I’m the Zodiac Killer

By Ted Cruz 

It all started at my local Subway sandwich joint in ‘17. I was delving into the second half of my footlong on italian with only shredded lettuce and yellow mustard, praying to God asking for him to put an end to this wretched stage of teenage veganism when my world was turned completely on its head. From the corner of my eye, I saw one of my fellow pre-play-rehearsal-subway-goers summon a picture from google on their iPod Touch. This troubled me greatly, as I knew that our Subway did not offer publicly available WiFi. Maybe the Lord or the universe or Simon Cowell had made this google search possible for my phoneless friend for a reason. My psychic senses were giving me that particular tingle that meant I was on the brink of destruction from the contents of my friend’s iPod fourth generation. My clairvoyance had never done me wrong up until now, and it wasn’t about to disappoint. When the photo was revealed to the rest of us, I knew that my carefree youth was behind me. 

When it became my turn to hold the iPod, I found myself looking into the sultry, republican eyes of one Ted Cruz. Smiling with his signature flare that screamed “I’m definitely part-iguana, or at the very least iguana-adjacent,” Tedward Cruz’s image faded into black, and I was left looking at my own reflection in the darkness of my friend’s dead electronic device. It is important to note that while I am now aware that the picture of Tedwin Cruz had vanished due to my freshman year compadre’s inability to carry a charger, I had no idea at the time. How? Well, that’s simple. I happen to look exactly like Tedgar Cruz. 

At that moment, I knew that my only option was to stand my ground; the two working Sandwich Artists were blocking the entrance with a Glock 19 in each of each of their hands. Yes, you read that correctly. Each of each of. That’s 4 glocks, all pointed at me in this Subway. And all because I bear a more-than-passing resemblance to Tedwick Cruz. 

Well, I may be misleading you there. As all of you know by now, Tedmund Cruz has been found by the Court of Public Opinion to be responsible for the Zodiac Killer shenanigans of the 60s and 70s. Of course, I could not have anything to do with these murderous hijynx! I wasn’t even close to being born at this time in history, or so I had managed to make all those around me believe up until now. But now my secret was out. I, Sarah, am the Zodiac Killer. 

How did I hide my secret identity from society at large until this fateful sandwich outing, you ask? The answer is simple. Each morning and night, I lather my face in Johnson & Johnson diaper rash cream and spray my entire body from head to hammer toe in WD-40, as I have every single day since my inaugural crime spree in the mid to late 1960s. (Don’t drill me on the semantics, it’s easy to forget the particulars when you have so many tracks to cover. It happens to the best of us) I managed to live the entire first half of my life in a solitary hideyhole in order to set the scene for a future where there would be nobody to accidentally confess my crimes to. Then, around 1963, I hit the ground running. Blah, blah, you’ve heard the story. Cyphers and the like. Cut to this Veggie Delite sandwich on this day in this Subway, and the jig is finally up. 

In order to punish me for my heinous (all the while impressive) crimes, the U.S. government has bestowed upon me a punishment that compared to the Death Penalty, seems a tad cruel and unusual. From now until 2024 or 2025, depending on how my grades turn out, I am doomed to a future of writing about extreme winter sports and retail-worker anecdotes on

this here publication. Worse yet, the crew at the Pittiful News isn’t even letting me touch the whole horoscope thing. They say it would be too meta. What do they know anyway?

I have stormed the Capitol

By Lord Tyler Sikov

               If you turn the news on right now you will probably hear that many protestors have stormed the capitol building. Just like the amount of people that showed up to Trump’s inauguration, the number of protestors has been greatly exaggerated. It is just me here. I mean the congress members are also here, but I am the only protestor. What am I protesting you might ask; well, I am protesting the injustice that has been perpetrated against penguins. The past several times I have released penguins into the chambers of congress everyone freaked out. Did I toss a few off of the balcony making them land on some senators’ heads, possibly? But they did not react the way I hoped they would so I have infiltrated the capital to lighten the mood by pulling a number of other zany pranks.

               The first prank I am pulling is ding dong ditching the congress members in alphabetical order. I started with Susan Collins and ended with Mitch McConnell. None of them saw it was me, as I was dressed like a mummy mummy. That is a mummy dressed as an old timey British mother. This wacky fool that I pulled did not feel like it got my message across so I moved onto my second prank. I flooded the entire building with laughing gas. This was good as they had run out in the basement dentist’s office and Orin Hatch was getting a root canal. That spoof seemed like something the joker would do, and as I don’t like copying my uncle, I moved onto my next prank quickly.

               I went and found all of the presidential photos. I drew mustaches on the presidents that did not have mustaches and I removed the mustaches from the portraits that had mustaches. This was seeming rather small scale so I decided to step up my game. I went to one of the large open rooms filled with statues. I began to move the statues to different places. But every time I would look back, the statues would be right back where they started. I determined that they had some sort of spell on them similar to the one in the movie Night at the Museum. So, I went and asked nicely if they would move to random places and help me with my wacky hijinks. They happily helped, if there is one thing I know about statues it is that they love pulling pranks.

               This is where the problem began. Capitol police were called to the scene. By this point I had already placed jello recreations of all of the congress members in their seat on the house and senate floor. I also meticulously made jello capitol police, this confused the human police enough for me to escape. The news stations have been painting what I did as an insurrection and claim that I have seditious intent. While I have in the past successfully overthrown the government, this was not one of those time. This is all to say that there may be a few less articles by me for a bit, it all depends on the grand jury’s vote. I have catnapped most of the jury members’ cats for a bit of incentive for them to not indict me.

We have been asked to change our name, so we are brainstorming

By the writers of [REDACTED]

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I Assassinated the President of the United States

By Lord Tyler Sikov

               Now you may be wondering if I actually assassinated the president. The answer is yes. I assassinated Abraham Lincoln. You may be thinking, no, John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln. You would be wrong. John Wilkes Booth is an anagram of my name, Lord Tyler Sikov. I have hidden my true identity for a long time. There are many reasons why. As many of you know, I shot the president in the back of the head and then jumped out of the balcony in Ford’s theater. I did sprain my ankle but I got away and changed into one of the costumes from the play.

               I escaped and I was in the clear until that idiot Garfield got into power. I created a new identity this time, Charles J. Guiteau, a writer and lawyer, also conveniently another anagram for my name.  I saw him at a train station and shot him twice. I disappeared into the crowd and some other guy took the fall for me, as they thought he was me. I then impersonated a doctor and committed medical malpractice to ensure that my job was done well, and the president did not survive. I then went and perjured myself to say that the man they wrongly convicted was actually rightly convicted, that man who was unfortunately caught in the crossfire was sentenced to death.

               I laid low for a little while but then William McKinley was elected. I knew I had to be craftier this time, that I should not approach him with a gun. So, I concealed my gun in a handkerchief. This time the authorities almost caught me but luckily there was another man holding a handkerchief right behind me. The name I chose for this mission was Leon Czolgosz, another anagram. That is the name they attributed to the killer. I took a 62-year nap. By then many people had failed to copy my style. No presidents were assassinated while I was asleep, there were many attempts. I never fail, so those were not my work by any means.

               Once I woke up Kennedy was president. I created a new identity, under the name Lee Harvey Oswald, the semordnilaps of my name, I thought I would go a different direction as anagrams might be getting easier as technology evolves. I had missed killing under a name that was three names long. This one was very fun because people after the fact noted that there were two gunmen, they were right. A man was working in the building, where I planted a number of weapons. In reality there was only one gunman, I work alone. But I needed evidence as the judicial system had advanced during my hibernation period. I did not have to do much cleaning up after this shooting, Jack Ruby took care of my prop Oswald once they made it to jail. Then Ted Cruz’s father killed Ruby, making my job even easier.

               Since then, there have been many more attempts on the lives of presidents, none of which I have been involved in. Ted Cruz, aka the Zodiac Killer, has been keeping a close eye on my activities. Game recognizes game. I have done my best to stay out of his sphere of control. I text with him, the Unabomber, the still living guy from the Boston marathon (that cutie), and all of the alive serial killers, school shooters, and other various Guantanamo bay inmates. When I worked at Nickelodeon, I wrote a few episodes of SpongeBob. I used this to my advantage to send coded messages to my friends who have been less fortunate at their life of crime. The code I used was what our group called ourselves. E.V.I.L. aka Every Villain Is Lemons.

“Dove Chocolate Sayings Made Me Do It!” Says Local Arsonist

By Rachel Boward

“I’m innocent!” David Davidson boldly exclaimed as he unceremoniously collapsed to his knees outside a Pittsburgh police department Monday afternoon, “It was Dove Chocolate, they made me do it.” Davidson is accused of initiating a spree of house fires Friday evening which led to the mild terror and first degree burns of several South Oakland residents. However, against the urging of his legal consultants, he refuses to plead guilty to the charges brought against him. He instead blames “Dove Chocolate Sayings” for manipulating him into lighting the match.

In a wild turn of events, Davidson’s seemingly incoherent plea may not be unfounded. In a search of the suspect’s third floor apartment late Saturday night, dozens of the iconic Dove Chocolate candy wrappers were found amongst empty Sorento’s pizza boxes and half completed Chemistry assignments. Such seemingly innocent sayings as, “Do Something Spontaneous” and “Temptation is fun…giving in is even better!” meant to inspire the typical middle-aged female population suddenly turned dark in light of recent events. Even darker still were the sayings on the wrappers found lodged deep into the crevices of the stained mustard yellow La-Z-Boy recliner in the bedroom of the perpetrators home. “‘Make someone melt today’ and ‘Don’t settle for a spark, light a fire instead’, these are real quotes seen on the back of these candy wrappers. If these are found to be authentic, we might have a real epidemic on our hands,” Police Chief Henry McHenry boldly proclaimed in a press conference early Monday morning.
In a Pittiful news exclusive interview Sunday night, we got the real scoop on the darker findings of the investigation. “Yes, it’s true,” Jack Jackson revealed, “…there are more.” With a helpless grimace, Jackson opens the old Crocs shoebox sitting ominously in the center of the dirty Starbuck’s table. With a gasp, Richardson pulled out a single wrapper from amongst the hundreds of crumpled tin foil specimens that lay inside. “‘Gas stations are always a good place to find the ingredients to start a fire…in your heart,’” Richardson reads in a hushed tone, “No way, this can’t be.” Many more eerily specific quotes such as, “Strike the red end, no, no, against the box, you idiot, not your hand”, and “Okay, now just pour the gasoline onto the apartment, good, good girl, er, boy” could be glimpsed shining in the dim light at the top of the pile. If these wrappers are indeed the real deal, this may go deeper than anyone could ever have expected. “This could be government deep,” Jackson whispers, cringing at the sight of the empty shells in the box before him.
Whether a government conspiracy, mass-media cover-up, or simply the musings of a deranged chocolate factory worker, one can’t deny that for the first time in human history, eating an Almond Joy could’ve saved the world a whole lot of grief. The trial begins Tuesday.