No, Sen. Ted Cruz is not the ‘Zodiac Killer.’ But he finally just tweeted about it.

Is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the “Zodiac Killer,” the infamous Northern California serial killer from the late 1960s and early 1970s?

Not. A. Chance.

But the internet rumor-turned-meme that has ensnared Cruz for much of the past two years has finally come full circle with the Texas senator himself taking part in the fun.

On Wednesday — in a funny exchange on Twitter with his fellow Republican, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska — Cruz tweeted out what appears to be a cipher known to belong to the serial killer known as the “Zodiac.”

Eye-popping emoji.

The tweet drew a collective stunned expression — and a few “I knew it!” assertions — from journalists and political observers who have followed the hilariously sensational, but false, theories that connect Cruz to the “Zodiac” killer.

Jokes aside, Cruz was not and could not possibly be the “Zodiac” killer, and there is plenty of evidence to dispel this myth — starting with the date of his birthday, which was 1970, or around the same time that the serial killer was committing the infamous murders in California’s Bay Area.

But that did not, and may never, stop the internet from running with one of the most hilarious memes to dominate Google search results and social media. It is unclear when exactly the association was born, but one blog post on The Verge pointed out that it may have come from a tweet that dates as far back as 2013.

The rumor didn’t actually go viral until early 2016 when Cruz squared off against Republican opponents during a presidential debate. At the time, comedians seemed determined to make one of several innocuous Google search queries — among them was “How tall is Jeb Bush?” — turn into a trending topic, according to NPR’s Sam Sanders and Paulina Firozi.

“I just tweeted out: 'Hey everybody should Google 'Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac killer?' and see if we can hit the ticker on there,'" Nathan LaMagna reportedly told NPR about how he photoshopped the Google search query into an image of the debate as if it really happened.

Yahoo News once even asked Heidi Cruz, Ted Cruz’s wife, about it.

“Well, I’ve been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all. There’s a lot of garbage out there,” she said.

The rest, of course, is history. Cruz as potentially the “Zodiac” killer has been a running joke among journalists, politicians, jokesters and, now, Cruz. It’s finally come full circle.

So, now that Cruz has come out with it, will this put to rest those rumors?

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Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

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