Newspaper account of the murder of Samuel Breakwell, transcribed by Jan Mackie. The articles have been reproduced as printed, and contain some inaccuracies with regard to dates, places and spelling of names.

The Waukegan Sun, Saturday, August 20, 1898.

SHE TALKS

"No, the papers have been greatly mistaken in my age," said the divorced wife of the late Samuel Breakwell to a Sun reporter yesterday. "I am 78 years old."

"Seventy-eight years old, her worn body shaking from the terrors of the past few days, with her hands tightly clinging to the scanty shawl over her shoulders this poor woman stood at the corner of Genesee and Washington streets yesterday noon waiting for a car to take her from Pethke’s prison to the scene where there never again could be happiness or peace for her, where she must expect to end her weary days in toil and sorrow; she went back to Highwood to a home that she no longer could call her own, a home she must leave, because Carl Pethke could not redeem the mortgage on the place. Worst of all she must live alone.

There are two sides to a tragedy of real life such as the one that has just caused so much excitement in this vicinity. The side of the murdered man, Samuel Breakwell, has been told but the old lady, who, in a great measure, was the cause of all this woeful tale, has not yet had her say. It is only just that her story be told. She talked for fully fifteen minutes to a reporter and even entered into the details of the business transactions of the story. When Mrs. Breakwell left her husband about five years ago and went to live with Carl Pethke, the first part of this tragedy began.

"Why did you leave your husband, Mrs. Breakwell?" asked the reporter. She answered quickly and firmly. She spoke fluently and seemed to be glad of the chance to assert herself. So excited was she that she became dramatic and her tones rang with anger and her eyes flashed with fire as she spoke of the murdered man who was once her husband.

"Because," said she, "he didn’t love me because he loved another woman who lived in England: because he kept up a correspondence with this woman and did not care for me. I was Sam Breakwell’s wife for thirty-five long years. For thirty years, I lived with him and there was no trouble between us, but quite a number of years ago he went back to England to visit with a brother. At least he said he was going to visit with a brother, but what did he do but visit with another woman, with Mrs. Lambert who afterwards became his wife. I found that out and I know its so."

"Perhaps he just happened to call on her as an old friend whom he used to know," suggested the reporter.

"No, but that is not all" she said. "I have seen letters that he wrote to her and letters that she wrote to him. One day I found a letter from her in the house and her picture was in it."

"What did the letter say?"

"She called him her ‘sweetness’ and ‘darling’ and oh, it would make you sick."

"That was quite serious. What did you say to your husband?"

"Then it was that my blood began to boil, but I had no other home. I knew he wanted me to leave him, but I lived under his roof perhaps a year. I went out as a nurse and I served until I got quite a little money saved up. One day I and my husband had trouble. We lived over the store then and he tried to throw me down the stairs. He grabbed me and if it had not been for some children there he would have thrown me down. I know it."

Then it was that she left him. Pethke she says was her protector. He cared for her in her trouble and whenever she mentioned his name it was with tenderness. Everything good she could think of she applied to Pethke as though the murderer had some magnetic power over her and held her in a spell. But she never spoke of Breakwell save with bitterness. There was scorn in her tones and she screwed up her wrinkled face whenever she spoke his name. She told of the trouble about the land and the mortgage and says Breakwell was at the bottom of it all.

"O, Carl had been drinking" she said with tears in her eyes, "he wouldn’t have done it if he had not been drunk. Oh, it will just kill him: the poor man had taken terrible persecution from Breakwell and he was the cause of Pethke losing his home. It is awful, but Breakwell deserved what he got: he tormented Pethke, he persecuted him and he paid for it with his life."

Thus the poor old women will talk on until all her pitiful troubles of this world are over.