacher, Streleski took matters into his own hands by arranging a meeting with his advisor and bludgeoning the man to death with a ball peen hammer.

Immediately afterward, Streleski turned himself in to the police, under the impression that his act was “justifiable homicide.” Streleski said his victim deserved his gory end because he had denied Streleski promotions and departmental honors, demeaned his work and once insulted Streleski’s shoes.

Obviously, Streleski was no law student, or else he would have been able to predict his conviction for second-degree murder. He was sentenced to seven years in jail. Upon his release in 1985, however, Streleski said in interviews that he still considered his crime “logically and morally correct.”

So think twice the next time you’re tempted to tell a graduate student, “Hey, nice shoes, Pythagorus.” That insult may be your last.