Leader of cultlike Zizians linked to 6 killings faces bail hearing in Maryland

CUMBERLAND, Md. — The leader of a cultlike group known as the Zizians that is linked to six killings in three states faces a bail hearing Tuesday along with two others who were arrested with her in Maryland.

Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley, California, also known as Ziz, was arrested Sunday with Michelle Zajko, 32, of Media, Pennsylvania, and Daniel Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California. They face charges including trespassing, obstructing and hindering and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.

A bail hearing for the three is scheduled for Tuesday at Allegany District Court in Cumberland, Maryland, where court officials said they would appear remotely.

The Zizians have been tied to the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent slaying in January, the December 2022 deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania and a highway shootout last month in Vermont that left U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland and a car passenger dead.

LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland, about 150 miles west of Baltimore on Sunday afternoon. A resident told police he wanted three “suspicious” people off his property after they’d parked two box trucks there and asked to camp for a month, according to police documents.

They were dressed in black and two wore gun belts holding ammunition, according to police. Officers found a rifle in the back of one truck and a handgun on the front floorboard. Zajko, who refused to put her hands behind her back and was taken to the ground, also was carrying a handgun, police said.

Maland, 44, was killed in a Jan. 20 shootout following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles from the Canadian border. Felix Bauckholt, a passenger in the car, also died, and the driver, Teresa Youngblut, has pleaded not guilty to federal firearms charges.

Officials have said the guns they were carrying were bought by a person of interest in the Dec. 31, 2022, deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, and that Youngblut had been in close contact with a person of interest in a homicide in Vallejo, California.

Maximilian Snyder, who applied for a marriage license with Youngblut in November, is charged with the Jan. 17 stabbing death of Curtis Lind, a Vallejo landlord who had survived an earlier attack by members of the Zizian group and was set to testify against them.

Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, but Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.

Their goals aren’t clear, but online writings included topics such as radical veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence.

At the middle of it all is “Ziz,” the leader of the strange group whose members are sometimes called “Zizians” in online forums.

LaSota published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name Ziz and, in one section, described her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other.”

LaSota, who used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman, railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

LaSota has not responded to emails from the AP in recent weeks, and her attorney Daniel McGarrigle declined to comment on whether she is connected to any of the deaths. She’s wanted for arrest in two states for missing court appearances.

McGarrigle would only confirm Monday that he has represented LaSota and wouldn’t confirm her arrest or any details of the latest case. Attempts to reach attorneys for Zajko and Blank were not successful.

Pennsylvania state police records describe Daniel Blank as Michelle Zajko’s housemate in Vermont. In January 2023, police investigating the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents detained both LaSota and Blank at a hotel where Zajko was staying. Blank was not charged. LaSota was charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct.