20 May 1914 - Seattle Star (Seattle, Washington)
Page 1, Column 6,7,8
Sensation seekers struggled for places of vantage today in Judge Mackintosh's court room, when Mrs. Magdalina Werner took the stand in her trial for the murder of her husband at Issaquah. Her three attorneys lost in a vivid legal battle when the court ruled that her alleged confession could be read to the jury. The defense sought to show that the purported admission of knowledge of the crime was obtained after officials had promised Mrs. Werner her liberty from the county jail.
The state won a telling victory when Assistant Prosecutor Edgar J. Wright read the document in open court. Mrs. Werner was composed as she took the stand. She said she could remember nothing until a week or two after her arrest, when she came to her senses in the jail. "I don't remember signing any paper at all. I came to in jail and didn't realize where I was," she said.
"Some time after that, Deputy Sheriff Roberts saw me and said: 'You come out and tell me what you know about this. We're wasting a lot of money looking for the murderer. If you come out and tell the truth, you'll be out of here in five days. If you don't, you may be in here a year.'" The defense claimed this alleged statement of Roberts amounted to a promise. Their contention failed to hold before the court in the struggle to keep the paper from the jury.
In the purported confession, as read to the jury, Mrs. Werner is declared to have admitted a meeting with Frank Piconi, charged jointly in the crime, in which he asked $100 to do away with Werner. Part of it reads: "When I got down to the stable, Frank was down by the fence. His hands were all bloody, and there was blood on his coat. I went into the stable and my husband was dead. He was lying just as he was found." Mrs. Sophie Hall, mother of Mrs. Werner, was on the verge of a collapse as she testified as to her daughter's condition after the murder. Mrs. Werner might be termed the Young-Old Woman Who Was Never Loved. Love, or the lack of it, play a predominating part in the life of this woman of the hill-lands. "I never knew what it meant to have some one love me until I came to the county jail," she said. "I didn't know there was as much kindness in the world as I have received from women who have visited me here, and from the matrons."
The Magdalina Werner of today and the Magdalina Werner of 10 weeks ago are two different women. Something has wrought a remarkable change. Can it be the love and kindness which she says she received in a lonely jail cell after she had craved it all her life? Shortly after the murder, the day of her husband's funeral in Issaquah, when people of the country places flocked into the town, she sat crouched, half fainting in an uncomfortable chair in the kitchen of her ranch home, a creature of abject terror. It was a raw, chilly, disagreeable day. The stillness of the ran and the home seemed uncanny.
A slow fire smoked gloomily in the stove. Three little children hung back, frightened at the sight of the strangers and the mother who moaned incoherently. A newspaperman stood abashed, regredding his intrusion at a time when questions seem harsh and useless. But even at that time she talked of love. "My poor babies!" she moaned. "I love them so. What will become of them now? Nothing can ever be right again." When she arrived at the county jail she was the same distrustful creature who resented the intrusion of strange officials into her home. She had never been loved, she said. She believed every one was against her. The matrons at the county jail, three kindly women, cared for her. The change began to work. And one day she talked - really talked - to a reporter.
"In all my married life, since I was 16, the only love I have known is the love for my children." she said. "I LONGD FOR LOVE ALL MY LIFE AND I DIDN'T GET IT. It was a hard life to live." Then came the weeks of waiting for trial. Women who at times spend a few of their hours in the jail saying pleasant words to suffering humans, stopped to talk with her. It was a new experience. She had been ill, but she recovered. The pallor left her face. She gained 40 pounds in weight. She is cheerful and smiles and talked with people. Such is the woman the state has place on trial.