Three alleged members of a cult-like group of radical vegans linked to at least six deaths across the U.S. have been arrested in Maryland.
Court records showed that Ziz, a 34-year-old computer scientist known in court records by her legal name as Jack LaSota, was detained on misdemeanor charges in Allegany County on Sunday evening.
Ziz is a key member — and the namesake — of a mysterious group of mostly transgender and non-binary young people known as the “Zizians”, whose members have been tied to murder cases in California, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
Also arrested in Maryland was Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, 32, who is a person of interest in the Vermont shooting and the Pennsylvania shooting, and Daniel Blank, 26.
The charges listed for Ziz were trespass, obstruction, and possession of a firearm; for Zajko, trespass, obstruction, and resisting or interfering with an arrest; and for Blank, trespass and obstruction.
Allegany County jail official Elizabeth Shoemake told VTDigger that the pair were arrested for “on-site activity” rather than over an outstanding warrant.
The FBI is involved, officials confirmed, and the investigation is “fluid and ongoing”.
It is the latest twist in a bizarre saga that began in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 with a split in Silicon Valley’s quirky ‘rationalist’ subculture.
Ziz, who expounded her version of the philosophy in her personal blog, was one of a small group of anarchist-leaning rationalists who accused the rest of the community of under-valuing animal rights and welfare.
In 2019, Ziz and three friends attempted a non-violent protest outside a rationalist think tank, but were met with a SWAT team and felony charges. Ziz would later allege 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 detractors described her as a highly manipulative cult leader, while supporters said she had been unfairly demonized and ostracized for speaking out against abuse within the community.
Amid mounting legal troubles, Ziz reportedly faked her death in 2022, while several of the group stopped paying rent at their home in a trailer yard in Vallejo, California.
That led, in November 2022, to a deadly confrontation with their landlord Curtis Lind, which left Ziz’s friend Emma Borhanian dead — shot by Lind in alleged self-defense — and Lind himself in hospital, stabbed by a samurai sword.
Prosecutors charged two other members of the crew who had been leaving there with Borhanian’s murder, alleging that they had started the fight and were therefore responsible for its consequences.
After that, Ziz and her remaining associates seem to have dropped off the map. But since then, connections have continued to emerge in other criminal cases.
In Pennsylvania, on New Year’s Eve 2022, Zajko’s parents were killed in their home by gunshot wounds to the head. Police believed Zajko’s gun might have been involved, and detained her at a Pennsylvania hotel.
But when they checked another room in the same hotel, whose occupants Zajko had asked them to alert to her custody, they found Ziz — alive and well, albeit uncooperative — along with Daniel Blank.
Then, in California this January, Curtis Lind was killed by a figure in a black mask wielding a knife. Authorities arrested and charged 22-year-old Oxford graduate Maximilian Snyder, who denied being a friend of Ziz, with his murder.
“I am not one of Ziz’s friends, and neither she nor her friends endorse me or my words so far as I know. I speak only for myself, as myself, for the sake of everyone,” said Snyder in a letter dictated from prison, in which he urged other rationalists to stop eating meat immediately.
And in Vermont the same month, a border agent, David Maland, and a young rationalist named Ophelia Bauckholt were killed in a shoot-out over a traffic stop.
According to prosecutors and news reports, Bauckholt was traveling in a Toyota Prius with 21-year-old Milo Youngblut, known in court documents as Teresa Youngblut, when they were stopped by border agents.
Prosecutors allege that Youngblut then got out of the car and opened fire on the border officers without provocation.
Reports indicate that Youngblut had been reported missing by their parents about a year ago, and that they had recently applied for a marriage license with Snyder.
Zajko, meanwhile, was named a person of interest in the case, reportedly because investigators suspect that one of the guns carried by Bauckholt and Youngblut was bought by her.
A police bulletin described Zajko as armed and dangerous, and said she followed an “anti-law-enforcement ideology”.
The exact nature of the connections between these people and cases remain uncertain, and neither Ziz nor Zajko have been charged in connection with any of the deaths.
“The investigators that are working on the case aren’t going to do any press releases at this time because the investigation is kind of fluid and ongoing and the FBI is involved now,” said Maryland State Police lieutenant Jeremy Stonebraker.
