The killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border last month and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California have been tied to a cultlike group.
Interviews and online postings reveal how young computer scientists described by those who know them as highly intelligent appear to have become increasingly violent.
Border agent killed in Vermont
Maland, 44, was killed in a Jan. 20 shootout following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Canadian border. Washington state resident Teresa Youngblut, 21, faces two weapons charges in connection with the killing.
She was traveling with German citizen Felix Bauckholt, who is also listed in court documents as Ophelia. Both had connections to a cultlike group known in online communities as “Zizians” because of their affinity for a blogger who calls herself “Ziz.” The pair had been under the surveillance of authorities for several days after an employee at a hotel where they were staying reported seeing Youngblut carrying a gun.
Bauckholt died in the Vermont shootout. Authorities have not specified whose bullets hit whom. Youngblut’s lawyer said through a spokesperson that they are not commenting. Youngblut pleaded not guilty in federal court on Feb. 7.
Connection to Ziz
Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley, California, 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.
When LaSota left the rationalists behind, she took with her a group of “extremely vulnerable and isolated” followers, Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
In North Carolina, a landlord told The Associated Press that he had been renting two condos to Bauckholt and Youngblut. LaSota also had been living with Bauckholt as recently as this winter, said the landlord, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns for his safety.
First arrests
In November 2019, LaSota, Emma Borhanian, 31, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham, 29 were arrested at a protest outside a Northern California retreat center where a rationalist group was holding an event. The group said they were protesting sexual misconduct inside the group.
Deaths in California
In 2022, landlord Curtis Lind went to court to evict Borhanian, LaSota, Leatham and other tenants who had stopped paying rent at a Vallejo, California, property. Two days before the Nov. 15 eviction deadline, prosecutors say Leatham, Borhanian and Suri Dao attacked him.
Lind shot his attackers, killing Borhanian and wounding Leatham. He survived being impaled with a sword but lost an eye. Prosecutors concluded he acted in self-defense and charged Dao and Leatham with violent crimes.
On Jan. 17, the 82-year-old landlord was stabbed to death. Maximilian Snyder, 22, who applied for a marriage license with Teresa Youngblut in Washington state in November, is charged with murder.
Pennsylvania couple killed
On New Year’s Eve 2022, Rita and Richard Zajko were shot and killed in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.
Police questioned the couple’s daughter, Michelle, at her home in Vermont, and a few weeks later, took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel. She was not arrested or charged. LaSota was at the hotel, too, and was arrested after refusing to cooperate with officers, and charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct.
Six months later, LaSota was released on bail but stopped showing up for court. LaSota’s attorney, Daniel McGarrigle, said last month his client was “wholly and unequivocally innocent of the charges filed in this case.”
LaSota, 34, has not responded to multiple Associated Press emails in recent week. She has missed court appearances in two states, and bench warrants have been issued for her arrest. Associated Press reporters have left numerous phone and e-mail messages with LaSota’s family and received no response.
Her whereabouts are unknown and McGarrigle declined to say whether he’s had recent contact with his client.
