Murder by Numbers (2002)

As someone mentioned after we watched this on Saturday night, “That is one messed up story.” For sure. But, in the echo chamber of my mind, I remembered something that wasn’t actually stated, but had a similar ‘feel’ to it. Wasn’t there a case about this in the distant past?

The subtext is a sense of gay love. It’s not expressly stated, but one character’s girlfriend asked the question, “Did Richard seduce you? He seduced me.” Hmm. That got me to thinking about the supposed motive (a lark) and the actual purpose of the murder: to cement their relationship. So, I looked up the genesis of the story.

Leopold and Loeb

Yes, even the actors had a passing resemblance to the original murderers. So much for fiction, eh?

Both their charts were already on my computer program, so I’ve combined them to see what their dynamic was, in reality.

There is one double Yod, pointing at Leopold’s Mercury. The inconjuncts come from Loeb’s Venus/Midheaven conjunction and his natal Neptune. (Because of their closeness of birth – 7 months apart – their placements of Neptune are very close @ 7° Cancer. Leopold’s Neptune is retrograde, while Loeb’s is not, so Loeb would have been the driver of this action.) Also, Leopold’s “purpose” was intellectual only, while Loeb’s was more emotional. They thought they could perform the ‘perfect’ murder (by the numbers) and get away with it. But it was not meant to be.