Hendrik Jut

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Dutch murderer who killed two people in part to afford his marriage to Christina Goedvolk. After the murders the couple travelled, or fled, but eventually returned to the Netherlands where they were imprisoned. Jut died relatively soon after imprisonment, while Christina lived out her twelve-year sentence. Once released she changed her surname to "De Graaf", her mother's name, and became a maid. She also remarried, but had difficulties continuing to her death in 1926. Jut was an illegitimate child of Maria Geertruida Jut. After being discharged from military service due to "physical defects", he started working as a waiter in Scheveningen around 1870. There he entered into a relationship with Christina Goedvolk (1847-1926), who had already had two children who had died early, while she was unmarried in Delft. In 1872 she worked briefly as a servant to the wealthy widow Maximiliana Theodora van der Kouwen-ten Cate (born on 11 May 1809 in Zundert), who in 1862 had inherited one sixth of the wealth of her sister Geertruida Löschen-Ten Cate (previously widow of the very well-off shipowner Jan Bonn). Christina became pregnant to Jut in 1872 and the couple had money problems because he had lost his job. They thought of the rich widow, who had the habit of showing off to all kinds of people, including her servant, her jewels and other possessions, and decided to rob her. Jut borrowed ten guilders from his mother to buy two pistols and a dagger. On 14 December 1872 Jut went with Christina to Van der Kouwen's house in The Hague. While Christina distracted the widow on the top floor, he first killed Leentje Beeloo, the new maid. Then he called down the old lady and killed her too, after she had first succeeded in wounding him. Jut and Goedvolk took off with valuables, securities and money. The Hague was in turmoil for days. A suspect was arrested and he tried to hang himself in his cell. Then two more people were arrested, but by the end of 1873 the police had to let all three go free. Jut and Goedvolk were married on 19 February 1873. They left for New York, and sold the jewelry and cashed in the securities for over ten thousand dollars. They returned to the Netherlands after just two months and moved to Vught, where their daughter Angelica Arabella Cassandra Christina was born on 2 July 1873. The couple, however, had no rest. In February 1874 the Juts left for South Africa, but in the autumn of that year they returned to the Netherlands again. They settled in Rotterdam, where Hendrik bought a coffee house. On 7 April 1875 they had a second daughter who lived for only one day. In the same month Jut shot his mouth off to Jan Roelfs, who had wondered how Jut became so rich. Jut and his wife were soon arrested. During the search of the house, irrefutable evidence was found in the form of a letter that the murdered widow had kept from her late husband. Public attention was enormous and Jut was presented in the newspapers as the most unscrupulous killer in history. The portraits of the "monstrous perpetrators" could be found in all of The Hague display windows, and various brochures were available in the bookshops. Judgment in the murder case was handed down on 6 May 1876. Jut was assisted by lawyer Pieter Cort van der Linden, who later became prime minister. He received a life sentence for double murder. Many people did not think that was enough. They wanted the death penalty for Jut, but it was abolished in 1870. For fear of a lynching, he was transferred to the prison of Leeuwarden, where he died two years later, aged 26, on 12 June 1878. Christina was sentenced to twelve years in prison for theft. She was released in 1888, but in 1890 she was sentenced to two years in prison because she had stolen two umbrellas and two pieces of soap. She settled in Haarlem in 1892 and remarried on 4 March 1896 with a German, the blacksmith Albert Münnemann. By Royal Decree of 14 June 1898 her daughter, aged 25 and already married to a Mr. Sonneville, also received the surname Münnemann, instead of the infamous name Jut. Münnemann died in 1907. When Christina applied as a 70-year-old as "widow Munnema" at a Haarlem courthouse, she was refused on account of her "debauched" lifestyle, i.e. her relationship with a 27-year-old horticulturalist and alcohol abuse. On 17 September 1920, she obtained accommodation in the city poor house in Haarlem, dying on 26 June 1926 at the age of 79. Jut has become a part of Dutch folk culture and a carnival "strength tester" called the "Kop van Jut" (Head of Jut, hitting a block with a large mallet, causing a bell to be rung if the blow is powerful enough) is said to be named after him. In English it is called the High striker. Hendrik Jut's head was kept in a jar and was long on display in an anatomical museum attached to Groningen University but apparently was discarded after the bottle started leaking. There is however a cast of his head still extant. Link to Wikipedia biography