19 May 1914 - Tacoma Daily News (Tacoma, Washington)
Page 8, Column 6
SEATTLE, May 19 - With a jury on which six women are to help pass upon her fate, Mrs. Magdalena Werner was placed on trial yesterday on a charge of conspiring to murder her husband, Henry Werner, an Issaquah rancher, March 2.
Prosecutor Wright, addressing the jury, said the estate expected to show that Mrs. Werner determined on the death of her husband and will introduce letters from Mrs. Werner to Henry SMith, a friend of Picconi's, in which Smith was asked to kill Werner. Smith, he said, got his friend Picconi to undertake the contract and that the Saturday before the murder Picconi went to the ranch and saw his intended victim. That same night, said the prosecutor, Mrs. Werner and Picconi talked over their plans at Issaquah.
He would show, he said, that Werner rose Monday morning and went out to the shed to milk the cow. The cow was half milked when Frank Picconi entered the shed and stabbed Werner with a two-edged knife about the head and throat. Werner, the said, cried out and Mrs. Werner joined Picconi in the shed and either she or Picconi took the mattock and inflicted more wounds upon her dying husband.
The copmleted jury consists of Mrs. Mabel Erspamer, A. A. Kingernschild, George Fraser, Mrs. Mary Healy, G. A. Merrill, Mrs. Sarah P. Trueblood, C. P. Martinez, Charles J. Hall, Mrs. Lulu Shipper, Thomsa R. Goodwin, Mrs. E. L. Buren and Mrs. Rose Hawthorne.