Disinformation has always been an issue in our society, and with the rise of social media, bad actors have been given carte blanche to spread whatever falsehoods they desire without any fear of repercussion. Growing weary of the constant veil of distrust I have to apply, I have made it my mission to root out all disinformation I have encountered.
This leads me to my neighbor Connor. In the sixth grade, Connor told me that he “did fingers, mouth stuff, and even full-on sex” concurrently with every member of Destiny’s Child after attending one of their concerts. I considered Connor my friend and thus had no basis for not believing this claim which, over two decades later, appears dubious at best. I’ve hired the Hard Times to fact-check Connor, and with such a crack team of investigators now in my employ, I’m confident that I can get to the bottom of this.
According to Connor, he was roped into attending their concert near our hometown of Walnut Creek, California a couple weeks before Halloween with his family to celebrate his sister’s birthday. He thought their music was “fucking lame,” but was pleasantly surprised at the show’s conclusion when Kelly Rowland gestured for him to “come hither” and follow her backstage, where the collective tryst supposedly occurred in the group’s dressing room. Connor claimed to have completed the carnal act in time to join his family in the merch line to buy his sister a tour shirt before his absence had been detected.
VERDICT
False. While Destiny’s Child did play a show at the Concord Pavilion in Concord, CA on Sunday, October 15, 2000, Connor was not there. The Hard Times was able to confirm through multiple sources that, while Connor’s parents did take Caitlin to the Destiny’s Child concert, Connor himself was attending Dribble Drills basketball camp in the gymnasium of nearby Walnut Creek Intermediate School, having been driven there by the father of another camper. In fact, The Hard Times was able to procure an attendance sheet from the camp’s former director Ron Barrister who, while completely mystified at the request, assured us that the documentation was likely still in an old filing cabinet in his basement.
I have since called Connor in an effort to confront him about his blatant falsehoods. While he was at first pleased to hear from me, his tone quickly changed to one of disgusted bewilderment as his deceit was called out. Though his exact words were “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not have anything better to do? I have to put my kid to bed. Jesus Christ, dude” before hanging up, it’s clear he was attempting to obfuscate the lies he had been caught making.
I would like to thank the Hard Times Fact Check Team for their diligence and attention to detail in bringing light to this flagrant and uncalled-for misrepresentation at the hands of Connor, and I hope he sees the ignominy associated with this article’s publication as an opportunit to portray his actions honestly going forward.
No way, Rowlf is a certified good boy and possibly the only muppet above suspicion in the Zodiac murder case.
“Okay, so like, tie her up for me, and then tie yourself up, and make sure you tie the bonds really tight or I’ll shoot you mkaaaay?” Yeah, we don’t really see it.
When it comes to The Muppets and nefarious activity, Gonzo is usually suspect number one, but not this time. As far as we can tell none of the Zodiac’s crimes were sexual in nature, and since Gonzo can’t so much as see a chicken and not get all horned up, the odds of him killing a person and not immediately having sex with them are extremely low. He’s far from clean, God knows, but he is not the Zodiac.
Sure, she has a history of violence and has at least one major axis-2 personality disorder, but the idea that Piggy could generate so much attention as The Zodiac and not take credit for it by now seems implausible.
Other than asking every barely legal girl who crosses his path “What’s your sign baby?” There is little tying Zoot to the Zodiac killings.
Floyd is the “lover not a fighter” type, and he’s too bombed out of his mind on pain pills to solve a Sunday morning Jumble much less create his out cryptic ciphers. Still, he gets oddly cagey whenever the Zodiac is mentioned. What does he know? Who is he protecting? Another member of The Electric Mayhem” perhaps?
Link is too high-profile to commit such nefarious crimes and goad the police, or at least he thinks he is. He probably isn’t the Zodiac, though the “accidental” drowning in the pool raises some serious red flags.
All of the Zodiac’s bodies were found by police. If Gene did it, they would all be in his stomach.
It’s just a name… or is it?!
What kind of animal is The Swedish Chef again? Oh right, human, curious species for a muppet. And what’s with the way he talks? Is that supposed to be Swedish? Our linguists can’t make heads or tails of it, and our researchers could find no record of his life before “The Muppet Show.” It’s as if he came out of nowhere, and whenever you ask about his past he responds with his trademark gibberish. He’s definitely a man with a shady past and a dark secret, could he be The Zodiac? Some of his letters did get pretty gibberishy…
It would explain the Zodiac’s frequent spelling and grammar mistakes, but we find the likelihood that Animal could create his own cypher dubious at best.
He’s the nepo-baby of the Muppets—everyone knows he only got the gig because his rich uncle owns the theater. Yes, Scooter is well accustomed to getting his way, and known for flying off the handle on those rare occasions he doesn’t. A failed pilot, a bumped flight, perhaps a rebuking from a love interest, it wouldn’t take much for Scooter to become filled with rage and desperately seek to regain a sense of control.
Sweetums is basically the Arthur Leigh Allen of muppet Zodiac suspects. Everything in your bones tells you this is the guy. He fits the profile perfectly, he once expressed a desire to kill couples at lover’s lane to Dr. Teeth in 1962, every scrap of circumstantial evidence says he did it but son of a bitch if one or two crucial details just don’t match up. You may not have Zodiac’s prints or handwriting, but we’re keeping an eye on you Sweetums!
Throughout “The Muppet Show” Dr. Honeydew seems to delight in being smarter than the police, or at the very least smarter than Beaker. He has an ego, a clear superiority complex, and has demonstrated what could best be described as moral ambiguity on multiple occasions. Could he also have murder in his heart?
You remember Beauregard, the low-key janitor? Maybe a little too low key. Arthur Leigh Allen was a janitor, coincidence?!
Consider the life of the niche circus performer. Lonely. Transient. Unstable. It can’t be easy making a living throwing a fish as a boomerang, and over the years that hardship is bound to make a man angry. Angry enough to kill and taunt the police? Perhaps. Let’s just say Lew’s boomerang isn’t the only thing that’s fishy about him.
He’s a lifestyle influencer now, same as half the subjects of every true crime doc made in the last decade.
Much has been noted in recent years about the psychopathic tendencies of the comedic mind. Fozzie wouldn’t be the first “clean” comic to live a sinister double life. If Cosby can turn out to be a prolific rapist, Fozzie could easily be The Zodiac.
Killers are frequently the victims of abuse in their formative years? Just how long has the B-man been assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew? How many years of doing his menial tasks, suffering his egotistical insults, being a guinea pig for his various dangerous experiments? The good doctor has instilled a fear in Beaker he dare not challenge, but perhaps in a period of dangerous psychosis, Beaker found a new way to feel a sense of control.
He is canonically insane, as was Zodiac, and really, wouldn’t being a confirmed arsonist be the perfect cover story for a murderer? Psychiatrists of the time often speculated that Zodiac suffered from multiple personality disorder, and when you start connecting the dots it makes perfect sense that one of those personalities was The Zodiac and the other was a muppet demolition freak. Those are basically the two forces at work within each of us.
The multiple-killer theory has existed since the early ’70s, but the idea that the killers were working together and moonlighting as an insult comic duo is a new wrinkle. New, but not implausible. Consider how dissatisfied Statler and Waldorf seem with the world around them, the inner rage that must fuel those admittedly hilarious jibs. Could they once upon a time have satiated such hatred in a less savory manner, say, a cat-and-mouse game with San Francisco police?
Early psychological profilings of the Zodiac pegged him as a transient fringe type living on the margins of society., sort of like… a rat? Think about it.
The man’s name is “Lips” for god sake, he’s clearly full of rage and capable of anything.
Robert Johnson. Jimmy Page. The Bloodhound Gang. Musical history is rife with legends of artists selling their souls to the devil in exchange for wild musical success. Dr.Teeth’s long standing reputation as a calculating fame-obsessive makes him a prime candidate for such an unholy pact. Could the Zodiac murders have been his way of proving his devotion to the dark lord? According to a vinyl copy of “Can You Picture That?” played backwards, yes.
“That city pig toschi is good – but I am bu smarter and better he will get tired then leave me alone.” Zodiac frequently used the word pig or piggies in his letters, often referring to police and other perceived enemies. Kermit, meanwhile, has a long and storied history of suffering physical abuse at the hands of Miss Piggy. Could the frequency of this word in the Zodiac’s communications be a Freudian, nay, FROGIAN slip? We all know it ain’t easy being green, so how much could this frog really take before snapping and adopting a murderous alter persona to vent his frustrations?
According to psychologists, Sam’s ultra-conservative and reserved exterior suggests a sinister and repressed shadow-self lurking under the surface and waiting to strike, and matches the speculative profile of the Zodiac to a T.
