Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, Part IV: The Victims

by Marilyn Muir, LPMAFA

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

How do you begin to examine the horror story of the victims? First you have to set aside your emotions and attempt to use your brains instead of your feelings. We are well aware of the helpless young children. We are slightly less aware of the adults who were also victims. Sometimes in the count of the victims, the shooter’s Mother and the shooter are left out of the number. But Mom was the first victim and shooter Adam did die by suicide minutes after the mass shooting. The last to die in this tragedy was a child later that evening.*

Many of these mass or spree shootings reveal that the shooter does not expect to survive, sort of a suicide mentality, whether it be self-inflicted or suicide by police. This is unlike serial killings in which the perpetrator expects to literally get away with murder, survive and not be identified, so they can continue their repetitive killing pattern. In my research, I only encountered one potential serial killer who turned himself in when he realized what was happening to him. Only one of thousands of serial killers I studied in my research chose to stop his killing pattern!

In parts I, II and III of the Sandy Hook, CT elementary school shooting, we first looked at the event itself as a stand-alone chart (timed event).
We also looked at the noonmark chart for the killer as a stand-alone chart. You could add the death time of the shooter as an accurately timed event if you choose, but you are comparing apples to oranges with an untimed natal.
We then looked at the location of the event using the incorporation for Newtown, CT, again as a stand-alone chart.
But these were not ever stand-alone charts. They were specific multiple elements to a much larger picture.
Time for us to examine the people involved.

The birth information for each victim (all 28) is presented in the attached spreadsheet format, so I will not repeat that information here. Time standards for all charts are accurate according to my IO computer program. Since none of the victim charts were timed, noonmark was used.

Noonmark provides the middle of the legal day (midnight to midnight), allowing for less potential math error (orb of effect).
There should be consistency among charts (apples to apples). Since only the event, death of shooter and death of one of the children* are timed, all other charts are noonmark. We can trust the timed charts best; but can use the noonmark charts with reasonable accuracy.

All twenty children were six-to-seven years old, born between 2005 and 2006. They comprise a generational group. I did look at that possibility.

The eight adults were:

The shooter, Adam Lanza, born 1992
and his mother, Nancy, born 1960
Rachel D’Avino, 1983
Dawn Hocksprung, 1965
Anne Murphy, 1960
Lauren Rousseau, 1982
Mary Sherlach, 1956
Victoria Soto, 1985.

It’s not practical to do speculative workups on 28 time-unknown charts, and I don’t see any purpose to doing so. I will speculate on one time-unknown pattern just to illustrate how to generate information out of not necessarily reliable charts. As early research, I had done all the 28 chart aspects on my spreadsheet, but that report is difficult to reproduce here in this paged format and will not be included.

Also provided on the spreadsheet is an incomplete list of asteroid names associated with each victim. I was provided with the list just after the tragedy and I did preliminary associations but have not done further work. This asteroid section needs verifying and updating; asteroid discovery, naming and application is a burgeoning study, which I have not done. Anyone want to volunteer?

Initially, I recorded whatever info I encountered from the news and timeline information provided, but backed off once I realized I had no specific application for such other info. (FYI: Both birth (date and location) and burial information can be found on the Find A Grave website. https://www.findagrave.com/)

Generational? The earliest child victim’s birthdate was September 24, 2005. The latest child victim’s birthdate was November 20, 2006 (14 months). I looked at the three outer, truly generational, planets to find common groupings, but also noted much faster Saturn and Jupiter:

Pluto ranged from 22 to 25.75 Sagittarius
Neptune ranged from 15 (Rx) to almost 20 Aquarius
Uranus ranged from 7 (Rx) to 14.5 Pisces
Saturn ranged from 4.5 Leo to 25 Leo (extremely wide orbs, not generational)
Jupiter ranged a full sign plus in 14 months (not generational by orb).

Looking at the Event chart thirteen main positions (Sun / Moon / Planets / Asc / MC / N Node):

Sun 23:01 Sagittarius is conjunct the Pluto range. Worth examining.
I found no notable close event chart connection to range Neptune.
Event Mercury 4:48 Sagittarius square range Uranus
Event Jupiter 9:45 Gemini Rx square range Uranus
Event Mercury / Jupiter opposition are in T-square range Uranus. Worth examining.
Event Saturn 8:01 Scorpio is square many range Saturns. Worth examining.

Karma: I practice karmic astrology as well, so I wondered if karmic indicators are possible. For those not familiar with karmic charting, the midpoint between the Sun and Moon is the determining factor for the Karmic Ascendant (KA), setting the equal house chart base. These birth times are unknown. The Sun moves about 1˚ daily and the Moon is capable of moving from 12 to 15˚ daily, about half a sign. Untimed charts have a larger fudge factor due to faster lunar motion. This was speculative at best, but it was interesting, though trusting the work becomes a factor.

I set the Event KA (timed) and wheel using the Sun/Moon midpoint ahead of the Sun (the technique used primarily for male karmic charting as I have no specific rule for event charts). Event KA is 2:48 Capricorn. Equal house the balance, then drop the natal planets into the wheel as appropriate.
Accidentally, I listed that figure on the Karmic Midheaven (KM) instead of the KA. At times I get a little shove from the Universe, so I tend to pay attention to “errors”. It’s an interesting wheel with Uranus at 4:37 Aries conjunct that KA point – an absolutely shocking, off-the-wall event. This wheel also puts the Event Moon / Pluto conjunction in the 10^th, along with Mars – huge involvement with the public. Saturn, Venus and N Node in the 8^th– mass karmic implications. This is a Bowl Pattern chart with most of the planets in the 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th houses. For a mistaken construction, this chart really describes the mass shooting event karmically. Retain this mistake for observation!
The correct chart should show the KA at 2:48 Capricorn, equal house the balance, an then drop in the natal planets. That places the Moon / Pluto conjunction (mass mayhem) as well as Mars (guns) in the first house, with the Sun (ruler of the death house) in the karmic 12^th of ambush, which this was. The Bowl Pattern has shifted to the rising side of the chart, with Uranus directly conjunct the 4^th cusp (Imum Coeli / IC) – strong home / family disruption. This Bowl Pattern, regardless of where located, is contained by Saturn and Uranus as outer boundary planets. I have no problem seeing the potential of karma operating in this chart as well.
I was on a roll, looking at karmic charting in a new way (for me). So, I set the wheel at the Solunar midpoint ahead of the Moon (usually used for a female’s KA). I then constructed the wheel. This placed that Moon / Pluto conjunction and Mars in the 7^th house of what we karmically owe to other people and life in general. Uranus was now on the KM (what needs to be accomplished, upheaval), and ruling the catastrophic 8^th house. The Bowl Pattern shifted to the setting side of the chart with the 5^th house of children holding Saturn, the North Node and Venus. This layout applies as well to what we know of the event.
What did I miss? Putting the calculated KA on the 4^th cusp. Hmmm! Don’t know where this is going, but why not peek at it! Uranus is now on the Karmic Descendant (what we owe others – shock and awe?). Neptune is in the karmic 5^th of our attitude towards children in general. The Moon / Pluto conjunction and Mars are in the karmic 4^th of our attitude towards Earth as a home.
In this chart, I find karmic Jupiter in the 8^th to be revealing as the courts are currently hosting the defamation suit against Alex Jones brought by the victims’ families (yes, ten years later and still counting). Jones was adjudged guilty, but the still unresolved settlement is pending). With USA law not allowing gun companies to be held responsible for just about anything, the Sandy Hook parents sued the gun company under Connecticut law and won their case after a prolonged battle. Gun laws and legal battles are proof of the cascade effect still unwinding from prior event(s).
You don’t suppose there is more to karmic charting than I was originally led to believe, do you? Makes me go hmmm!

(Note: As of this writing in June, 2022, we’re currently working on Karmic Astrology: Your Cosmic Apprentice Guide. It will be posted on my website, marilynmuir.net in the near future. Please stay tuned!)

Groups and what energy guides or leads them: When I was teaching at Mission: Aquarius, Inc., the church / school I founded, I was doing six to seven classes weekly. They were all different metaphysical / astrological subjects, usually as ten-week courses. On the first day of each course, I would take the Suns of each student attending, as well as my own Sun (as I was also present), converted each to degrees and minutes of sign and ran a total. I would then divide them two different ways to see what body, degree and sign led the class. For a small group of a dozen students it was very easy to simply divide by the number of Suns: total zodiac degrees / minutes divided by number of people. Convert that result to sign, degree and minutes). The result would be a current transiting body or the N Node. That way I knew who / what was leading (planet or N Node), what the slant of the class was (nature and sign of leader), and if there would be struggle or success in the class (aspect). I did that for each class for many years.

An alternative math technique would be to take the total, deduct any full circle of 360˚, with the residual converted back into sign, degree and minute – that could work as well. At times they matched, or there could be two leading influences. Think!

When a teacher sets the class, they have a vision.
When students take the class, they have an alternate vision. Both are valid!
What about the Universe’s need to educate and inform, perhaps using that teaching format? Could it be there is more to taking or teaching a class than we realized?

For example, there were times when I set the stage to teach and halfway through wondered why I was teaching something else. I was and always am open to spiritual guidance. If it were important for the students to hear it, I was okay with that. Honestly, the students didn’t mind it either. The information flow was usually useful to them. I always got done what needed to be done for the class, just not always in the way I originally had in mind!

And so, the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting had 28 victims, including the shooter and the shooter’s Mother. However, the Mother was not in the mass shooting. She was the first victim, but separate. The shooter also died that day. I’ve never tried my “leader” concept with 28 “Suns”, but why not?

First: I found the noonmark Suns’ total for all 28 victims using actual degrees and minutes. I then removed the Mother because she was killed first and separately from the mass shooting, That second total gave the leading principle for that isolated main grouping of 27. I set both groups using both math methods previously described:

total divided by number, and
reduction by 360˚ full wheels, perhaps revealing a heretofore “invisible” position.

I then looked to the event chart to determine the “leading” transit principle as described.

28 victims: 4175 total degrees, divided by 28 people = 149.11 = 29.1 Leo. Event Venus 28:01 Scorpio, square. Venus leading.
28 victims: 4175 total degrees reduced by 360˚ increments (11 each) = 215 degrees = 5 Scorpio, Event Saturn 8:01 Scorpio, conjunct, Saturn leading.
27 victims (removing Mom who was killed separately and first): 4011 total degrees, divided by 27 people = 148.6 = 28.6 Leo. Event Venus 28:01 Scorpio, square, Venus leading same as the group of 28.
27 victims: total degrees reduced by 360˚ increments (11 each) = 51˚ = 21 Taurus, conjunct timed Event IC (4^th cusp) / opposed Event MC, both angular (focus and stress). Note: Angles did not show up as leaders in my original classes. Something new to investigate.

Note: Do remember we have only noonmark charts for all victims. There are 28 built-in fudge factors. Choose the tightest connection, but remember there is a lot of speculation here.

I created a spreadsheet of each victim’s hard aspects. Killing, regardless of method, is a hard aspect to me. A soft aspect might imply mercy in the fact that the whole event for the victims was a few really bad minutes, and not a prolonged agony over hours or days. All in the classroom died when shot except for one boy who died that evening*. It might be interesting to single out that chart to investigate the delayed death. I wish we had timed charts to work with.

What about the mother / son angle? The son killed his mother. Matricide. In any timed natal chart, I would turn to the house cusps ruling the topics.

Mom’s chart: 5^th house of children, planets ruling and occupying; also 8^th house of her own death, planets ruling and occupying.
Son’s chart: 4^th / 10^th houses of parents, planets ruling and occupying both houses; also the 8^th death houses of the parents, which would be the son’s 5^th / 11^th, and planets ruling and occupying all houses.
Because it is the son’s mother, we can also look to the son’s Moon (if we can trust the noonmark lunar position).
The Mother died – her physical body was physically assaulted and killed.
If birth time were available, I would also investigate her Ascendant, ruler of and any occupants of her 1^st house.
Because a gun was the weapon of choice, I could also watch Mars activating or being activated. Lots of possibilities here.

We don’t have the birth times, so we don’t have timed wheels. That means we don’t know the layouts of the two charts, no angles or cusps, no occupations and / or rulerships. What can we do? We must start with the only known accurate chart (the Event) and work backwards.

We know that the Event chart and its positions are accurate for the timed mass shooting. The killing of the Mother was prior to the mass killing. We need to watch the timed event separating aspects for the Mother’s death. Separating aspects have perfected themselves prior to the Event positions. Hopefully, we will find close but separating hard aspects. Again, hard aspects make things happen!

To begin, what does the son’s speculative noonmark Moon tell us about his general relationship with his specific Mother? Look at his besieged Moon, last passing over Pluto in Scorpio, moving to conjunct first Uranus, then Neptune, and then Saturn in its travels. Besieged implies that his Moon (Mom) energy has no possible favorable development, especially when you add the actual squares from son’s noonmark natal Mercury and Venus in Aries. The negative focus of this Moon is overwhelming, even with the fudge factor!

Son’s noonmark Moon is around 8:17 Capricorn. Event Pluto is 8:43 Capricorn – tight, but applying (future). Event Moon is 10:36 Capricorn conjunct that Pluto, but 2˚ separating, perfect about four hours earlier. Why? The transiting Moon moves about 1˚ forward only (it does not retrograde), every two hours on the clock. So this aspect prior to the mass shooting can work. Earlier the Event Moon had been square event Uranus 4:37 Aries. 6˚ separating equals about twelve hours earlier on the clock, or the evening prior to the mass murder. Since this murder took place in the home, we may never fully understand. But Moon squaring Uranus precipitated something unexpected, resulting in potential violence (like mass murder), due to the Moon’s impending conjunction to Pluto.

Cascading effect: This is a good place to mention the cascading effect of multiple aspects. Events do not happen in isolation. Activations set in motion stem from prior activity. A situation occurs, which in turn sets results in motion going forward. We tend to focus on single events as if they stand alone, but they are really a natural flow of activity. One thing leads to another. Physics states that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The transiting Moon first triggered the square to Uranus and produced results. It then moved on to the conjunction to Pluto and produced even more results. It was a cascading effect. The horror did not stop with the killing of the shooter’s mother, the mass killing, the suicide of the shooter, or the trauma it created. To this very day, the gun law frenzy cause by this and many other events is still unfolding. Try to think of events as one part to a continuing story, a virtual cascade.

Mom: Going back to the mother’s chart, what do the Event planets trigger in her horoscope? Her natal noonmark Venus is 4:45 Libra, opposed by accurate Event Uranus 4:37 Aries, very close, with the transiting Event Moon squaring first the Event Uranus and later conjoining Event Pluto.

Mom had a multiple planet mutable T-square in her birth chart with a mutable Grand Cross the day prior to her birth. Major aspect configurations like this can overwhelm a chart with a negative connotation. Think of a plate of cooked spaghetti. Try to move just one strand. The whole of the pasta moves. When triggered, major configurations may take over the whole life and activities. Also, they don’t just magically evaporate once the aspect perfects itself – they have residual effect. What has been placed in position or motion must work itself out in experience, perhaps even after the fact. New activity is not usually generated from a separating aspect, but residual activity needs to have space and time to work itself out.

Mom’s Virgo natal stellium, Pluto / Sun / Mercury, can act as a single unit despite wide orbs, and was widely square Jupiter in Sagittarius and Mars in Gemini, along with the potential of an extremely wide Moon at 29 Sagittarius. The Grand Cross was solidly in effect the day prior. This noonmark Moon could be in an earlier Sagittarius degree if she were born between midnight and noon, so this is still somewhat possible for the Event day. With Mom’s continuing Mercury T-square Mars / Jupiter, there is no doubt of angry communication in her experience. Note also that the natal Nodal axis is central to this mutable configuration, indicating the possibility of a karmic pattern being triggered. This was an escalating, violent problem, with stages in its development. There were cascading events that led to catastrophe. I usually read squares as challenges, problems and obstacles, and I read oppositions as endings, divisions, or eliminations.

More on Mom? Event Mercury 4:48 Sagittarius was square Mom’s natal Pluto 6:10 Virgo (kicking that natal stellium into activity, again).

Event Saturn 8:01 Scorpio was conjunct Mom’s natal Neptune 7:02 Scorpio. Transiting Saturn / Neptune triggering hard aspect combinations are called “the Dark Night of the Soul” and appear to me to be one of the most difficult transiting activations. They can be illustrated by open warfare between logic / reason / reality and confusion/ delusion / insanity. As close as I can tell, these behavioral problems had existed for some time with many parental efforts to find a solution, but without success. The fact that weapons were an ordinary part of that household and available within a disturbed family situation was a tragedy which found a place to happen.

Mom’s noonmark Mars was 22:05 Gemini, part of her natal T-square and possible Grand Cross. Mass Event Sun was 23:01 Sagittarius, 1˚ separating from an opposition. The day prior must have been just awful.

Mom’s Saturn 11:53Rx Capricorn was activated by Event Moon 10:36 / Pluto 8:43 conjunction. Transiting Mars had been activating that Saturn earlier, adding to the buildup of tensions that eventually led to the tragedy. Mars rules guns and aggressive behavior.

Worth noting: Event Neptune 00:40 Pisces was conjunct Nancy’s noonmark IC 2:44, and opposed the Virgo MC – not completely trustworthy but a very close possibility.

I have not yet mentioned Mom’s progressions because a fudge factor progressed comparison to a fudge factor natal is stretching credulity quite a bit! But… a tight Fixed T-square developed involving progressed Moon, Mercury and Uranus, naturally close to natal Uranus 22:51 Leo (very slow motion by progression). Progressed Mercury was 23:54R Scorpio, Moon 26:36 Aquarius, and Uranus 25:18 Leo. T-squares can act as catalysts in a chart, perhaps bringing difficult things to a head at a particular moment. It can take over the chart and the life. And her 3˚ conjunct progressed Sun 5:31 / Neptune 8:45 Scorpio was activated by Event Saturn at 8:01 Scorpio, tight. Her progressed Venus 8:49 Sagittarius had been (developing earlier experience) squaring both natal 6:10 and progressed Pluto 7:41 Virgo. The potential for catastrophe cascaded into the tragic experience at Sandy Hook Elementary.

I did set the noonmark natal composite and relationship charts between Adam and Nancy Lanza (mother and son), as well as the progressed composites and relationships for date of deaths, but have decided not to pursue that avenue. Having two noonmark natals translated into what would be a noonmark composite and relationship, plus the progressed composite and relationship charts, is way too speculative to be useful. I may change my mind in the future, once I figure out how to ferret the information out of highly fudge-factored charts. Stay tuned for future web postings.

I know I said I would only do one noonmark workup to illustrate how to get the information you need when you do not have birthtime, but… In 2013 I had done an individualized workup on one child victim. I see no reason not to include that workup so you can see:

how I completed her workup and
how I obtained the information for the spreadsheet, victim by victim.

Her name was Charlotte Helen Bacon and she was only six years old.

*Note: Daniel Barden’s time of death was 9:04 PM on the day of the shooting.

Children’s birthdates originally from Michael Munkasey’s contacts and obituaries; verified by additional information from Find A Grave website. Noonmark charts only. Only the event chart was calculated from actual time.

Original Asteroid source: Astrologer Lee Lehman – The Ultimate Asteroid Book

Here are the rest of the noonmark victim’s charts: