Gov. Greg Abbott Tweets Out To “The Zodiac Killer”

We’ve covered this before…..many years ago….but the Internet believes Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.

Yes, really.

Many of you may not be old enough to even remember this being in the news, so let me fill you in on the background before we get to the Tweet from Gov. Abbott.

Here’s the background:

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer’s identity has never been officially confirmed, and the case remains unsolved to this day.

The Zodiac Killer is known for sending letters and codes to the media, taunting the authorities and claiming responsibility for a series of murders. The killer’s victims were mostly young people who were attacked while out on dates or while driving in their cars.

The Zodiac Killer was first active in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. In the summer of 1969, the killer murdered five people in the Vallejo, California area. The victims were David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, who were shot while parked on a lover’s lane on December 20, 1968; Darlene Ferrin, 22, and Michael Mageau, 19, who were shot while sitting in Ferrin’s car at a drive-in theater on July 4, 1969; and Paul Stine, 29, a taxi driver who was shot and killed in San Francisco on October 11, 1969.

After each murder, the Zodiac Killer would send letters and codes to the media, claiming responsibility for the killings and providing details about the murders that only the killer could have known. The killer also sent letters to schools and newspapers, threatening to kill children and claiming to have killed as many as 37 people.

The Zodiac Killer’s letters were written in a code that has never been completely deciphered. Some of the letters contained clues about the killer’s identity, such as the killer’s age and occupation, but these clues have never led to a definite suspect.

The Zodiac Killer’s case remains one of the most famous unsolved murder cases in American history. Despite numerous leads and suspects over the years, the killer’s identity has never been conclusively determined. The case has been the subject of numerous books, movies, and TV shows, and continues to fascinate people to this day.

So now with that background, you have to really appreciate this Tweet.

Here is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott callling Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer:

The Zodiac Killer celebrates another birthday.

(It’s a joke. He gets it. ) pic.twitter.com/RLVAIa0KsV

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 23, 2022

Abbott clearly says it’s a joke, but you have to wonder….”hidden in plain sight”?

NPR has covered the story before:

If you start typing “Is Ted Cruz…” into Google, before you can even get to the C, Google attempts to auto-complete the sentence. And usually, at least these days, one of the first auto-complete options is a very strange question: “Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac killer?”

Ted Cruz is, of course, not the Zodiac killer. Really, he’s not. (And we will make that point several times during this story.) In fact, there’s no chance he could have been the Zodiac killer. No chance at all.

The FBI describes the Zodiac murders like this: “seemingly random brutal murders of five people in California’s Bay Area in 1968 and 1969 and a series of taunting cryptic notes sent by their killer terrorized Northern California for years.”

But here’s the thing. Ted Cruz wasn’t born until 1970. And, people floating the Ted Cruz/Zodiac Killer conspiracy theory actually point that out.

It’s all really absurd. And increasingly, it’s trending.

It seems to have started with one tweet, sent in 2013, from an account called @RedPillAmerica.

After that, a few enterprising Twitter comedians kept the conspiracy theory alive. Keep in mind, during this time, seemingly everyone keeping the Cruz/Zodiac joke alive on social media knew that it wasn’t true, at all. And again, we should point out here, once more: Ted Cruz is not the Zodiac Killer.

The story lived in the crevices of the Internet and social media for a while, but it really peaked in the last few weeks.

If you’ve spent much time on the Internet during this insane election season, you’ve probably seen somebody make a shocking claim about a certain senator from Texas. It turns out that many online believe that Ted Cruz might actually be the infamous Zodiac Killer that terrorized Northern California in the late ’60s and early ’70s. On one hand, this seems unlikely as Ted Cruz was born in 1970 and the first Zodiac murder was in 1968. But on the other hand, nobody knows who the Zodiac is. So…

Let’s take this from the beginning. The meme began back in 2013, with a Twitter joke from @RedPillAmerica.

But it really took on a life of its own during Cruz’s run for the presidency.

So why do people like to say that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac. I think there are a few key reasons.

1. He’s a bigoted zealot, who by all reports is one of the most repulsive, awful human beings you could ever meet. I mean, even his fellow Senate Republicans feel that way. Lindsay Graham joked last month that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” You know what kind of person ordinary people are most okay with killing? Murderers.

2. He does kinda looks like the Zodiac. Especially if you squint.

3. He says things that really make him sound like a serial killer. This is something he told US Weekly in an effort to seem cool and relatable:

“When I’m away from the family, in Washington, D.C., my dinner is a can of soup. I have dozens in the pantry.”

What a weird thing to do, and a weirder thing to admit in a fluffy “25 Things You Might Not Know About Me!” piece. The phrase “I have dozens in the pantry” sounds like a serial killer describing where he keeps his collection of dismembered limbs. You’re just bringing this Zodiac talk upon yourself, Ted.

It’s worth reiterating that since Ted Cruz was not born for some of the murders, and was in fact a baby for most of the others, he probably isn’t the Zodiac. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a great and perfect tweet.

It definitely doesn’t help that Ted himself Tweets stuff like this:

Happy Halloween pic.twitter.com/jIgTaIMzep

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 31, 2018

From Vox:

Displaying that he has a sense of humor about himself is part of a larger Cruz project over the past year to, under pressure from a surprisingly well-funded Beto O’Rourke campaign, render himself not so toxically disliked by his colleagues. Not so long ago, the former House Speaker John Boehner even called him a “miserable son of a bitch.” Now he’s showing he can laugh about his bad reputation.

Still, the fact remains that his reputation is really bad and that Republicans are only rallying to his side because they recognize that losing a Senate seat in Texas would be a disaster.

So why does this keep coming up?

1) Who is the Zodiac Killer?
If I knew, I would be informing the proper authorities and not writing about it here.

The name, however, is used to denote an unknown serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early ’70s. He murdered at least five people (and left two surviving victims) and is regarded as a leading suspect in four more murders. The Zodiac Killer corresponded with authorities and the public via letters and postcards sent to media organizations, occasionally cryptographically encoded, in which he claimed a total of 37 victims.

The perpetrator of these crimes was never identified, and the combination of the mystery with the publicity-seeking and cinematic flourishes — like signing his letters with a distinctive symbol and communicating in code — have made the killings a subject of national fascination for decades.

There are several books about the Zodiac Killer, one of which, by Robert Graysmith, was adapted into a 2007 film directed by David Fincher. The theory of Graysmith’s book — endorsed to a limited extent by Fincher’s film — is that the killer was Arthur Leigh Allen (who died in 1992), whom Graysmith links to the killings via a raft of circumstantial evidence.

But Allen’s culpability is contradicted by the fragmentary forensic evidence available. Allen’s DNA does not match DNA recovered from one of the Zodiac Killer’s stamps (Graysmith replies that the evidence was not stored with a view toward later DNA technology), and handwriting analysis indicates huge differences between the killer’s letters and any known writings of Allen’s.

The point is the Zodiac Killer’s true identity was never discovered, and he may well still be at large. Since the killings and the letters stopped, it seems likely that he abandoned murder as a hobby and moved into other social deviant behaviors like attending Princeton, working for George W. Bush, or spoiling the GOP’s best-laid plans to stop Donald Trump.

2) Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?
In all seriousness and as best we can tell, no. An exhaustive investigation by the Washington Post’s Philip Bump reveals that Cruz was born in 1970, while the Zodiac Killer’s first confirmed murder occurred in 1968. Therefore Cruz is not the Zodiac Killer.

Cruz’s birth certificate establishes this pretty clearly.

The same document also confirms that Cruz was born in Canada (specifically the province of Alberta, which is known informally as the Texas of Canada), and that his name is Rafael rather than Ted. (As Rafael is also my father’s name, I kind of wish Cruz went by Rafael, since it would make the Spanish spelling of this name better known in the United States and reduce the number of times his name gets misspelled “Raphael” like he’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or a Renaissance painter.)

On the other hand, who even knows what an authentic Canadian birth certificate looks like? It could be a forgery. After all, a person capable of perpetrating the Zodiac Killer’s crimes — and getting away with it — could probably fake some paperwork.

But let’s be honest….

Ted doesn’t look anything like the Zodiac Killer.

In reality, he looks IDENTICAL to the Grandpa Munster:

Ted Cruz looks like Grandpa Munster pic.twitter.com/KDRbrgWKUG

— 2RawTooReal (@2RawTooReal) October 19, 2022

Right?

Odd 🤔
You never see Grandpa Munster
and Ted Cruz in the same room ? pic.twitter.com/96n8z9GrYA

— #ULTRAMAGA "45" DeepDiver# (@TheDeepDiver555) June 5, 2022

Right.

Where’s Grandpa “Ted Cruz”Munster? https://t.co/drOWPjMoel pic.twitter.com/FO517HKZNx

— Tired of this…yet? (@Cynthone60) June 11, 2022