History

The Zodiac Killer: An Unsolved Case and Its Many Suspects (Plus One Joke)

The Zodiac Killer is believed to have murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, and taunted police and newspapers with letters and ciphers. The case is officially unsolved. Many people have been named as suspects by amateur sleuths. No one has ever been charged.

By The Tinfoil Tribune StaffEra: 1968–present · Verdict: Unproven
Illustration of a page of invented cipher symbols. These are not the real Zodiac ciphers.
Illustration of a page of invented cipher symbols. These are not the real Zodiac ciphers. Illustration: The Tinfoil Tribune

Verdict: Unproven. The sources below do not establish this claim. That is not the same as proving it false. How we rate stories

The Story

In 1968 and 1969, a gunman killed five people in the San Francisco Bay Area. His last confirmed victim was a San Francisco cab driver, killed in October 1969. He wrote to Bay Area newspapers, calling himself the Zodiac and sending coded letters announcing his crimes.

One of those ciphers, the '340 cipher' sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969, was solved in December 2020 by a team of amateur codebreakers, and the FBI confirmed the solution, CBS News reported. It did not reveal his name. The Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people. He is believed to have killed five.

The Ted Cruz 'theory' is a joke. He was born in 1970, after the murders.

The case is officially unsolved. Over the decades, authors, podcasters and amateur groups have named many suspects. Arthur Leigh Allen, whom Vallejo police once identified as the Zodiac, denied it until his death in 1992. In 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a partial DNA profile from Zodiac letters did not match him. Later claims by private groups have not been confirmed by law enforcement, and this entry does not name living people.

Then there is the joke. By 2016, a meme claiming Sen. Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer had taken off online. NPR traced it to a 2013 tweet and found it was kept alive by Twitter comedians. That was the point: Cruz was born in 1970, after the killings. To be completely clear, Ted Cruz is not the Zodiac Killer. The real killer has never been identified.

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Origins

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Zodiac killed five Bay Area residents in 1968 and 1969, the last of them a San Francisco cab driver in October 1969. He sent 21 letters about his crimes to Bay Area newspapers, according to the Chronicle, and CBS News reports he went silent in the early 1970s.

The Claims

Key Evidence

Fact Check Unproven

The Evidence Against

  • Arthur Leigh Allen, whom Vallejo police once identified as the Zodiac, died in 1992 and denied to the end that he was the killer. In 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that police inspectors said a partial DNA profile from Zodiac letters did not match him.
  • Other suspects promoted by private groups or authors have not been confirmed by any law enforcement agency.
  • The Ted Cruz 'theory' is a joke. NPR reported in 2016 that it appears to have started with a 2013 tweet and was kept alive by Twitter comedians. Cruz was born in 1970.

Documents & Sources

Each link was checked for availability on Oct. 27, 2026. Links open in a new tab.

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