Saturday, October 10, 2015

Officer & Murderer

Last week we watched An Officer and a Murderer on Netflix, it had originated on Lifetime TV channel. I wasn't aware, until the movie ended, that it was based on real life events, though the way the film moved on to its final scenes did arouse suspicions of that. The tale was, indeed, a true one. It is based on events involving Colonel Russell Williams between 2007 and 2010 in Canada, "a walking Jekyll and Hyde" who suddenly embarked on a life of crime in 2007, escalating from panty thief fetishist to murderer.


There's a good, all-encompassing article about the actual events, written in October 2010 by Jim Rankin and Sandro Contenta, staff reporters at the star.com:
Col. Russell Williams: A serial killer like none police have seen.

SNIPS only - to give brief outline:


In Ottawa, a burglar was stealing lingerie in a middle-class neighbourhood, careful to break in when no one was home.In Tweed, 200 kilometres west, two women were sexually assaulted by a man who took pictures but did not attempt penetration. In Brighton, south of Tweed, an air force flight attendant was badly beaten, raped and murdered.

The modi operandi could not have been more different. Police considered a link to the Tweed sexual assaults when Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd, 27, went missing in late January from her home near the village. But nothing could have prepared them for the suspect they finally caught. Col. David Russell Williams — who this past week indicated through his lawyer that he intends to plead guilty on Oct. 18 to two murders, two sex assaults and a string of fetish break-ins — is a serial killer like none they have ever seen.

“This guy is quite unusual,” says psychologist Vernon Quinsey, who spent 16 years assessing criminals at the Oak Ridge maximum security psychiatric hospital in Penetanguishene.
“We haven't seen guys like this in the past and we don't expect to see a lot of them in the future.”

Williams had a successful career and a long, apparently loving marriage, and didn't embark on a life of crime until he began a series of fetish home burglaries in September 2007, at the age of 44.

“It's very unusual for a guy who's got his act together like that ... to all of a sudden start committing crimes at a late age,” says Quinsey, professor emeritus of psychology, biology and psychiatry at Queen's University.....“Almost nobody starts a life of crime when they're in their 40s.” Equally unusual was his escalation from panty fetish to sex assault to murder. Most serial killers assault and kill in tandem, right from the start.

Williams seems a walking Jekyll and Hyde: by day, commander of CFB Trenton, the biggest air force base in Canada; by night, a sexual predator.

But Quinsey dismisses suggestions of a split personality, describing it as a popular but misused term, long associated with schizophrenics. And Williams is no schizophrenic...........

Both Quinsey and Woods speculate that a sudden, significant event might have triggered Williams' life of crime. “We all have stressors that put pressure on us and we all have different ways of relieving it,” says Woods, who left the RCMP in 2007 and now runs a company that trains police forces on criminal profiling. “Some people go for a run, others have a glass of wine, and sexual predators go out and rape.”

Says Quinsey: “The only scenario I can think of is that this guy had these interests for a long time, but he was able to control them. And then something sets him off and he can't control them any more.”

What set him off?.....

ASTROLOGY

Crime experts were surprised and puzzled - I'll don my Sherlock Holmes hat and try to discover whether astrologers would be surprised and puzzled too.

Russell Williams was born on 7 March 1963 in Bromsgrove, UK. No time of birth is known, chart is set for 12 noon, so Moon position will not be exact, nor will rising sign.


First impression, in general: lots of oppositions. It doesn't surprise me that this man had two distinct sides to his nature. Many people have charts with configurations such as this this though, without weird outcome.

Getting to the nitty-gritty...what was going on in 2007 that might have triggered Williams' crime spree? Transiting Uranus, planet of change and the unexpected, conjoined his natal Pisces Sun!

When Williams was born, Neptune at 15 Scorpio was conjunct fixed star South Scale, aka Zuben Elgenubi. Interpretation of South Scale with Neptune:
With Neptune: Morose, melancholy, isolated, shrewd, cunning, evil use of occult powers and of poisons or drugs, cynical, dangerous, broods over some secret, peculiar death, often suicide. [Robson*, p.206.] (See Constellation of Words.)
It was reported that Williams did actually attempt suicide in his jail cell. A generation had this Neptune/South Scale conjunction in their natal charts, but not all had it connected by aspect to personal planets. Williams had the conjunction in harmonious trine to his natal Sun, also in uncomfortable square aspect to Saturn. Coincidentally film director, screenwriter, producer and actor Quentin Tarantino, born around three weeks later than Williams, in the USA, also had Neptune & South Scale square Saturn. In his case it could be said that his films' subject matter, an "aestheticization of violence", and neo-noir style reflect this aspect.

I'm guessing that latent negative characteristics, indicated by the Neptune/South Scale conjunction's aspects to personal planets, were triggered when Uranus conjoined Williams' natal Pisces Sun - whose ruler is Neptune.

16 comments:

Sonny G said...


Sounds like a movie we'd enjoy..

thanks for your opinions, Annie..

I think we all have a good n bad side to us, hopefully most are able to keep the bad under control:)

As a 7 numerology wise, he had a entire life or 3 going on in his head while he lived the outward life people saw.. It wasn't just imagination- it was a REAL to him, totally separate life.

mike said...

In 2007, transiting Saturn was opposing his natal Saturn and square natal Neptune. Transiting Uranus and N Node conj his natal Sun was trine natal Neptune, but inconjunct transiting Saturn. Transiting Neptune was conj natal Saturn and Mercury, square natal Neptune. Transiting Neptune had been opposed to transiting Saturn. LOTS of Saturn and Neptune influence, with a touch of Uranus. Transiting Jupiter was square natal Sun, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto that year, and transiting Jupiter conj transiting Pluto, too.

His final dispositors are complex. His Jupiter disposits Sun, Moon, Mars, and Neptune on one side; Mercury and Uranus in mutual reception, and Saturn disposit his Venus and Pluto. His natal Mars and Venus are in opposition and both have final dispositors...those final dispositors were tangled in harsh, frictional aspects starting in 2007.

I suspect he ALWAYS had a malignant male-female pattern established with the Venus-Mars opposition, enhanced with both having different dispositors, and the female form for him would be viewed through the Mercury (mental)-Saturn (harsh & restrictive)-Uranus (cold, higher mental) lens of the Venus-Pluto sexualization [the rape of Persephone, Venus & Pluto in mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Persephone].

I quickly viewed his progressed chart, but all I noticed is that progressed Moon would have conjuncted his natal Sun in 2007, which would indicate a new beginning.

This might sound a bit strange, but the internet may have assisted his aberrant behavior by bringing deviant content to his desktop computer for easy viewing and him falling into that digital, surreal world that he could no longer distinguish from reality, such that it played-out in real life.

mike (again) said...

Another factor - March 3, 2007, Uranus and N Node were within conjunction of his natal Sun. There was a full Moon eclipse at 13* Virgo (S Node), with the Sun at 13* Pisces (N Node). The transiting Sun-Uranus-N Node would have been conj his natal Sun and Chiron, in opposition to transiting Moon and S Node conj his natal Pluto. As mentioned above, his progressed Moon was conjunct his natal Sun and Chiron at this time.

Twilight said...

Sonny ~ Yes, the numerology interpretation sounds about right. The film, though not exactly a pleasant hour and a half's viewing, is never boring, and Gary Cole does a creditable job of portraying this very unusual character.

Twilight said...

mike + (again) ~ Thanks for the additional astrological points. A tangled web indeed!
Yet in spite of the tangle he did manage to retain, for many years, his well-respected senior position and very "proper" military persona.

Good point about internet content, mike! Without that kind of "live" enticement Williams could well have chained the dark side of himself within his mind, never to spill over into reality, even in face of the astrological goings on of 2007.

mike (again) said...

I looked to see famous others born on that day: http://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/born/march1963.html

EL James stands-out as the writer of the erotic, S&M "Fifty Shades of Grey". Says she started her career as a writer of "Twilight" fan fiction and other romance novels. Maybe if Russell Williams had channeled his inner-me into writing or screen, he'd been a successful, creative, non-prisoner...LOL. She and Williams were both born in the UK, too.

Sonny G said...


That makes sense, Mike.. I think astrology and numerology both guide us to the energies surrounding us or available to us at any given time and then its how we choose to use that energy that makes one person famous and the other infamous:)

Sonny G said...


on that note, I've often wondered what people like Hitler or Trump and many others could have accomplished for Positive in this world if only they used their massive energy for the good of all..

Twilight said...

mike (again) ~ Oh yes - good find in E.L. James! I suppose Williams' "male-ness" led him to the military, which served to "feed" the dark, violent side of him too well, and smothered any lurking creativity.

Twilight said...

Sonny ~ Without examples of our dark side, when it ventures out as a warning, for all to see, maybe we, remaining naive and unsuspecting, would get into even worse problems.
Though the world would have been a far better place without having to experience Hitler's very dark side, it has stood as a valuable dire warning ever since. I'm not sure we ought to put Trump in that category though (yet!). ;-)

LB said...

Who knows why one person born on a particular day becomes a serial killer and another a saint? Free will? Whatever the reason, I don't believe we can predict or know someone's character by their chart.

In retrospect, I can see how his South Node in structured/controlling/authoritarian Capricorn and its ruler, Saturn, in masculine/intellectual/rational Aquarius probably played a role in his choice of career, offering him an outlet for those energies and also, a way to deny or repress the softer, more feminine/receptive/emotional/vulnerable qualities of his North Node in Cancer.

His Leo Moon (ruler of his NN) along with his chart's other Leo-Aquarius oppositions might've represented a similar conflict between passion and reason, heart and mind, individual desire/passion versus those behaviors dictated by duty or social standing. As mike already pointed out, at some point in 2007 his progressed Moon in Pisces likely joined his Sun, ruler of his natal Moon.

If the Moon and Sun represent, respectively, the unconscious and conscious parts of our psyches, then maybe this became the crisis point for him, a time when he could no longer ignore or repress his unconscious material, including the longing for his anima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

Pisces is a pretty sensitive sign anyway, as is Cancer, so it must've taken a lot of psychic energy to repress the divine feminine within himself. Maybe he (once again, unconsciously) began stealing women's underwear as a way to explore or even embrace these qualities ~ not saying this is a healthy way to go about it, btw. Then, as the unconscious material became too much to deny and the conflict too great, his crimes escalated to a point of no-return. Maybe the very real crimes he committed against women -rape and murder- were his ways of attempting to *symbolically* overpower and kill off the unacceptable (feminine) parts of himself.

The transits and aspects you all have mentioned helped to create the perfect, terrible storm.:(

LB said...

Twilight ~ Adding how it seems as though you and mike reached similar conclusions. I just used slightly different wording and took another road to get there.:) It all works together.

mike (again) said...

LB - You said, "Maybe the very real crimes he committed against women -rape and murder- were his ways of attempting to *symbolically* overpower and kill off the unacceptable (feminine) parts of himself." Here's a copy-paste from his Wiki:

"... In addition to the four primary incidents, the investigation into Williams includes probes into 48 cases of theft of women's underwear dating back to 2006. In the searches of his Ottawa home, police discovered stolen lingerie that was neatly stored, catalogued, and concealed.

... Williams had progressed from break-ins to sexual assaults with no penetration to rape and murder. He had kept detailed track of police reports of the crimes he was committing, logged his crimes, kept photos and videos, and had even left notes and messages for his victims. In a break-in into the bedroom of a 12-year-old, he left a message in her computer saying: "Merci" ("Thank you" in French). He had taken thousands of pictures of his crimes, and had kept the photos on his computer. Crown Attorney Robert Morrison presented numerous pictures of Williams dressed in the various pieces of underwear and bras he had stolen, frequently masturbating while lying on the beds of his victims."

Twilight said...

LB ~ Thanks for your take on the Williams case. Yes, many strands of a tangled net lead to similar conclusion and to, as you said "a perfect storm".

It's probably beyond anybody's apprehension (even the most able psychologist's or skilled astrologer's) to work out what exactly was going on with this man. We can only guess, from our own limited perceptions. It is a very unusual case, mainly due to the extreme opposites of how his two sides presented - there can't be too many (if any) cases quite like this to compare.

R J Adams said...

Oh dear! When I comment on one of your astrological posts I always worry you'll read my chart and find I'm going to become a mass murderer, or worse! I have to admit to not sharing your enthusiasm for the silver screen, or astrology, but I still enjoy catching-up on your prolific writings. When are you going to branch out and produce a best-selling novel for us? Perhaps one of astrological intrigue set in the glitzy world of Hollywood? Your writing skills have been honed to a degree that should make such an undertaking quite feasible.

Twilight said...

RJ Adams ~ Hi there! Nice to see you in circulation again, from your new abode in La Belle France. Well now, that relocation you've just accomplished (or should I term it "escape" rather than relocation?) might, in time, adjust how you see yourself and how others perceive you, because your rising sign will have changed quite drastically. Though you, like me, probably don't know your exact time of birth, so natal rising sign can't be calculated. You could be an interesting subject to study though - why not slide under our astro microscope right now.....Hey - come back!! ;-)

Don't know if you saw Tuesday's post (Oct 6) on Relocation Astrology, if not have a quick look. Anyway, you might agree let us know, in due course, whether and how your move has changed your perspective.

I'm no novelist, RJ, but if I were I'd want to write a time travel-type story. Glitzy Hollywood itself holds no fascination, even though I enjoy some of its output (though not as much of it these days - it ain't what it used to be!)