Beto O'Rourke was a member of computer hacking group called Cult of the Dead Cow who posted fiction about killing children and called himself 'Psychedelic Warlord'

Beto O'Rourke was a teenage computer hacker who posted fiction about killing children, it was revealed Friday - a day after he threw himself into the Democratic president race. 

O'Rourke acknowledged in an exclusive interview with the author of a forthcoming book that he belonged to the Cult of the Dead Cow, the oldest group of computer hackers in U.S. history.

Members of the hugely influential CDC, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, have protected his secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability.

But O'Rourke said in an interview conducted during his failed run for the Senate last year that he was a member from the age of 15 until the age of 18, and pilfered long-distance phone service to fund his primitive family computer's connection to the 'bulletin boards' - predecessors of websites - on which the group existed. 

He did not say if he engaged in credit card or calling card fraud, which other members of the group say they used to pay for their connections, and which could have been a felony if he had been caught.

And O'Rourke was revealed to have posted fiction during his time as a hacker, including a short story written from the point of view of a driver who intentionally killed two children because they were 'happy.'

In the interview O'Rourke said being part of the CDC shaped his values in later life.

 

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