This is an infamous criminal case, and many podcasts and documentaries on it exist. I will make sure to note the sources at the end for additional details not included here.

Background.

Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, two fifteen-year-old girls, next-door neighbors and inseparable best friends. They lived in West Ryde. At the time, it was a working-class suburb located in Northwest Sydney, Australia. 

Marianne and Christine had many things in common. They were described as nice young women and responsible students. They were shy and enjoyed spending time at home.

Christine was a young child when her father died. After her mother remarried and moved to a different suburb in Sydney, Christine chose to live with her grandparents. I couldn’t find any information that would give us any idea of the reasons. We have more information about Marianne than about Christine. 

Marianne was born in Germany, and her family moved to Australia in 1958. The family included parents Helmut and Elisabeth, along with their six children: Helmut Jr., Marianne, Hans, Peter, Trixie, and Wolfgang. A younger brother, Norbert, was born in Australia. After relocating to Australia, they moved a lot in the first few years. In 1963, they moved to Sydney to treat her father’s Hodgkin’s disease. Sadly, he died in June 1964, leaving behind his wife, Elisabeth, and seven kids.

The Story

That weekend, the girls went to visit Marianne’s mother at the hospital. She had undergone surgery and was convalescing. Marianne and Christine asked Marianne's mom for permission to take the younger siblings to Cronulla Beach on Sunday, and she agreed. Even though Cronulla was far away, it was the only beach accessible by a direct train at that time. Even with a direct route, the journey would still take over two hours. 

They postponed their outing to Monday due to poor weather on Sunday. That Monday morning, Christine, Marianne, and her four younger siblings, Peter, 10,  Trixie, 9, Wolfgang, 7,  and Norbert, 5, set out for the beach with a packed lunch. When they arrived at Cronulla Beach, they found it closed for swimming due to rough seas and strong winds, so they chose to walk to Wanda Beach instead. 

Timeline:

• Around 8:30 am  - Marianne, her four younger siblings, and Christine head out to get the train to Cronulla Beach.
• They arrived around 11:00 am, and they found out that the beach was closed due to high winds and rough seas.
• They walked to the southern beach and had lunch in a rocky area sheltered from the strong winds.
• After lunch, they left their bags hidden on the rocks and walked to the sandhills at Wanda (the aboriginal word for beach or sand hills). 
• The winds were too much for the younger kids, so they found some shelter from the wind. Marianna and Christine left the kids with the excuse that they were going to pick up their stuff, and they asked to wait for them. They would be back in 20 minutes.
• Both girls headed out in the opposite direction, which Peter pointed out, but they just laughed and went on their way. 

The Astrology of departure at 8:30 am chart:

• We have a Pisces Ascendant, as a double bodied sign, and the one that suggests plurality, indicating that more than one person leaving. 
• We see Saturn on the Ascendant. Having Saturn in any angle suggests that things will not go as desired, especially when it is afflicting the Ascendant which represents the people leaving the home.
• Jupiter, the ruler of the Ascendant, is in the third house; it is a cadent house, but denotes that they are about to embark on a short journey of sorts. Jupiter, in Taurus, they were very determined to take this journey.
• The Moon is Peregrine in the second house, but it is also not a great omen. 

The Story continues:

After waiting hours, Peter and the younger siblings decided to go home around 5:30 p.m. Peter knew that the last train ran at 6 p.m., so they walked south to get the bags and the girls’ purses from where they had hidden them and took the train home.

Around 8 p.m., the young siblings arrived home, alerting Helmut Jr. that the girls never came back to collect them and that they were hoping to see them back home. Helmut Jr. informed Chrisitne’s grandparents, who filed the missing persons report around 8:30 p.m. 

Astrology of the last time Marianne and Christine were seen alive:

The children stated that Marianne and Christine left them around 1 pm. Wolfgang told policemen that the last time he saw the girls was around ten minutes after they went to retrieve the bags. Peter had sent him to look for them, and he saw them talking with a young man, about 17 years old. They walked back to the sandhill, and after another 10 minutes, Wolfgang saw him come back to the beach without them. He tried to ask the young man about his sister, but he ignored him and went on his way.

These timelines are related by young children, so I anticipate that it is an approximation. 

The chart for 1:00 p.m. gives us a 00 Taurus Ascendant, suggesting the time was later.

If we look at the chart for 1:23 p.m. (below), we have a 5-degree Taurus Ascendant. Venus, its ruler, is in the 8th House of Death, which sadly feels more representative of the facts.

• Venus, the ruler of the Ascendant, is in the 8th House of Death. Venus is highly afflicted. It is in the last degrees of the sign that she is peregrine. In a very bad house and applying to a sextile to Saturn - good aspect, but bad planet. As soon as she moves to Capricorn, she will gain dignity by Triplicity and Term. I guess the accidental debilitation was stronger than the promise of a better condition. Venus is in the sign of Sagittarius, which is a double sign - two victims.
• The 7th House represents the perpetrator or perpetrators in Scorpio, ruled by Mars.
  • We find Mars in Virgo in the 5th House of Children. Could it be that the perpetrator had a predilection for children? 
  • Mars in Virgo. Describes someone that can be suntanned and well proportionate. Possibly more than one perpetrator, Virgo is also a double-bodied sign.
  • Mars is being disposited by Mercury and is just separating from a Trine, so we have reception. Could it be that the young boy lured the girls for another? Venus is also just separating from a conjunction with Mercury. 
• We see that Venus is separating from Mars by less than two degrees. Less than two weeks before, on New Year's Day, the girls visited Cronulla Beach. After their deaths, police discovered in their diaries that during this visit, they had been kissed by some boys, which makes me believe that they had met the perpetrator(s) during that last visit. Mars and Venus are significators, so we can anticipate that there is a sexual component to the crime, and Mars also suggests injuries from something that cuts.
• AGE of the perpetrator: Lilly said (p.337), “If Saturn, Jupiter or Mars be significators, then behold the distance of them from the Sun… the nearer the Sun, the lesser in age.”
  • If we consider that  Mars in relation to the Sun is in the opening the Trine to the Sun, Lilly continued "…from the square to the opposition signifieth the age of 36.” Mars is 114 degrees from the Sun, closer to the square than the opposition. If I do the math correctly, Lilly gave 18 years to the first square and 36 to the second. So 114 degrees are close to 22 years.
  • The helper is ruled by Mercury, so much younger. This could be the young man that Wolfgang saw talking to the girls.
• Lilly said (p. 328), “For the fugitives, have respect to the Moon, being the natural Significatrix of them…” We have the Moon peregrine in the sign of Aries in the 12th House of isolation and imprisonment. The girls didn’t have a way to get away. 

They are found:

On the morning of January 12, a man strolling with his nephews spotted what he initially believed to be a mannequin partially buried in the sand. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a lifeless body. He promptly headed to the Wanda Surf Club to alert the authorities. There is considerable public information about the injuries, so I will refrain from detailing them here, but they are very Marcian. 

The Investigation:

The Police did thousands of interviews and offered a £10,000  reward, but they never had enough to charge anyone. Sadly, that area of the sand hills in Wanda was rampant with sex crimes, from peeping toms to flashers and other similar offenses, so no one came forward to talk to the police. 

The girls living in a different area of the city most likely had little opportunity to understand what a dangerous position they were in. 

The only “suspects” the police had over the years were similar offenders who could have done the crimes. I didn’t find any information about the police, looking at more than one perpetrator.

 It’s hard to comprehend how a single person could violently murder two girls without any assistance, especially given the circumstances. It was the middle of a summer day, with passersby fishing nearby, and the victims were found not far away from where their siblings awaited them. They were in an open space—not confined to a locked room, devoid of escape routes. In this instance, there is clear evidence that the tragic events unfolded right there in the sand hills.

The Astrology:

-Lilly suggested some names depending on significators. Lilly said (p. 340) Jupiter in the Angles - short names with few syllables, Saturn, more syllables. We have Jupiter angular in the 1st house and Saturn in the 10th. 

We are considering two perpetrators, maybe one short and one long (p. 341). “To know the names by the Lord of the 7H, or the planet in the 7H or the planet joined with them as follows: For Mars in the sign of Mercury, Matthew. 

There are a few suspects, let's see if one of them is in the list for Mars, 7th House significator, or Jupiter and Saturn, angular planets.

The Suspects:

1. Alan Basset - during his incarceration for murder, he gave a detective an abstract painting that resembled the crime scene. Most police detectives didn’t consider him the perpetrator. 
2. Christopher Wilder -  He was 19 at the time of Marianne and Christine’s death. He was a serial killer who escaped to the US. In January 1963, Christopher raped a 13-year-old girl in the company of two other men. In 1968, he was questioned regarding some sexual assaults at Manly Beach - Even though both offenses were at beaches, they were very far apart. Manly Beach is 44 km away from Cronulla. I wonder how often perpetrators move their hunting grounds. 
3. Derek Percy - He was 16 in January 1965. Someone resembling him was on the train and talked with the girls that day in 1965. All of his crimes were against younger children. Marianne and Christine were very close to his age. Don’t get me wrong, I think he was very dangerous and a horrible human being (if we could even call him that), but his crimes were towards pre-teen children. 

This case hasn’t been solved.

In Memorial

I would like to end by remembering Marianne and Christine. 

From their resting places:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
CHRISTINE MARY SHARROCK³
Aged 15 Years
Died 11 January 1965
GOD HAD HER IN HIS KEEPING
WE HAVE HER IN OUR HEARTS
RIP

---

Sources:

Buried Bones, Episode 82: Sands of Crime
Casefile Podcast, Case 01: The Wanda Beach Murders
True Crime Island
Crimes and Consequences, EP 104: The Wanda Beach Murders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Beach_Murders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Beach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wilder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Percy

Footnotes:

1. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70764995/marianne-schmidt ↩︎
2. All the reports say "two fifteen-year-old girls," but by this date, Marianne was 16. ↩︎
3. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70764870/christine_mary-sharrock/photo
   ↩︎