Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for his claims about his violent past, including assertions that he tried to stab a childhood friend and hit his mother with a hammer. While the media has questioned the authenticity of the stories, Carson has not backed down and now he’s taking his claims even further.
On Saturday, Carson told a crowd of reporters that he was the infamous Zodiac Killer, a mysterious serial killer from the late 1960s.
“I had so much anger, so much hatred in my heart when I murdered dozens of people in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the soft-spoken Carson explained in a relaxed tone. “But, you know, I’m a totally different person now.”
“Those experiences shaped who I am today,” he added.
While some were intrigued by this new development in a case which has been unsolved for decades, many experts and media figures immediately questioned Carson’s latest claims.
“By all accounts, Carson grew up in the Detroit area, over 2,000 miles from where the murders took place,” explained Brian Baldwin, a political analyst for The New York Times. “And he doesn’t match any of the witnesses’ descriptions of the killer.”
CNN interviewed several friends and classmates from Carson’s high school days, and none of them had any recollection of Carson planning elaborate murder schemes or writing cryptic messages to newspapers.
“That’s not the Ben I remember,” one friend said.
Carson immediately fired back, asserting once again that the media has been unfairly attacking him.
“I can’t believe these pathetic lies you’re trying to spread about me,” he said in a CNN interview. “It is 100 percent true that I was the Zodiac. I did those murders. I killed those people.”
Carson’s numbers in the Republican race were back on the rise, according to the latest polls.
