February 21, 2025
Provided Image/Allegany County Sheriff's Office
From left, Daniel Blank, 26; Jack 'Ziz' LaSota, 34; and Michelle Zajko, 32, were arrested Maryland on Feb. 17. LaSota is considered the leader of a cult-like fringe group called the Zizians, who have been linked to six homicides in three states, including Zajko's parents in Delaware County.
Federal investigators are piecing together a web of homicides tied to a cult-like fringe group suspected in the murders of a Delaware County couple and high-profile crimes in other states.
Three armed members of the group, known as the Zizians, were arrested in Maryland on Monday, authorities said, including the Zizians' reputed leader and the woman whose parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, were fatally shot at their home in Chester Heights on Dec. 31, 2022.
Zizians are named after the group's apparent founder, 34-year-old Jack "Ziz" LaSota, a transgender woman and computer programmer whose blog, with posts on subjects like technology – particularly the potential dangers of artificial intelligence – gender identity and radical veganism, became a magnet for like-minded people during the past decade.
The group is made up of vegans and skilled computer scientists, many of whom who left behind their mainstream lives to enter LaSota's online orbit and eventually live together in various parts of the country.
A yearslong timeline of incidents that authorities believe are connected to the Zizians intensified in January when a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed, allegedly in a shootout with two members near the Canadian border in Vermont. Days earlier, in California, a former landlord of the Zizians was found dead at his Vallejo property where he had once been attacked by the group for trying to evict them in 2022.
On Monday, Maryland State Police arrested LaSota along with Michelle Zajko, 32, of Chester Heights, Delaware County, and Daniel Blank, 26, of Berkeley, California. The trio were located on a property in rural western Maryland after the property's owner had an encounter with them, and the Zizians had asked if they could camp out on the property in their box trucks. The man became suspicious and called the police. All three were charged with trespassing and weapons offenses.
LaSota, Zajko, and Blank were denied bail this week amid a wider investigation into their possible roles in multiple homicides, all of which prosecutors allege have connections to the "extremist group," the Washington Post reported.
At least six homicides in California, Vermont and Pennsylvania – including the deaths of two Zizians – have been tied to the group since 2022, authorities say.
Jack "Ziz" LaSota, of Berkeley, California, is considered the leader of the Zizians because of a blog she maintained with writings on a range of social and political issues. The group espouses veganism, transgender identity, the dangers of artificial intelligence and rationalist philosophy – the belief that logic and reason should guide decision making and rules rather than relying on tradition, emotion or historical precedent.
"They're not necessarily all connected in one overarching plan. It's not necessarily like a Manson Family type of plan," Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow and policy adviser at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told USA Today.
Zizians are mostly well-educated computer scientists who became radicalized through their involvement with LaSota, although the group does not appear to have an organized political agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Zizians first banded together in the San Francisco Bay Area around 2016, when LaSota was heavily involved in rationalist philosophical groups opposed to unchecked technological advancement. LaSota later split from those organizations when they rejected some of her theories, the AP reported, and LaSota developed a devoted online following with her blog.
Families of people affiliated with the Zizians have described their loved ones as being brainwashed. Blank, one of the three people arrested in Maryland, last spoke with his parents in November 2022. His father told the San Francisco Chronicle he had been evasive in the months before he cut contact with his family.
“He’s under the influence of a cult,” Blank's father, Alexander, told the newspaper. “And I believe (he) is kind of a victim of the cult.”
Zizians first crossed the radar of police in 2019 when LaSota and three other people were arrested during their protest of a rationalist gathering in Berkeley. Zizians showed up at the event in robes and masks and accused the rationalists of sexual misconduct in their organization.
Three years later, in August 2022, LaSota allegedly faked her own death when the U.S. Coast Guard was called to the San Francisco Bay for a report of a person who had fallen off a boat. LaSota was presumed to have drowned when the Coast Guard couldn't find her body. An obituary for LaSota was published in a newspaper in Alaska, where she had attended college, that September.
The Zizians' alleged string of violence started two months later.
LaSota and other members of the group were living together in box trucks and vans on a property in Vallejo, California. Their landlord, Curtis Lind, had taken them to court for failure to pay rent. Days before the eviction deadline, Lind was attacked on his property with a sword and partially blinded. He opened fire at the Zizians, killing member Emma Borhanian, police said.
Investigators determined that Lind had acted in self-defense. Two Zizians, Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao, were charged with homicide. Police made contact with LaSota at the scene, but she was not charged.
On New Years Eve in 2022, Richard and Rita Zajko, 71 and 69, each were shot in the head and killed at their home in Chester Heights. Investigators in Delaware County found Michelle Zajko's driver's license inside the home, and days later police searched a property in Vermont where Zajko was believed to be living with Blank, court documents showed.
Before her parents' funeral in Pennsylvania, Zajko allegedly hid out with LaSota at a hotel in Chester. She refused to cooperate with police, investigators said, and LaSota was charged with obstructing the investigation into the killing of Zajko's parents.
At the Chester hotel room, authorities seized a gun and ammunition that allegedly belonged to Zajko. The ammunition allegedly matched the bullet casings found at Zajko's parents' home after they were killed, according to court documents obtained by 6ABC.
LaSota was held at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County for several months awaiting a court date. Her bail originally had be set at $500,000. In February 2023, a judge lowered LaSota's bail to $50,000, and then in June 2023 reduced it to unsecured bail, allowing LaSota to leave jail, according to the Delco Times.
LaSota never showed up for her scheduled court dates.
Zajko, LaSota and Blank are all considered persons of interest in the shootings of Zajko's parents, but no charges have been filed in the case.
The Zizians' former landlord in California, Curtis Lind, was found dead on Jan. 17 at the same property where the Zizians allegedly had attacked him in 2022. Lind's throat had been cut, police said. Prosecutors allege the Zizians wanted to prevent Lind from giving testimony at the trial in the 2022 shooting case. Maximilian Snyder, 22, has been charged with killing Lind.
Three days after that homicide, two alleged Zizians, Felix Bauckholt and Teresa Youngblut, got into a shootout with a U.S. Border Patrol agent who stopped them near the U.S.-Canada border in Vermont. Bauckholt, a German national, and border patrol agent David Maland, 44, were both killed in the gunfire. Youngblut, who was driving the car and first opened fire at Maland, was wounded in the shooting. She was arrested and has pleaded not guilty to weapons charges.
Two guns recovered at the scene of the shooting in Vermont were found to have been purchased by Zajko, prosecutors said. And investigators also learned that Youngblut had applied for a marriage license with Snyder, the man accused of killing Lind, in November, the AP reported.
Earlier this month, during the investigation of Maland's shooting, FBI agents searched a property in Chapel Hill, North Carolina after a landlord reported suspicious activity at two of his condos. LaSota, Bauckholt and Youngblut allegedly had been living there in recent months, and neighbors reported seeing them dressed in black robes and tactical clothes.
“They rarely came out during the day but would walk around the neighborhood and in the woods at night,” one neighbor, who requested anonymity, told the AP.
With court cases pending in multiple states, federal investigators are working to determine a broader motive to explain the Zizians' connections to the cross-country crimes.
The FBI has not commented on the cases, but court records show federal authorities have been closely involved in the investigations.
Poulomi Saha, a University of California, Berkeley professor who studies cult groups, told USA Today it will be difficult for investigators and the public to comprehend what drives LaSota and the Zizians. She cautioned against rushing to conclusions about the links between the homicides until authorities have had a chance to unpack LaSota's influence over her associates.
"The internet culture and the absolute immersion that's possible there means there are forms of connection that only appear after the fact," Saha said. "We are kind of grasping for a story that makes sense of it."
