In September 1910, the wife of the 84-year-old market master Willem Markus was murdered in Hoorn. His wife – Maria Musman – dies after eating a piece of a poisoned cake. Maid Grietje barely survives the tragedy. The perpetrator – Johannes Beek – did not target them, but Markus. He wanted to take revenge for his dismissal a few years earlier.
Conditional intent
Beek is initially sentenced to manslaughter, which leads to a lower sentence than murder. The Supreme Court reviews the decision and finds that Beek could have known that people other than Markus could eat it when he sent the poisonous cake. And so the principle of ‘conditional intent’ enters Dutch case law.
This is still very important, for example when it comes to mistaken murders. “There is no lawyer who did not start his studies with the Hoorn Taart judgment,” says Hoorn lawyer Cees Nierop.
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