When the alleged leader of a cult-like group that has been linked to six killings across the country was ordered to be held without bail this week, she demanded vegan meals, claiming she could starve and that she was already “in a mild state of delirium” due to lack of food.
Jack LaSota, 34, known online as “Ziz” is the apparent leader and the namesake of a mysterious group of mostly transgender and non-binary young people known as the “Zizians.”
The group, whose members include highly educated young computer scientists obsessed with veganism, animal rights, and theories about the nature of human consciousness, have been linked to homicides in California, Pennsylvania, and Vermont – including the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border in January.
And LaSota, a vegan computer scientist from Berkeley, California, who uses she/her pronouns, has reportedly been seen near multiple crime scenes and has connections to various suspects.
More than two years after the elusive LaSota allegedly faked her own death in 2022, she was arrested on Sunday along with Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, 33, of Media, Pennsylvania, and Daniel Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California, on charges of trespassing, obstructing and hindering, and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.
A judge ordered all three held without bail, describing them as dangerous flight risks, despite LaSota asking for pretrial release, saying she was homeless with no means of traveling.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she told the judge.
The trio were arrested after a Frostburg, Maryland resident called police to remove three “suspicious” people off his property after they had parked two box trucks there and asked to camp for a month, according to police documents.
When police responded to the call, they found the three individuals dressed in black with two of them wearing gun belts holding ammunition. A rifle and handgun were found in their vehicle.
Zajko, who was carrying a handgun, refused to put her hands behind her back during the arrest and was forced to the ground, police said.
The arrests are just the latest twist in a bizarre saga that emerged following the deadly shooting at a traffic stop that left a border patrol agent and a car passenger dead, leading to a cross-country investigation that has revealed a series of violent incidents that started years earlier.
Alleged members of the Zizians have since been linked to the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent slaying in January, and the December 2022 deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania.
Landlord impaled by sword, shoots tenant dead
In 2019, Ziz and three friends attempted a non-violent protest outside a rationalist think tank, but were met with a SWAT team and felony charges. Ziz would later allege that she was abused in police custody.
Amid mounting legal troubles, Ziz reportedly faked her death in 2022, while several of the group stopped paying rent at their home in a trailer yard in Vallejo, California.
Curtis Lind, the landlord, then tried to evict LaSota and her friends, who had been living in vans and box trucks on the property without paying rent.
That led, in November 2022, to a deadly confrontation with Lind, which left Ziz’s friend Emma Borhanian dead — shot by Lind in alleged self-defense — and Lind himself in hospital, stabbed by a samurai sword.
Prosecutors charged two other members of the group, Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao, who had been living there, with Borhanian’s murder, alleging that they had started the fight and were therefore responsible for its consequences.
After that, Ziz and her remaining associates seem to have dropped off the map. But since then, connections have continued to emerge in other criminal cases.
The 2022 murders of Richard and Rita Zajko
In Pennsylvania, on New Year’s Eve 2022, Zajko’s parents, 71-year-old Richard Zajko and his wife, 68-year-old Rita Zajko, were shot and killed inside their Pennsylvania home.
Police believed Zajko’s gun might have been involved, and detained her at a Pennsylvania hotel.
But when they checked another room in the same hotel, whose occupants Zajko had asked them to alert to her custody, they found Ziz — alive and well, albeit uncooperative — along with Daniel Blank.
Zajko, Lasota and Blank were all initially taken into custody, but were not charged with their murders at the time, NBC News reported.
A deadly confrontation with a landlord
Then on January 17, Curtis Lind, the 82-year-old landlord back in Vallejo, California, who was set to testify against the members of the group from the 2022 attack, was killed by a mysterious figure in a black mask wielding a knife.
Authorities arrested and charged 22-year-old Oxford graduate Maximilian Snyder with Lind’s murder.
The same month, a border agent, David Maland, and a young rationalist named Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt were killed in a shoot-out over a traffic stop.
Teresa Youngblut, 21, was arrested and charged in Maland’s murder. She had been traveling with Bauckholt, a German citizen, and the pair had been under surveillance for several days.
Youngblut, who was wounded in the shootout, is charged with firearms charges.
During the investigation of the shooting, it was discovered that Youngblut and Snyder were connected through a marriage license they had applied for in November 2024.
Snyder denied being a friend of Ziz.
“I am not one of Ziz’s friends, and neither she nor her friends endorse me or my words so far as I know. I speak only for myself, as myself, for the sake of everyone,” Snyder said in a letter dictated from prison, in which he urged other rationalists to stop eating meat immediately.
Border patrol agent, young rationalist killed in shooting
On January 20, three days after Lind was killed, the shoot-out unfolded more than 3,000 miles away in Coventry, Vermont, when Youngblut and Bauckholt were pulled over on Interstate 91 for an immigration inspection, according to an FBI affidavit.
Bauckholt appeared to have an expired visa, according to a Department of Homeland Security database, but investigators later confirmed that his visa was current, the FBI said.
Youngblut, who had been driving Bauckholt’s car, got out and opened fire on Maland and other officers without warning, the FBI said. Bauckholt tried to draw a gun but was shot.
The gun allegedly used by Youngblut and the one that Bauckholt was carrying were purchased by a third person in Vermont in February 2024, it was discovered.
That buyer was Zajko, who was also a person of interest in the 2022 murders of her parents, state police confirmed.
A police bulletin described Zajko as armed and dangerous, and said she followed an “anti-law-enforcement ideology”.
The exact nature of the connections between these people and cases remain uncertain, and neither Ziz nor Zajko have been charged in connection with any of the deaths.
“The investigators that are working on the case aren’t going to do any press releases at this time because the investigation is kind of fluid and ongoing and the FBI is involved now,” Maryland State Police lieutenant Jeremy Stonebraker said.
