1srelluc
Diamond Member
The leader and two adherents of a cultlike group linked to six recent homicides were on the run Sunday afternoon when they aroused the suspicion of a property owner in Western Maryland, an Allegany County prosecutor said in court Tuesday.
Jack A. “Ziz” LaSota, a computer programmer and blogger once declared dead in San Mateo County, California, was in one of two white box trucks parked at the end of a rural road in Frostburg when a person approached and asked the group to leave. They replied by asking to camp for a month, according to an affidavit filed by Maryland State Police.
Records show the rattled property owner called the police, not knowing authorities had linked the “Zizians” to the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last month, or that the three had just weeks earlier been in hiding in a Chester, Pennsylvania, hotel room after the slaying of a member’s parents.
On Tuesday, a judge ordered the trio held without bond after a prosecutor argued they were members of “an extremist group” and noted that LaSota also has a pending warrant in Pennsylvania.
The Zizians, composed mainly of people devoted to veganism, transgender issues and the potential threat of artificial intelligence, attracted the attention of law enforcement in 2019 when they wore masks and dark hoods and barricaded a retreat meeting in California; LaSota and three others were arrested.
The years since have taken a darker turn, with authorities linking the group to the killing of a woman in an attack on members’ landlord, who also died; the parents of one member; and U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland last month in a shootout that also killed a vehicle passenger. Among the dead are two people police say belonged to the group.
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Months before the deaths began in 2022, LaSota, who identifies as a transgender woman, faked her death via drowning.
Then two of her co-defendants and a third person allegedly attacked their 80-year-old landlord in Vallejo, California, impaling him with a sword and blinding him in one eye. While defending himself, the landlord fatally shot one of the Zizians, police said.
Not long after that, a Philadelphia-area couple whose daughter was in the Zizians was shot to death in their home. While police were investigating the daughter, Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, they discovered LaSota alive and well in a Pennsylvania hotel room, but unwilling to cooperate, records show. LaSota was arrested again for obstruction and disorderly conduct and spent six months in jail in 2023, but has missed court dates ever since. No one has been charged in the double homicide.
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Then early this year, two Zizians were stopped by Border Patrol at the Vermont-Canada border and one began shooting, authorities said. Maland was killed, as was Zizian devotee Ophelia Bauckholt. Investigators say guns at the scene had been purchased by Zajko, the Pennsylvania woman whose parents were shot to death.
A U.S. Border Patrol officer deploys a flare while blocking Interstate 91, a day after a U.S. Border Patrol officer was shot and killed on the highway in Coventry, Vermont, on Jan. 25.© Carlos Osorio/Reuters
That woman was one of three members, along with LaSota, who were found in trucks parked on private property near Frostburg, a rural city in Western Maryland. State troopers found that Zajko and LaSota had a handgun and a rifle in their truck, according to an affidavit, which states that Zajko physically resisted arrest and had a loaded pistol in her waistband when she was taken into custody.
In a bond hearing Tuesday morning, Allegany County State’s Attorney James Elliott described LaSota, listed in Allegany court records as 33 years old, Zajko, 32, and Daniel Blank, 26, as extremists led by LaSota whose “group is believed to be involved in multiple homicides in the United States.”
Allegany County District Judge Erich Bean ordered all three held without bond, citing their lack of local ties and the allegations against them. Blank is charged with trespassing and obstructing or hindering police, both misdemeanors. LaSota faces those charges and a felony count of possessing a handgun in a vehicle. Zajko faces the misdemeanors and felony counts of resisting arrest and possessing a handgun.
Jack LaSota refused to speak and kept her eyes closed while being photographed after being detained in a hotel in suburban Pennsylvania in January 2023.© Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney's Office/AP
None of the three would provide their names or identification, police said. “Blank is under investigation for a double homicide that occurred in Delaware County, Pa.,” the police affidavit states.
At Blank’s bond review hearing, Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden, a lawyer who represented all three defendants Tuesday, described him as “a brilliant young man” with Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism.
His stepfather told the judge he hadn’t seen Blank in two years and he’d be willing to help him get housing if he were released.
Francoeur-Breeden also spoke of Zajko’s intelligence, saying she had studied biology.
Elliott described Zajko as a “person of interest” in the murder of her parents in Pennsylvania. He also said she was a suspect in the purchase of handguns linked to the shooting in Vermont.
LaSota is a computer engineering graduate of the University of Alaska who moved to the Bay Area in 2016 to work in the tech industry, she has previously written.
She joined a community in Berkeley of “rationalists,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, who lived in communal homes, ate vegan diets and discussed the prospect of artificial intelligence becoming so advanced it would destroy humanity. In 2018, she participated in an apprenticeship program at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Center for Applied Rationality, but became disillusioned with the center, leading to the barricade situation with police in 2019, a case still pending against her today.
Much of LaSota’s bond review Tuesday hearing involved trying to secure a vegan diet in the Allegany County jail. “I need the jail to be ordered for me to a have vegan diet,” she told the judge. “It’s more important than whatever this hearing is.” LaSota said that without the diet change, she would not eat even if she became mentally impaired.
Francoeur-Breeden told the judge she’d spoken to LaSota’s mother and was told by her that the diet concerns would be taken care of in the jail. LaSota’s mother also said she’d be willing to help LaSota get housing if released from jail pending her trial, according to Francoeur-Breeden.
“This is a very, very bright person that we’re dealing with,” Francoeur-Breeden said.
LaSota spoke in broad terms about the case. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I shouldn’t be here,” she told the judge, taking a long pause before adding, “I wish I could be more eloquent. Maybe I could if the circumstances were better.”
But Elliott, the head prosecutor of the county, spoke of the risk posed by the Zizians and called LaSota “an extreme flight risk” with ties to Alaska, California, Vermont and Pennsylvania. Elliott also noted that LaSota had faked her own death.
Ordering LaSota held without bond, the judge said, “The circumstances are odd at best and concerning.”
I hope one of the states still have the death penalty (MD does not) and the trans cult are sent there.
Of course, the killing of the BP agent could carry that penalty....I Think.
