How Zizians, cult-like group led by Jack ‘Ziz’ LaSota, is linked to multiple deaths in US

Cults often capture the minds and imaginations of people. And the case is no different for the cult-like group, the Zizians, whose leader was arrested on Sunday (February 16) by American police in Maryland.

Officials confirmed that they had arrested 34-year-old Jack LaSota along with 33-year-old Michelle Zajko and charged them with trespassing, obstructing and hindering and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.

LaSota is believed to be the leader of the Zizians, a cult-like group that has garnered international headlines when one alleged member was arrested and another killed after a traffic stop by border patrol in Vermont escalated into a shooting. David Maland, a law enforcement officer, was killed during the confrontation.

But what exactly is this group all about? Who is their leader? We get you the answers.

Who is Jack LaSota, leader of the Zizians?

Authorities arrested Jack LaSota on Sunday (February 16) and have held the 34-year-old on charges including “trespass on private property, handgun in vehicle and obstructing and hindering”, according to Allegany County sheriff’s office records.

The 34-year-old is believed to be the leader of the Zizians and linked to the murders of several individuals across America. According to an AP report, LaSota has been seen near multiple crime scenes.

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But who exactly is LaSota? LaSota, who also goes by the name Ziz, was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1991. Identifying as a transgender woman, she studied computer science at the University of Fairbanks and moved to California in 2016 because it was “sort of in her destiny”.

There, she had a stint at Google, took part in an apprenticeship by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) and became part of a rationalist movement in Berkeley, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

However, it turned out she wasn’t destiny’s child — her attempt to break into Silicon Valley went poorly. According to her blog, she crashed out of job after job and bounced around between insecure temporary housing.

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In 2017, along with her friend Gwen Danielson, another trans woman, Ziz began working on a plan to build a “rationalist fleet” of rehabilitated old boats that could offer cheap housing to talented young compatriots, freeing them to devote their energies to “saving the world”. They bought a nearly century-old tug boat named the Caleb in Alaska, and sailed it down the coast to the Bay Area.

In the subsequent years, she kept posting on her blog as well as other online rationalist forums like LessWrong about saving the world through rationalism, using sociopathy to avoid being “pwnd” and fantasies about killing their abusers. Several of her blog posts reveal the use of unusual jargon such as “anti-ethics”, “dichotomy leakage” and other such terms. She also classified people as “zombies” and “vampires”, or “single good” versus “double good”.

“Ziz seemed like an intensely ambitious and moralistic person… who was interested in psychology and doing good things for the world,” Jessica Taylor, who met Ziz at a Berkeley rationalist event in 2015 or 2016 and stayed in touch for several years, told The Independent. “She got very moralistic about philosophy.”

One of her many theories was that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other.”

What is the cult-like group Zizians?

Eventually, Ziz or LaSota grew apart from other rationalists and that’s when Zizians, the radical cult-like group came into existence.

Following in Ziz’s footsteps, these people are described as smart, techie vegans, many of them transgender women, who share an obsession with the dangers of artificial intelligence. As Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Ziz took with her a group of extremely vulnerable and isolated followers”.

Jessica Taylor, an AI researcher who met Ziz both in person and online through the rationalist community, further told the AP that Ziz adherents used the rationalist ideology as a reason to commit violence. “Stuff like, thinking it’s reasonable to avoid paying rent and defend oneself from being evicted,” she said.

And it is this belief that led Zizians to have run-ins with the law.

One of their first brushes with the law came in 2019 when Ziz and three associates — Danielson, Emma Borhanian and Alexander Leatham — showed up at an event being held by the Center for Applied Rationality in Sonoma County, California. Dressed in robes and Guy Fawkes masks — popularised by the movie V for Vendetta — they proceeded to block the entrance to the grounds.

The police were called, and the four were ultimately charged with felony criminal conspiracy and five misdemeanours, including false imprisonment.

What are the deaths linked to Zizians?

According to officials and investigations, LaSota and his gang of followers, the Zizians, have been linked to the deaths of multiple people, including a Border Patrol agent in Vermont.

The first such case dates back to 2022. At the time, LaSota had moved with other group members, including Borhanian and Leatham, into vans and box trucks on property owned by Curtis Lind in Vallejo, some distance away from San Francisco.

However, things soured between Lind and LaSota’s followers when they stopped paying rent, leading to Lind trying to evict them. On November 15, Lind is impaled with a sword and partially blinded in an attack. The 80-year-old, however, still managed to shoot two of his alleged attackers, killing one of them, Emma Borhanian.

Then months later, in January 2023, police officials found the bodies of Rita and Richard Zajko inside their house in the borough of Chester Heights, a quaint Philadelphia suburb. The police later said that the couple was shot in the head in an upstairs bedroom.

Investigations led the cops to the couple’s daughter, Michelle Zajko, who possessed and owned a handgun that uses the same type of ammunition. When the police took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel, LaSota was also present, who according to officials, refused to cooperate with the authorities.

Two years later, in January, Lind, the landlord, who had been previously attacked, was found dead — his throat had been cut — not far from where he had survived the earlier attack. A week later, 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder was arrested and charged with murdering Lind. According to Snyder’s acquaintances, he was familiar with Ziz’s writings, and one even told The Boston Globe that he had publicly alleged that he tried to raise money for Ziz’s previous bail.

The last death came on January 20 in Vermont, when US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle carrying two people connected to the Ziz group. Authorities say that Teresa Youngblut was driving the car when it was pulled over. She quickly opened fire on officers. The passenger, Felix Bauckholt, a German national who is also listed in court documents as Ophelia, died, along with the border patrol agent, David Maland.

Youngblut was wounded and arrested and has pleaded not guilty to firearms charges. A search by officials uncovered guns, ammunition, cellphones wrapped in aluminium foil, two walkie-talkies, two full-face respirators and tactical gear — including a ballistic helmet, night-vision-goggle monocular, and a tactical belt.

It is left to be seen what happens, but the deaths have once again raised questions about cults and the influence their leaders can wield on followers.

With inputs from agencies