Mystery Coffins Discovered in the Hills Above Stanford University
A dozen bodies filled the plots of an unmarked graveyard
On an April day in 1908, a small group of students from Stanford were hiking in the hills above campus when they came upon stacks of coffins that had been recently unearthed by grave-robbers. How the thieves discovered the burial ground is unknown, as the graves were all unmarked, and no one had any clue that there had been bodies buried there.
Nine of the coffins were made of wood, and inside, nothing more than bones, hair, and dust. A tenth one was made of iron, of the highest quality workmanship, and had a glass viewing window. Inside, a strikingly beautiful, magnificently dressed young woman was visible, and though she was long dead, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully inside her air-tight burial case.
Upon further inspection of the scene, a smaller iron coffin was also found, holding the body of a toddler. All around the San Francisco Bay Area, the news spread like wildfire and speculation led immediately to theories of murder.
The San Francisco Call proclaimed that the discovery of the coffins could perhaps “reveal the secret of the mysterious disappearance years ago of the dashing, talented woman … Eugénie Clogenson.”
By all estimations, the secret grave yard had been filled with bodies during the years that the property was owned by a mysterious Frenchman known as Peter Coutts, whose real name was revealed years later to be Jean Baptiste Paulin Caperon, a fugitive member of the French Aristocracy. It had been close to 20 years since the man and his family had suddenly vanished without a trace.
Caperon was a tall, imposing figure who never shared details of his past. He had a seemingly unlimited source of wealth, and upon arriving in the spring of 1875, he purchased 1,400 acres of prime land from William Paul, founder of the old wild west town of Mayfield (later absorbed by the city of Palo Alto).
He christened his “Ayrshire Farm” and hired more than a hundred men to build his grand estate, which included houses and chalets, a 50-foot-tall clock tower, a grand library, stables for his race horses, a race track (complete with viewing stands), a massive wine cellar, kennels for his beagles, a dozen brick barns for his trophy-winning Ayrshire and Holstein cows, a man-made lake, waterways and a network of irrigation tunnels.
Among the estate’s prominent landmarks was a 30-foot-tall brick tower designed in the style of a Norman fortress, which could be accessed only from a tunnel below it. The structure still stands, and to this day, people speculate about what Frenchman’s Tower was used for. But it was likely nothing more than an elaborate pump house for the waterworks of the farm.
Monsieur “Peter Coutts,” his invalid wife Elisa, son Albert, daughter Marguerite and the children’s young governess Eugénie Clogenson lived quite lavishly. The family mingled with high society, hosting elaborate parties attended by other rich residents of the area, even as French authorities at the consulate in San Francisco hired spies among the Coutts estate staff - they were convinced that “Coutts” was a fugitive from France who had absconded with 5 million francs from the French army. Adding to their suspicion was the fact that the deed for Ayrshire Farm was made out in the name of the lovely Miss Clogenson.
Eugénie was surely Caperon’s lover. The San Francisco Call newspaper speculated that with her fine manners and elegant bearing, she might be Eugénie de Montijo, a deposed empress of France. Though that was later proven to be wrong, it was well-known that the wife of the Frenchman hated her. The Call proclaimed that the discovery of the coffins could perhaps “reveal the secret of the mysterious disappearance years ago of the dashing, talented woman.”
No one knows what exactly happened to Eugénie Clogenson, she disappeared years before the “Coutts” family pulled the same vanishing act. Had she mothered a child with the man of the house, and then been murdered somehow, along with their love child, by an insanely jealous wife? We will never know.
At the time that the iron coffins were discovered, it was noted that they bore the stamp of a San Francisco coffin-maker. But the maker's records had all burned in the wake of the 1906 earthquake.
Given the expensive clothing worn by the deceased, and the sudden disappearance of Clogenson from historical records after the mid-1880s, it seems likely that it was her. How and when she died is forever lost to history.
The 11 coffins were reburied at Palo Alto’s Alta Mesa Cemetery in unmarked graves.