Three alleged members of a radical vegan cult linked to at least six deaths in the United States were arrested in Maryland.
According to court records, Ziz, a 34-year-old computer scientist known legally as Jack LaSota, was arrested on misdemeanor charges in Allegany County on Sunday evening.
Ziz is a key member (and namesake) of the “Zizians,” a mysterious group of mostly transgender and non-binary young people linked to murders in California, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, 32, a person of interest in the Vermont and Pennsylvania shootings, was also arrested in Maryland, along with Daniel Blank, 26.
The charges against Ziz included trespass, obstruction, and possession of a firearm; for Zajko, trespass, obstruction, and resisting or interfering with an arrest; and for Blank, trespass and obstruction.
According to Allegany County Jail official Elizabeth Shoemake, the pair were arrested for “on-site activity” rather than an outstanding warrant.
Officials confirmed that the FBI is involved in the investigation, which is “fluid and ongoing”.
It’s the latest twist in a strange saga that began in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 with a schism in Silicon Valley’s eccentric ‘rationalist’ community.
Ziz, who wrote about her version of the philosophy on her personal blog, was part of a small group of anarchist-leaning rationalists who accused the rest of the community of undervaluing animal rights and welfare.
In 2019, Ziz and three friends attempted a nonviolent protest outside of a rationalist think tank, but were met with a SWAT team and felony charges. Ziz later claimed that she was abused in policy custody.
“I will actually never be able to trust society, even in a limited respect, like trusting cops to not torture you for literally doing nothing wrong[,] again,” she said in court records, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Rationalist critics described her as a highly manipulative cult leader, while supporters claimed she had been unfairly demonized and ostracized for speaking out against abuse in the community.
Ziz reportedly faked her death in 2022 to avoid legal ramifications, while several members of the group stopped paying rent at their trailer yard home in Vallejo, California.
That resulted in a deadly confrontation with their landlord, Curtis Lind, in November 2022, which left Ziz’s friend Emma Borhanian dead — Lind allegedly shot her in self-defense — and Lind himself in the hospital, stabbed with a samurai sword.
Prosecutors charged two other members of the crew who had been leaving with Borhanian’s murder, claiming that they started the fight and were thus responsible for its outcome.
After that, Ziz and her remaining associates appear to have vanished. However, connections have continued to emerge in subsequent criminal cases.
Zajko’s parents were shot in the head in their Pennsylvania home on New Year’s Eve 2022. Police believed Zajko’s gun was involved and detained her in a Pennsylvania hotel.
But when they checked another room in the same hotel, whose occupants Zajko had asked them to notify about her custody, they discovered Ziz — alive and well, albeit uncooperative — along with Daniel Blank.
Then, in California in January, Curtis Lind was murdered by a figure wearing a black mask and wielding a knife. Authorities arrested and charged Maximilian Snyder, a 22-year-old Oxford graduate who denied being Ziz’s friend, with his murder.
“I am not one of Ziz’s friends, and to the best of my knowledge, neither she nor her friends support me or my words. “I speak only for myself, as myself, for the sake of everyone,” Snyder wrote in a letter dictated from prison, urging other rationalists to stop eating meat right away.
In Vermont the same month, a border agent, David Maland, and a young rationalist, Ophelia Bauckholt, were killed in a shootout over a traffic stop.
According to prosecutors and news reports, Bauckholt was traveling in a Toyota Prius with Milo Youngblut, 21, also known as Teresa Youngblut in court documents, when they were stopped by border agents.
Prosecutors claim that Youngblut then got out of the car and opened fire on the border officers without warning.
According to reports, Youngblut’s parents reported him missing about a year ago, and they recently applied for a marriage license with Snyder.
Zajko, meanwhile, has been named a person of interest in the case, reportedly because investigators believe she purchased one of the guns used by Bauckholt and Youngblut.
According to a police bulletin, Zajko was armed and dangerous, and she had a “anti-law-enforcement ideology”.
The exact nature of the connections between these people and cases is unknown, and neither Ziz nor Zajko have been charged with any of the deaths.
“The investigators working on the case will not issue any press releases at this time because the investigation is fluid and ongoing, and the FBI is now involved,” said Maryland State Police lieutenant Jeremy Stonebraker.
