True crime doesn’t get scarier, gruesomer or more popular than Netflix’s chart-topping Girl in the Picture. The public appetite for abuse and serial-killer porn is thriving.
The story – gleaned from the internet – tells of a young woman in her early 20s, found dying after a supposed hit and run, who turns out to have been kidnapped when six years old by a violent and sadistic stepfather who abused and subsequently married her. It is assumed he probably murdered her, the boyfriend she had run away with and her son by him, and a girl friend of hers as well as others. He is now on death row.
She had multiple names during an unsettled childhood but still managed to be accepted into the Georgia Institute of Technology on a scholarship to study aerospace engineering. Ultimately it was discovered she was Suzanne Sevakis and her stepfather/husband is Franklin Delano Floyd.
Suzanne, 9 September 1969 Texas, was a Sun conjunct Pluto in Virgo opposition her North Node and square Mars in Sagittarius – power, fear, control were the central features of her experience. Her Node tied into that brutal T Square does suggest a fated life. But she also had an adventurous Uranus Jupiter Mercury conjunct in Libra and Venus Moon in Leo so had a lighter side as well. She would be hard-working with a Virgo Sun trine Saturn in Taurus.
Franklin Floyd, 17 June 1943, Georgia, was a Sun Gemini like several other serial killers – Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, Peter Sutcliffe, Wayne Williams, Robert Lee Yates Jr. He had a damaging and horrifying childhood with his alcoholic father dying aged 32; and he ended up in foster care where he was bullied and abused (see wiki).
His duplicitous Gemini Sun (possibly opposition Sagittarius Moon) square Neptune locked into Suzanne’s Sun Pluto Mars T square and his Saturn in Gemini squared her Sun – so he’d deceive and manipulate her and deflate her self-esteem. His superficially charming and persuasive Venus Pluto in Leo squared her Saturn – and his North Node in Leo may have been conjunct her Moon.
Their relationship chart has a needs-space, different-agenda composite Sun, Mercury, Uranus so not well designed for a closeted, possessive relationship. A Saturn square Mars suggests cruelty or unkindness and a necessity for one to suppress their needs; plus a power-struggling composite Jupiter Pluto conjunction.
He had a strongly aspected and brutal 18th harmonic, often found with serial killers. Her victim 12th harmonic was marked.
Can’t imagine why anyone would want to watch it. One of the many oddities of our culture. We have moved from an Agatha Christie – find a corpse, spot the killer – fascination which kept the masses enraptured for generations – onto the real deal which is much less sanitised.
How awful that Suzanne’s parents made no real effort to find her or even to declare her missing. They really failed her. I wonder if there’s any sign of that in her birth chart. As for the current fascination with crime and violence- that’s nothing new. People used to watch executions for fun, enjoyed dog fights, cockfights and bull baiting and even religion had many tales of martyrdoms complete with every details of horrible tortures.
When the reality of these crimes become apparent in the telling of these stories and how they are increasingly becoming moneyspinners for the media outlets, then we look at the case of a child of 10 years old becoming pregnant after being raped, not allowed to have an abortion as it`s against the law and the child within the child developing to such a size that the very life of the host is in danger, we see the reality of what is becoming normalised amusement
‘……. and the child within the child developing to such a size that the very life of the host is in danger, we see the reality of what is becoming normalised amusement”
Yes in the name of entertainment because if she and the baby make it , the offer of money and fame from media outlets can catapult her into celebrity world and fortune. Sick or sad?!!
Speaking as a Sun conjunct Pluto am very aware of the dark side of life and do not want to attract or amplify it so avoid gruesome TV and books. But I do like mystery novels
Let’s get some perspective here. People used to watch executions of anyone who was to be executed. Not specifically African Americans. Firstly, because they didn’t have a choice. Then later on, it sort of evolved into entertainment on a day out.
During the American Civil War they used to partake of picnics, which often resulted in their own deaths. A lot of executions in the 17th and 18th centuries were for minor crimes, like stealing a loaf of bread. In later times, they warranted being transported as a ticket of leave man, woman or child to places like Australia.for the vast majority, life wasn’t fair at all!
I watched it and thought it was a very good example of documentary film making.
Bad things happen every day. The story seemed to be nothing but a forest of thorns….but then look at the flowers that blossomed and are now on display for millions of viewers. We all love that little girl. She shines now for millions. The foster family of her son who died…how much we all love them. Beautiful people!
Her daughter found so much closure and love and found her grandfather too. He (the grandfather) has come so far from his PTSD Vietnam days.
The friend from the strip bar…how strong and powerful her spirit is. Her own mother searched for 5 years when she went missing….and found her! We now live HER mother even though she was never named.
The school friend who had to witness the rape and carry her silence with her for her whole life until now. Cathartic and healing!
The documentary showed so many flowers around the tangle of thorns.
It’s not what you look at that matters…it’s what you see.
I think people have always been fascinated with killers, think the Crime magazines in the sixties and seventies, huge readership and the attention given by newspaper to serial killer crime. With the internet we now have unlimited access to watch and read about those crimes. The ones I like watching are the unsolved, where I actually have to get my thinking cap on and try and work out what happened.
I see most true crime as fables, or stories to learn from. I’m markedly Plutonic, and so I feel like I can exercise my darker engneries by watching others play them out negatively – while also learning from their mistakes at the same time.
I have to assume that’s why a *portion* of society watch true crime shows as well – albeit more unconsciously.
Thanks Marjorie. I agree with you, and Anita, that the fascination with these stories – whether ‘true crime’ or fiction – seems to be booming, and fulfilling some kind of need. I think it’s a part of human nature, perhaps it makes people feel safe at some deep level? These are real life versions of folk/fairy tales – which were often frightening and gruesome in their original versions. Bluebeard was a serial killer, Snow White’s stepmother wanted to murder her, even the twisted psychological darkness of ‘Peter Pan’ in the JM Barrie story…and many more.
The Neptune in Pisces theme Anita mentions is interesting, although this fascination with evil and death is an ancient human trait. Neptune in Pisces in the 19th century coincides with the wide availability of magazines and newspapers. The Victorian appetite for sensational literature and stories was huge, continuing through Neptune in Aries, and on into Taurus. Have a look at the Police Gazette, for example. It began to be illustrated with very lurid sketches in 1883. At that point Uranus was in Virgo, while Saturn, Neptune and Pluto were in Taurus. By the summer, Saturn and Pluto were in Gemini (publishing?).
In real life, people went on tours of the Jack the Ripper (1880’s) murder sites at the time, and bus tours of East End slums were a popular diversion for the better off – just as tours of mental hospitals/asylums were another diversion for those who were safe and well. It’s now all available online or TV instead.
Here’s George Orwell, writing in 1946:
“It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?
Naturally, about a murder.”
― George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder
How much it’s been verified I don’t know but I’ve read that the current wave of interest in the True Crime genre is overwhelmingly young and female. I’m interested in the psychology of criminals, but won’t be watching this. Nor did the Epstein or Savile docs appeal to me – some of these programmes, particularly when they involve children are just too dark and heavy even for my Scorpionic nature.
As you say, Jane there’s nothing new about humanity’s fascination with the grim and the gory. Long before the ripper murders ever occurred, it was common practice for members of the general public to flock to the location of a brutal murder and pay to witness the bloody crime scene. The Radcliffe Highway murders of 1811 and the public’s morbid curiosity in visiting the crime scenes meant they became popular attractions, not to mention the subsequent awful spectacle of parading the corpse of the man found guilty of the crimes, John Williams who had hanged himself in prison, through the streets of London, stopping at each crime location, displaying the bloody maul – the murder weapon – alongside the body. Williams was publicly buried at the crossroads of Cable and Cannon Streets, upside down to the jeers of the crowd.
Perhaps there’s an underlying desire to see Justice at work in a world that can be random, brutal and barbaric. Hogarth’s ‘Stages of Cruelty’ series of four engravings which grimly depict scenes in the life of the degenerate anti-hero, ‘Tom Nero’, a kind of 18th century Clockwork Orange ‘Alex’, whose immorality eventually leads him to murder, the gallows and public dissection. Hogarth, who was a staunch animal lover makes sure to show a dog, which in the first engraving is seen being tortured by the adolescent Tom, wolfing down the removed organs of the dead criminal.
I don’t believe this kind of programme is ever going to go away, unfortunately, but as you say it’s nothing new.
Hi Marjorie,
Thank you for your analysis.
I used to think we were getting better as a species. The older I get the more I learn that for every forward motion there is huge resistance. People have watched animals tear apart victims in ancient Roman ‘entertainment’. Many white Americans gathered with picnics to watch lynchings of African Americans not that very long ago historically speaking. It looks like reality tv has simply taken us to a terrible but inevitable conclusion – watching death not only as entertainment but also as distraction from our lives, from reflecting on what we can change about our world when we collaborate. Is it that Neptune in Pisces (the martyr) has given us all these dreadful tales of women and/or children as victims of gruesome crimes? When Pluto finally leaves Capricorn maybe there won’t be so much monetary incentive to produce such sinister fare for consumption. What do you think? I had hopes that Uranus in Taurus would help us tell more stories about the environment. We have had a few but the zeitgeist really needs changing.
That’s a great thought, Anita -when Pluto leaves Capricorn- but we have a while to go. Some astrologers explain that Pluto forces us to see the dark- however in these times, discernment regarding what we feed our brains is our own responsibility. I have watched these shows, and notice how they bring my energy down, so much abuse of women and children, it’s unfathomable.
Yesterday I watched a show about a woman who claimed that she lived with wolves as a child, in search of her Jewish parents who had been taken by the Nazis. Now there’s a piece. I wondered if Marjorie would look at her chart?
Zero desire to see read or even know about it. It truly is sad how some consider this entertainment.