Mackenzie Shirilla Birth Chart: Leo Sun, Neptune Split
On May 29, 2026, Steve Shirilla told a podcast his daughter Mackenzie "definitely feels remorse" for the 2022 Strongsville crash. Her Leo Sun in opposition to retrograde Neptune in Aquarius maps the gap his words tried to name.
By Sera Vane·May 30, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
On May 29, 2026, Steve Shirilla sat down with the True Crime This Week podcast and told host James Renner that his daughter Mackenzie keeps a shrine to Dominic Russo in her room — and that she "definitely feels remorse" for the 2022 crash that killed Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan. Her birth chart, cast for August 2, 2004 with no verified birth time, carries a Leo Sun in direct opposition to retrograde Neptune in Aquarius. That single opposition — the angle of two planets sitting across the wheel from each other, fighting for the same airtime — maps the exact gap her father put into words: a self that needs to be clearly seen, and a fog that blurs intention from outcome. What follows is a reading of that pattern as the chart shows it — not a verdict, not a recap of the crime, but a birth chart read against a psychological gap the family itself put on record.
Pluto in Aquarius square natal North Node (orb 0.71°)
What's Happening
The Shirilla case has been back in the news cycle through spring 2026 on three pegs. Netflix released the documentary The Crash this year, which reignited public attention on the July 31, 2022 incident in Strongsville, Ohio — Mackenzie Shirilla was convicted of murder in August 2023 for the crash that killed her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan. She is currently serving her sentence at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, with parole eligibility in 2037 (WKYC Cleveland). In late April 2026, her defense filed a third appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court citing new medical evidence of a pre-existing condition that may have caused her to black out at the wheel (TMZ).
On May 29, 2026, Steve Shirilla appeared on the True Crime This Week podcast hosted by James Renner. He told the show his daughter keeps a shrine to Dominic Russo in her bedroom and has repeatedly told him she did not kill him intentionally. "If you would have heard the sound that came out of her, it would have crushed you," he said, describing her reaction after the crash. She "definitely feels remorse" for the deaths of Russo and Flanagan, he stated, and added: "I apologize to the Flanagans right now; if it was just Davion in the car, she wouldn't be in jail." On the same day, Gypsy Rose Blanchard told TMZ she does not believe the remorse is genuine (TMZ).
The Natal Chart
The single sharpest line in the chart is the Leo Sun at 10° opposing Neptune at 14° Aquarius, with Neptune retrograde — a turning back inward of the planet of fog and dissolved boundaries. Leo wants to be seen clearly; the Sun in Leo at this degree is the placement of someone whose identity needs an audience that gets it right, who experiences being misunderstood as a kind of injury. Neptune across the wheel is the counter-weather: the part of the chart where outlines blur, where motive and impact stop matching, where a story about yourself can drift from the witnessable facts without anyone — least of all you — noticing the drift. That's the cost side of the Leo Sun, and it sits in the architecture of the chart, not in any one event.
What Steve Shirilla described to that podcast — the daughter who insists she did not mean to kill anyone, the shrine in the bedroom, the inability to be sure where her own intention ends and her grief begins — sits squarely on this opposition. That's the kind of Sun-Neptune tension that runs through Kouri Richins's natal pattern, though hers expresses through different angles entirely; in true-crime defendants whose accounts don't square cleanly with the documented record, this kind of Sun-Neptune axis shows up over and over. It is not a verdict on what happened in the car in Strongsville — it is a description of a real psychological structure, and the price of that structure is that accountability, in the public, witnessable sense, is exactly what this opposition makes hardest to deliver.
Underneath the Sun-Neptune axis is a second weather system. Her Moon in Pisces sits at 6°, almost exactly conjunct retrograde Uranus at 5° Pisces — a conjunction (planets stacked at the same degree, fused into a single signal) of the emotional body and the planet of sudden, ungovernable reaction. Pisces is already the most permeable sign for emotion; layered with Uranus, it suggests a feeling life that can snap from porous calm to electric shock in a beat. The cross-current: that same Moon sits almost exactly opposite Mercury at 6° Virgo — a near-exact pivot in the chart. Mercury articulates; the Moon experiences; on this axis, what she feels and what she can put into words rarely match — a structural problem for any defendant whose credibility depends on describing her own state of mind.
A third placement sharpens both of these. Mars at 25° Leo gives the chart a will function that runs hot, theatrical, and impatient with being questioned — the kind of driver-seat Mars that pushes through situations rather than pausing inside them. In a Leo Sun chart, a Leo Mars stacks the deck toward identity as performance, and toward making decisions that protect that performance under pressure. Set against the Sun-Neptune fog, the picture sharpens: an identity that needs to be coherent, a feeling life that can short-circuit without warning, an articulation gap that won't let the inner state translate cleanly, and a will that doesn't naturally slow down to check itself. None of those four placements caused anything; they describe a psychological structure — the one her father is trying to put words to, on a podcast, in May 2026.
The Transit Picture
What makes May 29 worth reading against the sky in real time is what's currently sitting on her nodal axis. Transiting Pluto in Aquarius at 5° is square (the 90-degree friction aspect that forces a reckoning) to her natal North Node in Taurus at 6° — a precise alignment that holds through 2026. The North Node is the chart's pointer toward the developmental path forward; Pluto's square to it means that path is now running through forced, public dismantling. Transiting Mars in Taurus at 8° is also conjunct that same natal North Node — a brief and hot activation of the point Pluto is grinding against, with both transits pressing on the question of where her life goes from here.
Layered on top of the nodal pressure is a quieter pair of contacts to her Leo Sun. Transiting Saturn in Aries is trining (the easy-flow 120-degree angle) her natal Leo Sun this year — a transit that, in someone else's chart, would read as a stabilizing year. Transiting Pluto in Aquarius continues its long opposition to her natal Sun — part of the same Pluto-in-Aquarius pressure shaping the weekly weather for everyone with sensitive Aquarius placements. The contradiction matters: Saturn offers an opening to build credibility, while Pluto keeps tearing at the same point. Kouri Richins's chart carried a similar split during her own legal proceedings, and the same pattern tracked there — every stabilizing window the slower transits offered was undercut by the exposure of the harder ones. The chart this year is a public-relations window the sky itself will not let stay quiet.
What This Means
Read together, the natal pattern and the current transits describe what Steve Shirilla tried to put into words and what Gypsy Rose Blanchard publicly doubted in the same news cycle: an interior state of remorse that may be real to the person experiencing it, and an inability to translate that state into the language observers expect from genuine accountability. The Sun-Neptune opposition keeps self-image and witnessable fact out of register. The Moon-Mercury opposition keeps what she feels from arriving in language anyone outside her can verify. The Aquarius end of the Sun-Neptune axis has its own cost: Aquarius holds principle at arm's length from personal feeling, so accountability that should sound intimate and specific tends, on this end of the chart, to come out abstract and depersonalized. None of that proves intent or argues innocence; it describes a structural mismatch between what's inside this person and what reaches the public square.
The third appeal currently in front of the Ohio Supreme Court rests on legal grounds — new medical evidence, alleged trial errors — but the public-square version of the case continues to be argued on the question her father went on the podcast to address: does she feel sorry. The chart doesn't judge. It maps what's already there. What's there is a Leo Sun that needs to be seen rightly, a Pisces Moon that experiences without language, a Virgo Mercury that wants to articulate without the feeling life under it, and a Neptune across the wheel that softens every edge those other placements try to draw. The chart pattern fits the public dispute; it does not resolve it. That distinction is exactly what natal astrology is for, and exactly what it is not for.
For entertainment and self-reflection purposes. Not predictive and not a substitute for professional advice.
What is Mackenzie Shirilla's zodiac sign?
Mackenzie Shirilla was born August 2, 2004 in Strongsville, Ohio, which makes her a Leo Sun at 10°. Her chart also carries a Pisces Moon at 6° conjunct retrograde Uranus, a Virgo Mercury, and a Leo Mars at 25° — a Sun and Mars both in the same fire sign, with an emotional life running through Pisces water.
What does Mackenzie Shirilla's birth chart look like?
Her noon-fallback chart, calculated without a verified birth time, shows Sun and Mars in Leo, Moon conjunct Uranus in Pisces, Mercury in Virgo opposing the Moon, and the Sun in direct opposition to retrograde Neptune in Aquarius — the natal aspect that maps the gap between intention and outcome her father described publicly in May 2026.
What does a Sun opposition Neptune in a natal chart mean?
A Sun-Neptune opposition describes a structural tension between the part of the self that wants to be seen clearly and the part where outlines blur — motive and impact drift apart, self-image and witnessable fact don't always line up. It often shows up as identity confusion under pressure, or accounts of events that don't square with documented facts.
Is Mackenzie Shirilla's appeal expected to succeed?
We don't predict legal outcomes from astrology. Her third appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, filed April 2026, cites new medical evidence about a possible pre-existing condition. Through 2026, the transit picture suggests sustained public pressure on the case regardless of how the court rules; the chart describes pressure on the path forward, not the verdict.
Why are people skeptical of Mackenzie Shirilla's remorse?
Public skepticism — most visibly Gypsy Rose Blanchard's May 29 TMZ comments — centers on the gap between her father's account and her own past statements. The chart shows why that gap is structurally hard to close: a Moon-Mercury opposition keeps inner experience and outward language out of register, so genuine feeling can still sound rehearsed to observers.
