What can astrology tell us about criminal acts? Like murder?
Gerard Baden-Clay has been convicted of murdering his wife, Allison, in April 2012. He’s now going to spend a long time in jail.
Did the planetary transits to his natal horoscope provide any insight in to what happened?
I’ll admit I’ve done little research on the astrology of criminal behaviour. It’s a difficult topic. And yes – plenty of people will have been born at the same time and date as Baden-Clay – and none of them will have committed murder.
So ‘why him?’ In short – I don’t know. But I think it’s worth having a brief look at some of the astrological factors involved in this case.
There has been extensive media coverage during the past two years of the Australian murder trial of Gerard Baden-Clay. Last week the Australian 60 Minutes television programme featured a story (The Wife Killer) about the case, including interviews with Baden-Clay’s ‘mistress,’ Teri McHugh, and police investigators.
Baden-Clay was born in Bournemouth, England, on September 9th, 1970 (this birth data is from a court document shown in a news item). For eight years prior to the murder, he worked the manager of a real estate business in Queensland, Australia. He was deeply in debt, and apparently torn between his family and his lover.
Since there is no birth time available for Baden-Clay, a chart (horoscope) is set for noon for the date and place of birth. An accurate birth time would provide more astrological information. But some broad themes can be deduced by using a noon chart.
I’ll just mention two parts of this chart. Firstly, there’s four planets in Virgo: Sun, Mars, Mercury and Pluto. A strongly Virgoan person – interested in moral rules, perfectionism, fault-finding. This concurs with what a former business partner, Phil Broom, said of Baden-Clay in a news article: ‘Gerard has a public face which is ethical, moral and upstanding.’
Secondly, he has a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio: intense love life, grandiosity, love of money and wealth, secretive. This Jupiter-Venus is a good signature for sales work. But it is also prone to exaggeration. And it agrees with the headline of the article quoted above: ‘consummate salesman and narcissist.’
On the day of the murder, April 19th, 2012, there were two noteworthy transits (planets’ position on that day, relative to those at the time of his birth). As noted earlier, plenty of people with the same birthday as Baden-Clay will have had similar transits that day. Why Baden-Clay expressed those energies through murder cannot be explained.
Below is a transit graph. The straight lines are the positions of planets for his natal horoscope. The ‘wavy lines’ show the planets in motion.
There are two interesting transits in mid-April 2012 (the yellow arrow). Transiting Mars is stationary conjunct his natal Mars. Mars will cross over the natal position roughly every two years, so in some ways it’s ‘no big deal.’ But – it’s stationary, appearing not to move. This is because it’s been retrograde – appearing in the sky to be going backwards compared to it’s usual motion. Stationary Mars amplifies the rashness of Mars, and the need to ‘do something.’ Mars is about action and force.
The second relevant transit is transiting Neptune. It’s just gone in to Pisces, and it opposes natal Mars. This is kind of a big deal. Neptune makes things blurry and indistinct. To the natal Mars it indicates ‘I have no idea (Neptune) what I am meant to DO (Mars) in this situation.’ And/or his actions will be highly coloured, driven by idealism (Neptune) and wishful thinking.
Most people who experience similar transits will not do something as brutal as murder someone. The themes will be similar, and play out in a much less dramatic way. Baden-Clay took things to extremes. And there are likely to be many other complex factors, astrological or otherwise, that might point to why he did what he did.
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