Sociopathic Personalities/Serial Murders
By Joanne Wickenberg

Transcribed from a lecture originally given at the 1994 ISAR Conference.

I got into this particular research project on a fluke, having almost all of my planets on the setting side of the chart, almost everything I get into is kind of on a fluke.

As far as statistical research is concerned, I am a novice, and even a bit naive as far as the whole process of statistical research is concerned. How this little fluke got started was one day my phone rang and it was a detective with the Homicide Division of the Seattle Police Department. He wanted me to look at something and talk to me about a murder that had just occurred in the Seattle area which appeared to be the birth of a new serial killer. So I said: "Sure, come on out" I had no idea of what to look for as far as a serial murder was concerned. I was a great detective novel buff so I just thought this will be interesting if nothing more.

He came out and all he had was the birth date of a young man who was a suspect. An axe murder had just occurred. A block away from the murder site this detective had found a man sitting in his car late at night all by himself. He started talking to the young man who was a Tibetan Buddhist who believed in reincarnation. This was why he was a suspect in this detective's eyes. So we had a little talk about how many people believe in reincarnation. He wasn't very happy with what I had to say but I said I would do a solar chart for this young man.When I did the solar chart, this poor kid was going through a Saturn return, at the same time transiting Pluto was going over his Sun. I thought certainly he was going through a major life transition but does this mean he is a serial murderer? I felt a sense of dread about saying anything about this young man's chart. I asked the detective if he could find out the birth time. He said he would try.

A week after the detective had come to the house, I went to a conference, probably the UAC Conference. Because of this new interest in research I attended some of the research presentations, and also talked to Lois Rodden. She had just come out with her new book, "Profiles in Crime". I found out about the ISAR data base, got home, ordered all the charts of murderers and realized that if I was actually going to profile a serial murderer I needed to select only those people who were in fact serial murderers. I had decided before I started putting in the data that I would only use those people who had committed the crime singularly. I also eliminated all those who were considered serial murderers based on killing for money.

At the conference which was about two years ago, I met Alphie Lavoie. He had a very user-friendly type of Astrological Research program where you just press a button and it will go through all the charts in a certain file and tell you the percentage of how many had sun in a certain sign, the number of aspects, etc.

I ended up with 44 clean charts that fit the FBI profile. (Generally they are sexual, and repetitive). The charts were classified as A, AA, and one or two might have been B. That means that their birth records were accurate, the B being that birth data had come from an autobiography or a biography. I would not take any of the dirty data. Almost all of these charts were for the 1900's which is why I could not do much with the outer planets. Now 44 charts does not make a research project however it seemed to be enough to get an idea if something was going to show up. Here are some of the things that I found:
Sun is in either Gemini or Sagittarius 25.5% All of them but two had their Moon in either Capricorn or Sagittarius. There is an opposition between Gemini and Sagittarius and an emphasis between Sagittarius and Capricorn.

I suspected that I would get things that were more intense such as Moon in Scorpio. The emphasis on Capricorn did not really surprise me but the emphasis on Sagittarius did surprise me. From a statistical perspective it may not even be important for me to know the interpretation of that. You can look at it statistically, do up a profile and without even interpreting the profile you have some data with which to work. If for example, you were to work with the police department and go through a list of suspects, you can start reading things out, or prioritizing or categorizing things based on the astrological profile which I came up with.

Thirty one out of the 44 people, 74%, had the sun or moon in Sagittarius or Capricorn. Nobody had the Moon in Scorpio. Only two people had the Sun in Scorpio. Only 9% had their moon in fixed signs. There was only one Aquarius Moon no Aquarian Suns. I also found that 32% had the ruler of the ascendant in either Sagittarius or Capricorn. Everything kept going back to those same two signs.

In 41% of the cases the Moon was either the highest, most elevated or the lowest planet in the chart. Even though the interpretation of this may not be significant from a statistical perspective, most of the FBI profile of serial murderers place a strong emphasis on a dysfunctional family and issues around the mother.

Saturn was the most elevated planet in 25% of the charts. Saturn is rising or in the 12th house 38.5% of the time. The Capricorn, Saturn, Moon, emphasis seem to be a strong signature.

The mean average of Saturn rising or in the 12th house would be 16%. In 38.5% of serial murders it was here.

For the Moon phases, 77.3% had the Sun and Moon within 45 degrees of the new or full moon. That was in both directions. Basically we are dealing with incredible differences. The first quarter phase and the third quarter phase were not well represented in the chart. The mean average of 25% should have been in each one of these. In reality I have heard that there are more people born at the time of the full moon than at any other phase. I don't know if that is true or if any study was made about that.

I did find that the Mars-Sun angle seems to be significant. Of these people 56.8% were born when Mars was within 45 degrees on either side of the sun. On a mean average it is about 25%. We are finding more than double than we should expect to find.

Pluto was strongly shown in the chart between the ascendant and the Midheaven. In fact 55.4% had Pluto between the ascendant and the MC. That is interesting from an interpretive perspective. Pluto has to do with what we are living out in terms of where we are on the social evolutionary cycle of things and how we are contributing to the destruction of mankind. Since some signs rise faster than other signs, I later learned that Pluto in the last quadrant would be questionable because more people have Leo rising.

I felt there should be more retrograde planets, because they have us take a look at who we are and separate ourselves as being different from the mass of mankind. I thought that would show up as a strong factor. I found that it did not. On the average 19% of the people have Mercury retrograde in their chart. 22.7% of the serial murderers did, but that is no big deal. On an average 37.5% of the people have Saturn retrograde in their chart. 50% of the serial murderers did. I don't know if that is statistically significant or not. From my calculations 41.6% of the people had Uranus retrograde and 59% of the serial murderers had Neptune retrograde. I expected to find Venus and Mars retrograde. Actually they were retrograde less frequently than average.

My daughter has been working now for a year and a half for the emergency unit of the Police Department, answering the 911 calls. Because this has given me access to the police department, I have been able to go down there and listen to all the 911 calls. I have been able to make friends with quite a few of the officers. My daughter's sergeant is a former detective. I have been able to talk to him about the FBI profile files. He said there were no profiles for people who steal because everybody is inherently dishonest, but everybody is not a serial murderer.

The week that I was gone to the conference, the police found the killer and it wasn't the young man. I never did get the chart of that person who committed the murder. He had only committed one crime but the likelihood of having repeated it was very strong. I had never done the chart of the policemen and compared it to the crime.

In the process of getting all the material together, I thought: "What a great novel this would make!" I will write a novel about a serial murder and then will have an astrologer design a profile and through this profile, have her be able to come down to a list of dates and say these are a list of potential serial murderers. Then the police could narrow their list of suspects and prioritize it according to the astrological profiles. So I wrote the novel. I went through 15 years in the ephemeris and found all the dates where these things were happening. I kept track of all the dates and then pretended I was working on a serial murder case and helped to solve a crime. So hopefully my novel will be out in the next few years. The title of the novel is "Twisted Innocence".

I never thought that I would be interested in statistical research, but now I find it quite exciting. I would really encourage all of you to look into things from a statistical perspective. In closing if any of you have verifiable data on this subject, please let me know as I want to coninute my research on this subject. Thank you very much.