Zodiac Killer Resurfaces To Call for Ted Cruz’s Removal from the Senate
A cryptic message, believed to be written by the infamous Zodiac Killer, appeared this week in three parts in three Texas newspapers- The Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Dallas Morning News.
The Zodiac Killer, who has never been identified or caught, claims to have murdered 37 people (with 5 confirmed victims) in a Bay Area murder spree from the late 1960s to early 1970s. He published ciphers about his crimes in San Francisco newspapers by threatening the papers that he would kill more people if they didn’t publish his code.
Though disappeared from sight for 40 years, the ciphers and cases he left behind have been continually under investigation. Never providing a key to his codes, the killer’s cipher from 1969 was only decoded in December 2020. He appears to use the same key for this cipher as well.
Decoded, the three ciphers together read (predicted punctuation added for clarity):
“I have done many things that other men can only dream in hopes of being reborn in paradice (SIC). You have gone decades without finding me, now I will give one hint to my identity and say I am not Ted Cruz. I would love to take credit for the Capitol chaos. But even I would never blame children for a trip to Cancun in the middle of a crisis. That is just too far; if you wanna go to Mexico instead of helping your constituents not die, I fully support that and it is almost as good as insurrection and probably will gain you paradice (SIC) riches. But take responsibility and do not blame children. Even I think that is spineless and I send letters in code to newspapers under a pseudonym. Before now it had been an honor to be connected to Cruz with letting someone call his wife ugly and making the lives of millions of people worse, and likely through negligence having a higher body count than me. But this is too far. Kick this man out of the Senate.”
These ciphers were seen by a surprisingly large audience. While print newspaper circulation has declined in the decades since Zodiac’s killing spree, many Texas residents sought out newspapers to start fires to heat their powerless, freezing homes.
When asked about the letter accompanying the ciphers that prompted them to publish the message, the editors of the newspapers explained that, unlike in previous instances, there was no mention of harming others should the ciphers not be published. The letter just said:
“This is the Zodiac Killer and I have a very important message about Senator Ted Cruz.”
Editors, angry with the Senator for years of being an embarrassment to the state of Texas, decided to run the cipher despite the lack of accompanying threat. One, who agreed to be quoted anonymously, said “I’d publish any of Zodiac’s ciphers if they were dunking on Ted Cruz. And not advocating for violence, of course. Ted does enough of that for all of us.”
This appears to prove once and for all that the longstanding internet joke of Senator Ted Cruz himself being the Zodiac Killer is false, despite the senator fitting the profile: a self-aggrandizing man who appears to delight in human suffering.
