A Pennsylvania woman named as a person of interest in a sprawling web of alleged cult killings has denied murdering her parents — and insists that she and her friends have been “lied” about.
Michelle Zajko, 32, was arrested in Maryland in February after being sought by investigators in the murder of her parents in 2022 and the death of a border agent in a shootout in Vermont this January.
Both killings appeared to be linked to an enigmatic radical vegan group known as the “Zizians,” whose critics have painted it as a violent cult haunted by visions of an AI apocalypse whose member are bent on revenge against its perceived enemies.
But in a handwritten letter sent to the Associated Press on Tuesday, Zajko complicated that picture.
“You, the public, are being lied to,” Zajko wrote. “And while I don’t promise to answer all your questions, I think the truth about my friends and I will make a lot more sense than what you’ve been reading about in the papers.”
She went on: “My friends and I are being described as like Satan’s lapdogs, the devil, and the Manson family all rolled into one. These papers are flagrantly lying … I didn’t murder my parents.”
Zajko’s letter appears to be the first time any reputed Zizian has directly addressed the allegations against them in a public statement, at least since January’s killings.
The group is named after 34-year-old computer scientist and blogger Ziz LaSota, whose writings between 2016 and 2022 attracted a small but devoted audience of highly educated young people, often transgender or non-binary.
It originally emerged within Silicon Valley’s cultish “rationalist” subculture. But it split off around 2019 after bitter disputes about the importance of animal rights and allegations of sexual abuse and transphobia in the rationalist community.
Since then it has been linked to the murder of a trailer yard landlord in California, the death of Zajko’s parents in suburban Philadelphia, and the fatal shooting of border agent David Maland in a gunfight in Vermont — although the actual truth of these incidents, and the relationship between them, remain mysterious.
In her letter to the Associated Press, Zajko alleged that there were actually “multiple groups,” and that she and her friends were not affiliated with Maximilian Snyder, the 22-year-old data scientist accused of murdering a California landlord who had violently clashed with some of Ziz’s friends back in 2022.
Authorities claim that Zajko provided the gun used in the Vermont shooting, and consider her a person of interest in her parents’ death. But neither she nor Ziz has so far been charged in connection with any killing.
Both women were arrested together in Maryland in February after asking a local man if they could camp on his land — only to be reported to police as “suspicious.”
“The news media has utterly terrified this small town into thinking we were here to hurt them,” wrote Zajko in her letter, claiming that the group’s only plans were “eating (vegan) soft pretzels with guacamole, repairing a diesel heater, & camping.”
She alleged that Ziz and others were victims of a smear campaign led by people associated with rationalism, which seeks to understand and maximize human cognition, and address the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
“Stalkers and abusers” within the community have tried to discredit Zizians for trying to expose sexual abuse within rationalist organizations, Zajko claimed.
She also defended Ziz, describing her as an extraordinary friend who rescued her from an abusive relationship.
“Ziz is not my leader, and I am not hers. What we have is called friendship, and I love her infinitely more than I could ever express,” she wrote. “She doesn’t deserve her bad reputation. She deserves to be free.”
