I have thought on it off and on since you revealed it though I haven?t studied the chart any more except in my mind. I think I may always remember this chart if I ever see another Mars in Scorpio in the 12th!

One thing that doesn?t make sense is as you say - the brutality. It seems deranged. Not at all like a Scorpio trait which is more careful and scheming even tho Mars rules violence. This would seem to indicate the violence came to him, not the other way around. Could he have gotten so drunk that he went crazy? If he was asleep when the guests left, it doesn?t sound like he was roaring crazy out of his mind drunk.

And wouldn?t someone with the level of intelligence that he had, have planned a murder a little better than this?

But on the other hand, being a doctor, he had access to drugs. It is possible that he gave the son something to ensure that he would sleep through such an event if it were planned. So the evidence seems to be capable of going either way from that perspective. I don?t suppose they tested the boy for drugs the next day to rule that out.

From SaturnReturn,

If we use whole sign houses, both malefics are in the 12th house of secret enemies, and evil spirit. Saturn here is good, because he can stamp out the evil, but mars here is really malefic. He can do a lot of evil in the 12th.
My Lawyer, the esteemed Julius Firmicus Maternus, states clearly in the Mathesis, Book III, Part IV:34:

"[Mars in the 12th house] stirs up frequent plots amongst slaves. He makes the native the type slaves wish to harm, often through inventing scandals. Sometimes the natives are in prison [...]. But all these are alleviated if Mars is found in a nocturnal chart."

Well, we don't have slaves, but wasn't the gardener or another servant a suspect?

"But all these are alleviated if Mars is found in a nocturnal chart." And this is a nocturnal chart.

"...but mars here is really malefic. He can do a lot of evil in the 12th. "

What I?ve often read is that the malefics are truly malefic (evil) when they are thwarted, frustrated. A stationary retrograde Mars in its Taurus detriment is going to be more of a troublemaker.

But this is a good, constructive Mars. This is a Mars with dignity by domicile and triplicity. This is an In Hayz Mars. An oriental Mars. A direct and fast Mars. Therefore, this is a Mars with the potential to act appropriately and positively. It?s also a Mars with no oppositions or squares to any traditional planets (a square to Neptune, however). It?s sextile both the Sun and Moon. There?s nothing here to make Mars evil.

What this Mars lacks is the power to act on the behalf of the native due to its 12th house position. The 12th house is weakness; strength is taken away from the chart native. It might make for powerful hidden enemies and secretive undermining forces, but it would hardly seem to make the native cruel and capable of acting forcefully. But even if hidden enemies have the strength of Mars, it is still not a malefic, destructive or cruel Mars. It would simply make them strong.

The 6:28 chart still wouldn?t necessarily make Mars cruel and destructive, but the 11th house placement would give the Mars strength back to the chart native because of the 1st-11th sextile.

Could he have gotten so drunk that he went crazy?

There was never any evidence that he drank to excess that night. Besides, if he were that drunk it would make the task that much more difficult. Furthermore the police would have seen evidence of it the next day (hangover).

But on the other hand, being a doctor, he had access to drugs. It is possible that he gave the son something to ensure that he would sleep through such an event if it were planned.

Sheppard was a D.O., doctor of Oseopathy and he was either studying to be or maybe had just become a neurosurgeon. The hospital he worked in was, again if my memory is correct, was a small converted mansion owned by his father. Still there were probably drugs available to him. To my knowledge the son was never tested and perhaps appropriate tests did not exist at that time. The boy would have been old enough to recall his father giving him a pill or an injection, so if such a drug was administered, it would have been done surrepticiously.

And wouldn?t someone with the level of intelligence that he had, have planned a murder a little better than this?

You would think so.

Tom

SaturnReturn wrote:
...."In order to assess the power of Mars more accurately, carefully observe his duodecatemorion and the terms of the duodecatemorion."

...Yeah, I'll jump right on that.

...

Interestingly this subject is being actively discussed on the Horoscopic Astrology group on myspace. I'd be interested to find out where you got that quote. There is an active thread HERE discussing what is the most comprehensive information I've found regarding the duodecatemorion. From what I know most of the source information here came from the translation Rob Hand and Robert Schmidt are doing on Hellenistic texts via Project Hindsight.

Please feel free to contribute if you have any more information on this.[/url]

Tom wrote:

I tend to think with some exaggeration, of the Dickens character Ghost of Christmas Present when I think of Jupiter and jovial. Lewis tells us that jovial had more to do with being noble and reserved"cheerful, festive, yet temperate, tranquil [and] magnanimous." This fits Sheppard's reputation.

This is really interesting, because this is something I've frequently bumped into in old texts - that Jupiter represents modesty and temperance. For example Ibn Ezra says:

In his share of human nature is esteem, justice, peace, faith, modesty, good name, generosity of the heart, freedom of the soul, speaking the truth, keeping one's covenant, smiling face, love of good, abhorring evil, and in general hate of anything not in accordance of the law. (---) He seeks knowledge of the laws and jurisprudence, and solving dreams, and service in synagogues.

(Beginning of Wisdom)

I've thought that maybe the idea of Jupiter as the planet of excess is a modern invention after all, because old texts don't seem to support it much.

.
.

I'm glad you brought this chart back to the forefront. I finally took time to really analyze it more closely and this is what I come up with:

As I had written before (which you did not agree with Tom), I do not believe he had a part of fortune but in fact it became the part of MIS - fortune in his 4th, being in the sign of Pisces. This is further indicated by it being opposed by the Moon, which is moving to MC to show scandal and misfortune in the 4th. Moon is in Virgo: Mercury is in its detriment and fall in Virgo. This gives even a worse placement for the POF when being opposed by the Moon.

The moon has just separated by only a couple of degrees in its sextile to the Strong Mars in Scorpio 12th when it opposed the Part of fortune. Then Mars is willingly trining this Part of MIS-fortune in 4th. Mars also rules his 5th house of passion = Heat of passion crime perhaps which accounts for the poor planning in the whole affair.

Mars in Scorpio is very overpowering and its urges - depending on its house placement, can be hard if not impossible to ignore. (I speak from experience having it in Scorpio in my 9th which compels to an obsession with 9th house matters, astrology, law, higher powers, what is fair, etc.)

Mars in Scorpio says: I will not be ignored! as the villainess played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction said. For him, it was in his 12th. His 12th house of self-undoing may just have been too strong for him to resist. This would seem confirmed by the other factors listed above.

At first glance, you'd never think such a thing might happen to someone with Jupiter in Sag. on the ASC. But Jupiter was also Squared by the South Node in Pisces, sign of 4th and North Node sign of 10th. The nodes are in the 3rd and 9th, lower and higher mind. Mercury and Jupiter are also not getting along here when looking at their placements. Jupiter is in its fall in Mercury's placement and Mercury is in its detriment in Jupiter's placement. South node is in Pisces, North Node in Virgo. Jupiter sits on ASC and squared both in the houses of lower and higher mind. Nodes can lead to crisis and disaster when placed badly and hit by negative aspect as they are here.

Then look where Mercury - who plays such a dominant role in the chart is located: the 2nd house - what he produces in life. It is also his name/reputation 10th ruler. What is produced by his reputation and name is 11th house and is where Mercury?s dispositor, Saturn, is placed. Saturn squares the part of Substance and Saturn is Lord of Substance, in his lower mind third house! Part of Substance is used when the Part of Fortune is unusable in the chart. Here, both are unfortunate.

Then Saturn trines south node in Pisces in third as well. He applied his efforts and his name and reputation in such a way to produce nothing good. Mercury makes no applying aspect in the same sign and so Saturn does its work. And what/who is Lord of Saturn? Mars, strong in Scorpio, ruler of his own house, that house being 12th of self undoing. Mars being in the 12th, ruler of his own house means HE rules it, not some secret enemy. He was his own worst enemy. Mars would not allow another to come in and control matters of his own house.

Finally, Mars had just recently passed over Saturn (its last conjunction) and brought with it in life the nature which such combination produces: Mars/Saturn combination will bring the native into contact with violence and death at some point in their life whether by their own doing or someone else?s. Here, it is HIS doing. His Mars, His 12th ruler, king of his house of self undoing. The out of sign Square to Saturn by Mercury in his lower mind 3rd and ruler of fate 10th, is the final nail in the coffin here.

I?ve no doubts about it after finally studying it. I am with Deb on this one. Sam Sheppard brutally murdered his wife.

RC

Hi RC,

Lots of good stuff here.

As I had written before (which you did not agree with Tom)

You will find that in this area, you will have a great deal of company.

Mars in Scorpio is very overpowering and its urges - depending on its house placement, can be hard if not impossible to ignore.

I like this and I think it gives us some real food for thought. Let's put aside the house placement for the moment. Mars in Scorpio is passion, it is or can be obsession. Mars is very strong in Scorpio, but Scorpio is a feminine or receptive sign. Mars in Scorpio is likely to represent passive aggression more than the overt actions of Mars in Aries. Furthermore planets in domicile are strong and unless seriously afflicted, well behaved. Mars in Libra is far more likely to cause harm or represent an evil act than is Mars in Scorpio.

What happens to planets in the 12th house? The stock answer is that they have a difficult time "getting out." This Mars then is suppressed, not that suppressed Mars can never emerge. It is just more difficult. But whatif it does? It's a strong Mars in domicile - comfortable in his surroundings. We might wonder if his excessive drinking wasn't the result of trying to keep his Mars in check. I just don't see this Mars as particularly malefic, while admitting the 12th house placement to be problematic.

But Jupiter was also Squared by the South Node in Pisces, sign of 4th and North Node sign of 10th.

I've never found aspects to the nodes to be of much value, except partile squares, and here Jupiter is over 4 degrees out of perfection.

Finally, Mars had just recently passed over Saturn (its last conjunction) and brought with it in life the nature which such combination produces: Mars/Saturn combination will bring the native into contact with violence and death at some point in their life whether by their own doing or someone else?s.

Mars last aspect was to the Moon. His last conjunction was to Saturn, but in Libra, the sign of Saturn's exaltation and Mars' detriment. I don't know whether that would affect your analysis or not.

I?ve no doubts about it after finally studying it. I am with Deb on this one. Sam Sheppard brutally murdered his wife.

One of the supreme ironies of this case is that after all the appeals and all the trials, Sheppard was acquitted, but a subsequent jury determined he (actually his estate, he was dead by this time) was not entitled to compensation for wrongful conviction. What they are saying is that his guilt was not established beyond a reasonable doubt, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it or that he was wrongfully convicted. This is what the first jury should have found. I think he was wrongfully convicted, but I'm not 100% sure is innocent of the crime. This is what makes the case so interesting more than half a century after the verdict. It is, as I'm sure more than one observer has noted, the Lizzie Bordon case of the 20th century.

For those who are not familiar with that one, in the 1890s in Massachusetts, a husband and wife were found brutally murdered with an axe in their home in separate rooms. The only person home was the husband's daughter, Lizzie Bordon. The murdered woman was his second wife, his first, Lizzie's mother, had passed away. The trial was sensational, as it appeared that the only person who could have killed them was Lizzie, yet there wasn't a shred of physical evidence to tie her to the crime.

Two things are necessary to prove a murder in court: intent and opportunity. Motive is not required, but juries like it so prosecutors try to provide it. Lizzie had opportunity, but no one could prove intent (if a credible witness saw her swinging the axe, that would be evidence of intent). Sheppard's case was identical in that respect. Lizzie had motive. She hated her stepmother and with both her and her father out of the way she and her sister inherited a substantial amount of money. Sheppard had no strong motive, although the prosecution argued he was having an affair and wanted his wife out of the way. In other words he may have proved motive, but that is irrelevant.

Unlike Sheppard, Bordon was acquitted, but doubts linger to this day. If she did do it, how did she manage to avoid getting so much as a drop of blood on her clothing? [One possibility is that she committed the crimes in the nude, washed herself, got dressed, and then "discovered" the bodies] Sheppard should have been acquitted, too. His story may have been fantastic, but the system requires that the state prove his guilt. He does not have to prove his innocence. The bulk of the state's case rested on two facts: his wife was brutally murdered while he was in the house, and he had a girlfriend, i.e. he had motive and opportunity - but where is the intent?. This does not mean he didn't do it, but it does mean he should have been acquitted, just like Lizzie Bordon. We would all like him to be guilty because it feels better knowing we imprisoned a man who may have been wrongfully convicted, but did it. Oh well we goofed, but so what? He got what was coming to him.

Thanks for sharing all your work RC.

Tom

What was Sam Sheppard re-acting to?? We could dig into that some more. Her pregancy, her affair - if that was true that he thought she had one... both are 5th house matters.

This goes to motive, and the assumption is that he must have had a motive in order to kill her and if we discover the motive, we will have pinned the guilt on him. If Mars is sufficiently nasty, motive is all that is required. But this isn't true. All the motive in the world does not equal guilt. Kennedy conspiracy buffs do this, too. They line up any and all people, groups, etc that they believe had a motive to kill Kennedy and if they are satisfied with motive, then, in their minds, guilt naturally follows. However this is not logical. Any of us could have motive to see a particular person dead, but if that person ends up dead, it does not follow that we killed the person.

As bizzare as Sheppard's alibi is, it is not as bizzare as what would have had to take place if he were guilty. The Sheppards and another couple were having drinks the night of the murder at the Sheppard's house after dinner. Sam, who worked long hours that day, fell asleep. The other couple left while he was sleeping. The other couple testified that there were no harsh words, no arguments, no snippy comments of any kind between the Sheppard's that night, but Marilyn did confess some marital difficulties that night.

So if Sam killed Marilyn, he would have woken up after the company left, and gone upstairs where she was already in her night clothes. Perhaps she thought it was a good time to confess an affair (one for which no evidence exists), or confront him with his, or ask for a divorce etc. Whatever, he flies into a homicidal rage, battering his pregnant wife's brains in with a blunt instrument that happened to be in the bedroom, but maintains the presence of mind to keep quiet while doing it so as not to wake his son who was sleeping less than 30 feet away, thereby exhibiting a combination of uncontrollable muderous passion and premeditated killing. He somehow comes across some blood that is neither his nor Marilyn's and places it on his pants to establish an alibi that will not help him until DNA is discovered and used in court years after he dies. Despite not planning the murder he throws a cigarette butt into the bedroom toilet that he happened to be carrying around since neither he nor Marilyn smoke. He takes a blunt object, possibly the murder weapon* and inflicts an injury to himself in such a position that it is nearly impossible to be self inflicted, nearly kills himself doing it and falls into unconsciousness. Then he wakes up and hides the murder weapon where it will never be found even though he never left his property, along with the object he used to hit himself, if he used something other than the murder weapon. He figures he can cover up all this with the story of fighting off a bushy haired stranger, which, despite its utter implausibility, makes more sense than what the prosecution will argue.

He either killed her in a fit of passion, which is not first degree murder, or he planned it, and the bushy haired stranger is all he could think of after all this careful planning. We can't have it both ways. Sam Sheppard may have killed his wife, but if he did, no one has yet to figure out how he did it with the known facts. Speculation without evidence is useless; it only goes to opportunity, which we know he had. Motive and opportunity are not enough. This case, as goofy as as the defendant's alibi is, leaves plenty of room for reasonable doubt.

Tom

*If he murdered his wife, the injury to his head had to be self inflicted unless there was a conspiracy of some kind, and there is no evidence to support that, although F. Lee Bailey, Sheppard's lawyer offerred that possibility in 2000. Therefore he would have either used the murder weapon or something else. If he used the murder weapon there would have been some of Marylin's blood on his body transferred from the weapon; there was none. So he must have hid the murder weapon then used something else on himself and ultimately hid that. Obviously all of this is senseless.

Your arguments against his murdering her all sound logical. But murders don't always make sense and are not always planned as well as they could be. He looks rather cold blooded to me.

If he bludgeoned her, the child would not necessarily have heard anything. Rather than shouting, he could have been seething between clenched teeth, his anger possessing him like a demonic entity, his jealousy uncontrolled (or whatever it was), and with a barely controlled but low tone, he accuses her. She sais something back that further enrages him and he reaches for the nearest object, silencing her forever.... With one blow she was knocked unconsious, without the chance to utter a word or scream, the only sound, the thud that would silence her forever, fierce enough to kill and yet not awake a sleeping child next door. He then proceeds to stage the scene.

(Scene fades to black... Francis Ford Capolla, where are you? )

So much for my screen writing skills...

I am not anywhere near as familiar with the case as you are. Only looking at his chart and that 12th house Mars and the Saturn and Mercury placements. I just don't think any secret enemies would get past his own worst enemy - his own 12th ruler. Its too strong and had last conjoined Saturn before birth.

But having said that, if I were on a jury, and the evidence were presented properly, (perhaps with you arguing the case) I could vote to acquit.

But I'm not thinking like a lawyer now, just judging the chart. They don't always agree with what we present to the world.

RC