Interesting. I?ve never heard of him so I?m still reading up. Just thought I'd mention that the chart gives a beautiful signature for the claim that the movie ?The Fugitive? was based on him: Moon (natural significator for fugitives), on the MC (the name of reputation we acquire), applying to the ruler of the 7th house (of fugitives).

Because of your clue about Mercury and Deb "hitting all the notes", I had been trying to figure how the 7th house and the 8th and 12th all played in here and if there was some high profile divorce but that didn't quite come together. The 5th house kept distracting me. Now of course in hindsight.... The moon touching his MC showed something bringing him to the attention of the public, and here it was due to his wife's murder. Moon in Mercury, ruler of his marriage 7th house of marriage.

Growing up watching the t.v. show, the fugitive of course we all thought he was innocent. This chart will be interesting to study more. I saw his son on television not that many years ago, trying to use DNA or forensic medicine to prove his father innocent but they weren't able to resolve anything with it. I'm not sure now why. I guess I'd still like to believe he is innocent.

This chart raises loads of philosophical issues, but unless I scrap everything I saw before, I don?t beleive for one moment he was innocent. Two themes came up repeatedly. One was the very strong Mars influence. The other was that this man was lucky, or at least likely to have had more than his fair share of good fortune/opportunities. That doesn?t fit the bill for an innocent man who got convicted of a crime he didn?t commit.

From what I?ve read so far, there have been lots of comparisons with the O.J. Simpson case. Remember how everyone felt when he didn?t get convicted of the murder?

This chart raises loads of philosophical issues, but unless I scrap everything I saw before, I don?t believe for one moment he was innocent.

I'm not going to even try to prove his innocence or guilt. The case, if looked at objectively, makes one's head spin. However there are two major things any juror would have to confront:

1) His story is preposterous; He was asleep in front of the TV and never heard his wife's screams or the struggle is impossible to believe given the murder scene. Yet his 7 year old son, right down the hall, closer than he was, never woke up either.

2) His story that he grappled with a "bushy haired intruder", got knocked out, go up and fought him again is also ludicrous. BUt he had injuries and there is absolutely no physical evidence linking him to the crime. The blood on his pants is not his or his wife's. A cigarette in the toilet is another indication of a third person in the bedroom.

If he is guilty, and I admit he may well be, the most likely scenario is that he committed the crime with an accomplice. Some have suggested it was the mayor and/or the mayor's wife. They burned something in their fireplace on a summer night. What could that have been? If he did conspire with another or tried to cover up the crime to protect another, why would he do that, and who could it have been? Would he really try to help out a buddy by covering up the murder of his wife and unborn child?

OJ is an entirely different story because there was gobs of physical evidence to convict him. The victim's blood was in his car and his bedroom, some of it microscopic. The man they suggested, never accused, of planting the evidence didn't show up at the crime scene until after the evidence was taken from OJ's bedroom and car. How do you plant microscopic evidence and why would you? There is physical evidence that links OJ to the murder. There is none that links Shepard to the murder. The list of mistakes made in the Sheppard trial caused to US Supreme Court to virtually ridicule the trial and its judge. OJ wasn't tried in the press like Sam Sheppard was.

Tom

Moon near the MC and the ?planet? with the highest elevation makes him popular and emotionally protective.

Until the murder he always enjoyed great personal popularity.

This native may be critical of himself. Mars is dignified in scorpio and in the twelth house I am thinking very secretive.

Try as I would, I cannot find, online anyway, very much that describes Sam Sheppard?s personality. Many, many books have been devoted to the crime and there are probably descriptions in those, but I couldn?t find them at my local library. However he did have a secret life see next.

There are a few things that hint at this person perhaps being gay or at least desiring unusual relationship-Venus in Aquarius in second.

Although I think this position by itself does not indicate secret or unusual relationships, it is true that he had a three-year affair with a nurse prior to the murder of his wife. At the time of the murder Sam Sheppard was 30 years old. He would turn 31 in late 1954. Therefore he began this rather serious affair at the age of 27 barely five years into his marriage. To me this is an unusual relationship. I know affairs are not unheard of then or now, but it is the length of the affair and its occurrence at the early stage of the marriage that makes it so. We?re not talking about a sting of one-night stands. It is not so unusual as to be considered bizarre or unique, but it is not common.

The affair would prove to be his undoing (self-undoing?). One reporter noted he was charged with murder but convicted of adultery (Oh this poor pregnant girl battered beyond recognition AND he cheated on her!). It was given as a motive for the murder, for without it, there is no motive. It is not necessary to prove motive in order to gain a conviction for murder in the US and probably elsewhere. Proof of intent is required by the prosecution, not motive, but juries love motive and with the lack of physical evidence linking Sam to the slaying, motive was important.

Moon on the MC brings a rise in status or fame. Looking at the house that the Moon rules should say more about the kind of activity the Moon relates to. It rules the 8th house ?

Moon rules 8, death. His fame or infamy came as a result of the death of his wife.

Did he murder his mother or something?

Close. He may have murdered his wife.

Using a combination of common sense applied to Tom's clues, I scrapped that, but there seems to be something destructive about him, and yet he has Jupiter rising and the Moon?s next aspect is a positive one. So was he successful at being in some way destructive? I know that this isn?t Lucky Luciano, but that?s the kind of theme I am thinking of. Maybe a successful gangster.

He was definitely self-destructive. But like so much of his life there is more than one possible reason. Was he wracked with guilt, or destroyed by the notoriety and prison time? By the time of his second trial he was already alcoholic. How did he do that in the short period of tie between his release and trial?

More description: the Moon is on the MC in Virgo, a Mercury-ruled sign, and applying to the trine of its own dispositor. So Mercurial traits should figure strongly in his public profile.

And they do. Was he the killer of his own wife and unborn child, or was he a wrongfully convicted victim of that crime? Did he wrestle with a thief, rapist, killer? Incredibly, no testing was ever done to see if Marilyn Sheppard was raped. This is a family oriented forum so I?ll only note that there was evidence of someone other than Sam in samples taken. But we don?t know if she was raped or was having an affair. There is no evidence that if she was having an affair that Sam or anyone else knew about it.

And just as the Moon?s next aspect is important, its last aspect is important too, because it is translating between these two planets, and the sextile to Mars is very close. Mars and Mercury are the two planets that naturally signify thieves, except Mars is typically the smash and grab type of thief and Mercury is the con artist or the light fingered pick-pocket (someone who thinks and acts quickly). Hence this ?Mercurial theme? has a 12th house, Mars in Scorpio, 12th house ring to it.

The Moon, ruler of the house of death translates light from the secretive and perhaps violent Mars in Scorpio in 12 to the Lord of the 7th house of his spouse. Does this represent his doing or the way it would be done by another? Death brings together a violent secret enemy (Mars in 12) and his spouse, Mercury. Incidentally Mercury is conjunct the ASC by antiscion adding more background activity to his character. Could this be the affair?

My sister has Jupiter rising and she is my subconscious archetype for everyone else who has this. She has had more than her fair share of ups and downs, and both have been dramatic, but there is always that tendency to swing back and surface on top.

I?ll bet her life hasn?t been as dramatic as his. He did swing from respected, popular physician and citizen to convicted murderer to exonerated victim, to alcoholism and death. In the end he triumphed over his enemies, but at a horrific cost ? not that he would have been better off in prison.

Venus rules 6th and 11th . . .

Venus needs some work here, and she is probably more representative of the extramarital affairs than anything else. I?m not sure. She sits on the ASC of the pre-natal eclipse and her antiscion point is the MC of that same chart. In the December 1954 lunar return, Venus is tightly conjunct Saturn (one minute orb) and they sit on the natal 12th cusp and natal Mars. I think this symbolizes his affair coming to light, but only in a general sense. Mars ruling 5 posited in 12 is more indicative of a affair than Venus in 2. Venus only has dignity by face. She squares her dispositor a peregrine Saturn, who is in the sign of her detriment.

Fixed Stars

The Fixed Star Denebola (about 20 Virgo in 1923) is at the midpoint of the Moon and the MC. I don?t do much work with midpoints, but regardless this is a prominent fixed star. Robson tells us that Denebola. ?. . . gives swift judgment (oh yeah), despair, regrets, public disgrace, ? happiness turned to anger ??

With the Moon: ?Honor and preferment among the vulgar but final disgrace and ruin (hard to argue with that) violent disease of vital organ (he died from liver failure. GO look that up and you?ll see it is a violent death), blindness and injury to the eyes (I?ve found nothing to support this), losses through servants (the most likely suspect, if Sheppard had nothing to do with it, was a man the Sheppards hired to wash their windows), domestic quarrels, temporary separation from the marriage partner.?

Jupiter is on Antares one of the four Royal stars of Persia and one Morin repeatedly refers to as ?violent.? It is of the nature of Mars and Jupiter (like Algol). ?It causes malevolence, destructiveness, liberality, broad-mindedness, evil presges and danger of fatality, and makes its natives rash, ravenous headstrong, and destructive to themselves by their own obstinacy.?

This raises questions. ON the ASC is he self-destructive, or destructive to others?

With Jupiter: ?Great religious zeal real of pretended, ecclesiastical preferment, tendency to hypocrisy, benefits through relatives.? Robson is emphasizing the religious nature of Jupiter possibly because in order to be conjunct Antares, Jupiter must be in his own house and highly dignified. This should perhaps be modified with accidental effects, but in this chart Jupiter is in easy aspect, sextile, to Venus, so there are no obvious strains.

If rising: ?Riches and honor, violence, sickness benefits seldom last.? All too true.

Notice what is emphasized in the delineations of these fixed stars: violence, loss, fall from grace, and disease. Just like his life.

I have some more thoughts I?ll post later.

Tom

Deb wrote:This chart raises loads of philosophical issues, but unless I scrap everything I saw before, I don?t beleive for one moment he was innocent. Two themes came up repeatedly. One was the very strong Mars influence. The other was that this man was lucky, or at least likely to have had more than his fair share of good fortune/opportunities. That doesn?t fit the bill for an innocent man who got convicted of a crime he didn?t commit.

As for your statement about the strong Mars influence, I'm not sure I agree with that point alone unless you meant to include the factor of it being in the 12th house. Mars is my natal chart's final dispositor and Almutem. I also have it in Scorpio, was born in Capricorn as well and had Venus in Aquarius. I've got a lot of similiar planet positions as this man. Yikes!! But I don't even kill bugs or mice! I catch them and put them out rather than kill them. My Mars however is in the 9th house. His being in the 12th, made for en entirely different influence of course.

But the point about Jupiter in his 1st house is excellent. It is very hard to see how he could have had such a lucky position there on his Asc with Jupiter there and been wrongfully convicted. I forget how much time he had to serve but it wasn't life (he got out early tho he did spend a long time in) and he wasn't executed so from that standpoint, he was still lucky since if he were judged guilty, as he was, he could have received either, died in prison or execution.

RC

Hi Tom

I just found this comment on Wikopedia about his life after the release:

Later, Sheppard was briefly a professional wrestler, going by the ring name The Killer, and teaming with partner George Strickland in matches across the United States. In Mick Foley's book, he mentions Sheppard as inventor of the mandible claw, a submission hold Foley later made famous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Sheppard

Would you use the name 'The Killer' if you had been wrongly convicted of murder? Sounds to me like he was laughing in the face of his so-called adversity. And why pity him for ending up an alchoholic? Maybe he always had a alchohol problem (Jupiter rising would make him inclined towards excesses).

I don't know, maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. I just think that his chart demonstrates the ability to lie with conviction and a capacity for violence. He was the quarterback of the high school football team in his youth, and worked as a professional wrestler even after all this. He must have been a big strong chap, yet a bushy haired intruder overcame him twice?

Hi RC,

The Mars influence was referenced to that 12th house theme, especially because the aspect to the Moon on the MC was so close. But it was also because of the fixed stars with a Martial nature, and because the Moon rules the 8th house, so it seemed that there was somethign destructive in its placement on the MC. I would never read any one of these placements as negative on their own. Collectively they formed the basis of the comment that I made. That didn't suggest that he would be a murderer, but I said he was likely to be "very cunning, ingenious, probably quite ruthless; marked by enemies or adversity but able to rise above it".

Apply that to someone suspected of murder and it looks very bad. Apply it to someone like Donald Trump and you have the recipe for his success.

I will try to stay on top of this as things unravel and I hope the discussion really gets going as more pepole read this thread.

But the point about Jupiter in his 1st house is excellent. It is very hard to see how he could have had such a lucky position there on his Asc with Jupiter there and been wrongfully convicted. I forget how much time he had to serve but it wasn't life (he got out early tho he did spend a long time in) and he wasn't executed so from that standpoint, he was still lucky since if he were judged guilty, as he was, he could have received either, died in prison or execution.

This trial was perhaps as big a circus as the Bruno Hauptman trial in the 1920s or 30s. Hauptman was convicted of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindburgh's baby. Being lucky is one thing, but there were so many factors working against a fair trial that luck would not have been enough to get him off. To make matters worse when the jury came in with the verdict of guilty of second degree murder, the judge immediately sentenced him, which is far from a common practice. The judge just before the trail made the following statement to a reporter "He's guilty as hell." Yeah you'd need a lot of luck to get past that.

Now the prosecution asked for the death penalty, but in order for that sentence to be passed the jury would have had to find him guilty of first degree murder, usually premeditated and/or felony murder, i.e. a killing committed in the act of another felony whether premeditated or not. Therefore, after the verdict, the judge could not have sentenced him to death even though he wanted to.

He served ten years, but did not get out on parole. His release, a result of a successful appeal was ordered by the US Supreme Court because of the "Roman Holiday Atmosphere" of his trial. They ordered him released and the ordered the State of Ohio to try him quickly or drop the charges. What may have been lucky is that the Sheppards hired a young man who would become one of the nation's most celebrated trial lawyers, F. Lee Bailey.

Interestingly although he kept a low profile Bailey was on OJ's so called "Dream Team" of lawyers. Bailey was the only one of those lawyers with any serious trial experience. His one courtroom appearance though probably contributed to OJ's acquittal more than anything Johnny Cochran did. Bailey got Judge Alito to allow (irrelevant) testimony that police detective Mark Furhman made racist remarks to a girlfriend ten years prior. That laid the groundwork for the fanciful defense that Furhman therefore planted the evidence. It was Bailey's argument to Alito that swung that piece of legal footwork OJ's way.

Tom

Deb wrote:

Would you use the name 'The Killer' if you had been wrongly convicted of murder? Sounds to me like he was laughing in the face of his so-called adversity.

Sheppard was a physician and I think either studied or became a neurosurgeon. He was broken man by the time of his second trial - already alcoholic and probably drug addicted. He became a wrestler possibly out of desperation. He could no longer practice medicine and trading off on his reputation may also be seen as degrading not necessarily laughing at adversaries. He was a shell of what he was prior to his wife's murder. If he did it, he deserved it, and I have no sympathy for him.

Oh at the time of his trial at age 30 he was about 6'0 tall and 180 -200 lbs. He is about my size. Neither he nor I at his age would be invincible, particularly if struck with a heavy blunt object. But as I said, his story is preposterous.

If I seem sympathetic it is because I detest criminal trials like his. Hauptman's was, if anything, worse and he ended up in the electric chair as a result. In the late 1950s a young man named Edgar Smith was convicted in a similar trial in New Jersey (This may be a New Jersey trait; Hauptman's trial was held in NJ, too). This was a particularly gruesome murder of a fifteen year old girl. Smith was charged under the felony murder statute. The prosecution claimed the felony was rape, yet not one scintilla of evidence was introduced that indicated she was raped. In fact the coroner's report indicated she died a virgin. Yet he was convicted for first degree murder and sentenced to death. To make a long story short, after numerous appeals, and 15 years, most of which he spent on death row in solitary confinement, he was released, and it turned out that he did in fact kill her, but under the law he should never have been convicted of first degree murder, and had he been convicted of second degree murder, he would have done less time in better circumstances. This is not justice, or you think it is justice, then the law has to be changed. Vigilantism is not a good substitute for the courtroom system for all its flaws..

I hate these things. They mock an otherwise sound justice system and make people distrustful of it. If I'm sitting on a jury, and I listen to a preposterous alibi, like Sheppard's but the prosecution offers no evidence that he committed the crime (and instead spends all its time on his infidelity), I have to vote not guilty. It is up to the prosecution to prove its case. It is not up to the defendant to prove his innocence. In my view, based on what I've read, that wasn't done and despite my qualms and belief he conceivably had something to do with it, he should have been set free.

And why pity him for ending up an alcoholic? Maybe he always had a alcohol problem (Jupiter rising would make him inclined towards excesses).

Alcoholism can be seen as a character flaw, and he may have had his share of those, but if he is truly innocent, I can understand being driven to drink even as I can't excuse it.

Tom

Tom wrote: What may have been lucky is that the Sheppards hired a young man who would become one of the nation's most celebrated trial lawyers, F. Lee Bailey.
Tom[/color]

Interesting. You know a lot of details about this case. They should make a separate movie about this aspect of the case and part 2 of his life. I never knew as Deb found out that he became a wrestler of all things! I can't see Harrison Ford playing that role.

Interesting too, that Jupiter, which rules lawyers, dignified in his 1st which I was led to believe might be his father, might also have signified a lawyer (an exceptional lawyer) which proved very "lucky" for him and came to his aid.

Did the family get any of the money for his story? (the t.v. show and movie) It was a matter of public record so they wouldn't have to but if they cooperated in some way they may have.

Did the family get any of the money for his story? (the t.v. show and movie)

Not a dime. The producer of the original TV series claimed the idea for the show, a doctor wrongfully convicted of his wife's murder escapes and pursues a "one armed man" that no one else saw at the murder scene to prove his innoccence, was not at all influenced by the real-life story of a doctor perhaps wrongfully convicted of his wife's murder who wrestled with a bushy haired intruder no one else saw. I mean why would anyone think that?

If he admitted it he might have had to pay the Sheppards. I don't know that the Sheppards ever tried to collect on that.

Tom