9 Mar 1914 - Seattle Star (Seattle, Washington)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/87709860/?match=1&terms=Werner
Page 1, Column 7,8
Mrs. Magdalena Werner, in her cell at the county jail today, told a Star reporter she knows the man who murdered her husband, Henry Werner, the Issaquah rancher. Werner was found dead in his barn last Monday morning, his head hacked to pieces by a score of wounds inflicted with a mattock. Mrs. Werner was held, following the inquest Friday at Issaquah, where she collapsed on the stand when questioned by Deputy Prosecutor Edgar J. Wright about quarrels with her husband.
With her now in the jail cell is her little baby girl Agnes, 17 months old. Since the child was brought to her, the woman has brightened perceptibly and has lost the vacant stare of horror that was so noticeable when she first came in.
Deputies are scouring the North-west today for Roderigo Rocco, who is believed to know something of the crime. Officials declare he was seen near the Werner farm shortly before the murder. The theory is that he has fled from the country and is now on his way out of the country.
Frightened at first by the strangeness of her new surroundings, Mrs. Werner regarded everyone with suspicion. Newspapermen failed dismally in attempts to get interviews with her. She refused to talk to anyone. During her married life she has been accustomed to the loneliness of the hill farm hidden in the woods. In the last ten years she has seen few people and has not lived the life of the ordinary woman. Occasionally she left the drudgery of the farm to attend a dance at Issaquah. Twice she came to Seattle. The Matron McGuire and a Star reporter, she told her side of the case in full.
She revealed the lonely life of a woman in the hills yearning hopelessly for years for the love of man. She did not plead for sympathy. She simply asked for a square deal. As she talked, little baby Agnes cuddled up in her lap.
"Bye-bye, mamma!" she insisted in words scarcelly coherent. "Baby can't go bye-bye, now." said the mother. "Mamma can't go out, honey.". "Look!" said Mrs. Werner as she clasped the child to her breast. "She is my baby darling. Do I look like a woman who has killed the father of her children? No! No!"
"I have decided to tell the truth to the officers," she said. "The real murderer of my husband will be caught. When I come up for the test I know I will be found innocent and that some day soon I can go back to my children. When the public does find out the truth the police will learn that I have my own side in this case. I just want all the folks to wait until the end before they decide I am a bad woman. It is true, my huband was murdered. I have been murdered and tortured for years, and I am still alive. It is a wonder that I am, though. During years of hard work and slavery all the love I have ever known was my love for the children. Some folks, when they get married, have the love they want. I don't know what that love is. I WANTED IT SO MUCH, JUST AS ALL GIRLS DO WHEN THEY TELL SOME MAN THEY WILL MARRY HIM. People who criticise me now don't stop to think that I was only 16 years old when I married and my husband was 42."
"He was past the loving stage. He did not know what I craved for. But I married him and for reasons that concern no one. I tried to love him and wanted him to love me, but he didn't. The years have been lonesome out there on that farm. I worked in the fields like a man. I drove the horses on the plow. I cut the hay with a scythe and helped with all the chores and men's work besides, caring for my four little children as they came to us. It was hard to bear, I tell you."
"I tried to get away from the loneliness at times, but he has always objected to my leaving the farm. I hardly ever had a dollar to spend on myself. If I had known what ws coming to me when I got married I would hae much rather been buried alive. I mean it all. Lots of times I tried to get up nerve enough to pull the trigger of the shot gun and end my life and then I would think of my little baby and I couldn't. Don't you understand what I wanted? It was love, I tell you, and I DIDN'T GET IT"
"Why didn't he give me a divorce and let me go? He wouldn't listen to it. Four days before it happend I said to him, "Henry, why don't you be a man and let me go? I don't want your property. All I want is the children and my freedom. But he refused. He wouldn't let me go and never seemed to understand what a woman likes in her life. And that is a little affection along with the slavery. I never dreamed that he would be killed when he was. But it had to come. There was no other way out."