When three strangers arrived at the edge of a property in Frostburg, Maryland, its owner was immediately suspicious at the sight of their black clothing and belts filled with ammunition.
The trio asked to camp on the land for a month. Unnerved, the owner called the police, and they were arrested for trespassing. Later, the owner would learn the interlopers were accused by prosecutors of belonging to a cult-like group — the “Zizians” — that has been linked to at least six deaths in three states.
Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a transgender computer engineer from Alaska, is said to be the group’s leader.
The 34-year-old, who uses female pronouns but is listed as male in a police database, was detained alongside Michelle Zajko, 32, whose parents were murdered more than two years ago, and Daniel Blank, 26.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank are being held in a Maryland jail while investigators expand a multi-state investigation into the Zizians and the web of deaths around them.
Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a transgender computer engineer from Alaska, is said to be the group’s leader.
LaSota graduated from university in Fairbanks in 2013 and some time after that moved to California, becoming involved in the rationalist movement, falling in with intellectually gifted friends and developing interests in everything from radical veganism to artificial intelligence.
LaSota wrote about a theory that the left and right sides of the brain could hold different genders and “often desire to kill each other”. This idea is reported to have been rejected by other rationalists, prompting LaSota to break from the movement.
By 2019, however, LaSota had grown a following. The Zizians appear to have taken their name from the Ziz pseudonym LaSota adopted online.
In November 2019, sheriff’s deputies in California called in a Swat team after a masked group held a protest at a retreat where the Center for Applied Rationality was also holding an event. LaSota was arrested in what appears to be the group’s first run-in with the law.
LaSota developed interests in everything from radical veganism to artificial intelligence.
Today, the rusted hulk of a tugboat, the Caleb, sits in the shallow waters of Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay, California, slowly sinking into the seabed. In 2017, the Second World War-era ship was acquired in Alaska by LaSota, who is said to have envisioned a floating armada that would become a hub for fellow rationalists.
“We both recognized housing as one of the most obvious problems with the Bay area rationalist community,” Gwen Danielson, an alleged member of the Zizians, wrote in a blog, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The group “decided to start a federated fleet of boats in order to cause rationalists to have cheaper housing to improve the rate of work on AI safety”.
After securing the boat, LaSota and companions who had been recruited online set sail from Alaska to California. However, the vision for a seafaring community soon ran aground.
Local bureaucrats were not impressed with the decrepit state of the Caleb, with the coast guard describing it as “an imminent threat to the public health” and a former harbor employee saying those onboard were “feral humans”. The boat was abandoned in 2022 and officials had to pay for it to be anchored away from the dock.
A few months later, friends said they had seen LaSota fall from a boat in the San Francisco Bay and a local newspaper in Alaska printed an obituary.
Before abandoning the Caleb, the group sought a place to live on land. They settled on a trailer yard in Vallejo, a city north of Berkeley, having met the landlord at the harbor.
Authorities describe Zizians as “feral humans.”
Curtis Lind, a retiree who owned a boat, grew friendly with the group. In early 2020 he rented them a space on his land for about $2,000 a month. The relationship soon soured, however, to the point that Lind sought to evict his tenants, claiming they had stopped paying rent.
A deadly confrontation followed in November 2022, when Lind was attacked by three members, authorities said. He was impaled with a sword through the chest before shooting two of his attackers, fatally wounding Emma Borhanian, 31.
Solano County prosecutors charged Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham, alleging that they had attacked Lind and were responsible for the death of their friend Borhanian.
Lind, 82, had been due to testify against Dao and Leathan when he was killed last month. His throat was slit by a masked assailant at a location not far from the scene of the 2022 attack, according to Vallejo police.
Maximillian Snyder, 22, has been charged with Lind’s murder. He had attempted to obtain a marriage licence with Teresa Youngblut, another alleged Zizian member charged in connection with a separate killing.
Two more of the deaths believed to be linked to the Zizians took place in Chester Heights, an affluent township in southeastern Pennsylvania, at the stately home of Richard and Rita Zajko. On December 31, 2022, a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured a vehicle driving up to the house at 11:29 p.m., shortly before a voice shouted, “Mom!”, according to court records.
A voice is then heard exclaiming: “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”
About nine minutes later two people left the house through the front door and drove away.
The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Zajko were discovered on January 2.
Mr. Zajko, 71, had been shot in the side of the head, while Mrs. Zajko, 69, was killed by a bullet to the back of the skull, autopsies concluded.
Days after the murders, their daughter Michelle Zajko was questioned at home in Vermont and denied any wrongdoing. Weeks later she was briefly taken into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel before being released without charge.
LaSota was also at the hotel, and was arrested and charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.
Cult member Michelle Zajko was suspected to have murdered her parents.
On the afternoon of January 20, the US Border Patrol agent David Maland turned on his truck’s red and blue flashing lights to perform a traffic stop on a Toyota Prius in Vermont, near a crossing into Canada.
The occupants, Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, had been under surveillance by law enforcement for nearly a week after a worker at the hotel they were staying at raised alarm.
Youngblut, 21, and Bauckholt, a German citizen, were said to have dressed in “all black, tactical-style clothing with protective equipment”, while one of them carried what appeared to be a gun.
During the traffic stop Youngblut allegedly pulled out a handgun and opened fire at Maland and other officers, with at least one officer shooting back. Maland and Bauckholt were killed in the shootout. A search of the suspects’ car found night-vision goggles, ammunition and tactical gear including two-way radios.
Youngblut has pleaded not guilty to firearms charges. Pennsylvania state police said the gun used in the Vermont shooting was purchased by a person of interest in the Zajko murders.
With the number of deaths allegedly linked to the Zizians rising, LaSota and Zajko’s whereabouts remained unknown.
That changed last Sunday afternoon, when a resident of Frostburg called police to say he wanted three “suspicious” people off his property.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank face charges including trespassing, obstructing and hindering, and possession of a handgun in a vehicle. Officers found a rifle and a handgun in one of their trucks, while Zajko, who did not comply with police demands while being arrested, is also alleged to have been carrying a weapon.
Prosecutors said LaSota “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians”. A judge denied bail amid concerns for public safety.
Keiran Southern is the West Coast correspondent for The Times of London
