"If I am killed in police custody, it was murder!" shouted 29-year-old Alex Leatham as officers attempted to bring her before the judge.
This was April 8, in a county courthouse in sunny Solano County, California, and Leatham — a math whiz and transgender woman known to many friends as Somni — was, not for the first time, refusing to go along with proceedings.
“The court has been hormonally detransitioning me for quarter of a decade as part of a state-sponsored conversion therapy program," she alleged. "I am not suicidal. I have never been suicidal."
The hearing was the latest in a long-running and sometimes bizarre murder case against Leatham and her co-defendant Suri Dao, who stand accused of attacking their landlord Curtis Lind with knives and a samurai sword in November 2022.
Court documents reviewed by The Independent show how prosecutors have long struggled to bring the case to trial amid disputes over vegan diets, mental competence, and even uncertainty about who is actually being accused — with Dao at one point declaring their name as "Joshua of Nazareth".
The documents also detail graphic allegations of abuse by prison guards, and allege that both Leatham and Dao have been denied access to hormone medications while in custody.
This case is one of several across the USA believed to be linked to the enigmatic 'Zizians', a loose group of radical vegans haunted by visions of an AI apocalypse, which some describe as a cult.
Yet the prosecution's position now looks precarious after Lind, the star witness, was stabbed to death near his property in Vallejo, California, by a masked attacker, who is also alleged to have been inspired by the Zizian philosophy.
"Mr Lind is the only eyewitness to this case, and his testimony is critical for the People to have the ability to prove their case," wrote lead prosecutor Ilana Shapiro on January 16, just one day before Lind was killed.
"These defendants are extremely dangerous. They have both tried to escape from custody."
Impaled by a sword
The charges against Dao and Leatham stem from a deadly confrontation with Lind at his ramshackle trailer park in Vallejo, California on November 13, 2022.
According to reports, Dao and Leatham were part of a rotating cast of young dropouts who had been living in R.V.s on Lind's property for nearly three years. For much of that time they had not paid rent, relying on California's temporary Covid-era ban on evictions.
Leatham was an accomplished young nerd from southern California who had attended a special camp for gifted children. One fellow camper told Open Vallejo that she was "quiet and kind of weird, but all of us were weird".
Dao's past is murkier because their identity is in dispute. Still, reporting by The San Francisco Chronicle suggests that the 20-something is an "incredibly smart" spelling bee bronze medalist from Colorado, born in China and adopted by American parents, who came out as bigender in their early teens.
Both had been drawn into the San Francisco Bay Area's cultish 'rationalist' subculture, which aspires to solve the world’s problems via logical thinking. But around 2019, Leatham and her crew — known loosely as the ‘Zizians’ after the political writings of a woman known as Ziz — had split from the movement (or, in their telling, been exiled) due to bitter disagreements over animal rights, alleged sexual abuse by community leaders, and the best way to stop artificial intelligence from destroying the planet.
What exactly happened on November 13, 2022 is uncertain. One pseudonymous blog post purporting to be from someone close to the group, but whose identity The Independent has not so far been able to verify, alleged that Lind had threatened the tenants for months beforehand, and that he attacked first.
In interviews with investigators, Lind and his friend Patrick McMillan, 82, gave a very different account. McMillan said that in the small hours of Nov 13, Lind had asked him to phone the police because multiple people were banging on his trailer, throwing rocks at it, and threatening to kill him. McMillan said the police did not respond.
"Around sunrise, Mr McMillan was awoken by Mr Lind banging on his door and yelling 'help! I'm dying!'," prosecutors wrote. "Mr McMillan opened his door to see Mr Lind had a large gash on his face that was bleeding heavily, and was impaled by a sword."
Lind himself told investigators that Dao had lured him to another part of the yard by claiming there was a water leak that needed fixing. Then, he alleged, Dao, Leatham, and Borhanian had ambushed him, forcing him to shoot back in self defense.
Borhanian was killed and Leatham was rushed to hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. Afterwards, Leatham and Dao were charged not only with attempted murder against Lind but with murdering Borhanian, on the basis that they had caused her death by attacking Lind first.
Later, both defendants were also charged with trying to escape custody by faking medical emergencies — evidence, the prosecution says, of a pre-agreed plan to kill Lind then resist justice using a shared playbook.
Dao has pled not guilty to all charges, and the court has entered a not guilty plea on Leatham's behalf.
Their cases, though, soon grew even more complex.
‘Patient won't talk, eat, or bathe’
From the start both Leatham and Dao appear to have suffered badly in captivity, with defense lawyers alleging severe health problems, medical neglect, and transphobic treatment.
"This is a matter of life and death," wrote Leatham's sister Julia in a letter to the judge in December 2022. "Based on the events of the past week, it is clear that her ongoing incarceration poses an imminent threat to her health and safety."
Leatham's autism, Julia said, made her "exceptionally sensitive to light and sound", and yet her cell was kept "constantly lit" so that she could not sleep. Her "strict veganism" limited her possible calorie sources, and she had visibly "lost considerable weight".
In a similar letter, Leatham's father James alleged that jail staff had failed to provide "minimally acceptable" medical treatment, "leading to seizure and emergency transport to a hospital".
Dao, too, apparently struggled with their diet, and spent many months in a state of near catatonia. At various points they were put on suicide watch, force-fed, and deemed unsafe to be transported to court.
In July 2023, one doctor wrote that they were at risk of death due to "prolonged starvation", describing them as depressed, anorexic, and "grossly psychotic".
"Patient won't talk, eat, or bathe. [They] do not respond to questions. [They] won't even leave [their] room," wrote another physician the following month.
Dao's lawyers similarly said that the forced termination of their hormone therapy had induced "depression, psychosis," and suicidal ideation; that they engaged in "self-mutilation" and appeared "mentally vacant". It is unclear whether or not Dao ever regained access to their medication.
Many court documents make allegations of transphobia. Leatham's lawyers wrote that she had received derogatory comments from prison staff and death threats from male inmates, "causing her to be in fear for her life". Dao's defense lawyers also alleged "repeated bigotry" from the prosecution.
Leatham herself filed a handwritten civil rights complaint in 2024 alleging that police and prison officers had conducted at least nine "forcible" strip searches, which involved touching her breasts and inspecting her genitals, "sometimes making jokes about whether 'it' as a 'he' or a 'she'.” She claimed officers had verbally abused her, while housing her with male prisoners who threatened to murder her and hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs.
She further alleged that despite her repeated requests, she had been deprived access to her regular hormone medications ever since December 2022. "The medical staff... are forcibly detransitioning me, as part of the jail's de facto policy of putting transgender people through conversion therapy," she wrote.
As of April 17, neither the Solano County Sheriff's Office nor the jail's healthcare provider have filed any response. Both told Open Vallejo they would not comment because the lawsuit is still ongoing.
‘I am rational. I do not have a mental illness’
The defendants' medical issues — and, at times, their refusal to cooperate even with their own lawyers — were apparently severe enough to raise doubts as to their mental competence to stand trial.
In July 2023, Leatham was declared "developmentally disabled and incapable of.... understanding the nature and the purpose of the proceedings now pending against them"; she was sent to a long-term medical facility.
While the exact reasons are unclear, one lawyer later said it had been "based on her autism and its impact on her ability to cooperate and assist counsel".
According to Open Vallejo, Leatham had also made some unusual declarations during an earlier case over a botched protest in nearby Sonoma County.
"This land is outside the jurisdiction of the Sonoma Courthouse, just as a woman’s womb is outside the jurisdiction of a man who raped her," she wrote in September 2022. "Sonoma County is infested with evil spirits who are colluding with each other to kill us and silence our vengeful souls as we reincarnate in the bodies of Indigenous peoples and animals."
She claimed to have recognized the judge and district attorney as "spiritual incarnations" of the police officers who had "kidnapped" her. "I said, ‘I KNOW YOUR FACE. YOU ARE SLAVERS. YOU ARE NAZIS,'" she wrote.
Meanwhile, Dao's lawyers filed paperwork in August 2023 describing various indications that they could not currently stand trial. Top of the list was the distress caused by being deprived of their hormones.
County prosecutors have insisted that Leatham was "never in fact incompetent", but instead consciously refusing to cooperate. While asserting that she "suffers from" autism, lead prosecutor Shapiro wrote that Leatham's "peculiar or unconventional thinking and behavior" were simply "a product of her belief system".
Leatham appears to agree. "I am rational. I do not have a 'mental illness' and I do not need 'treatment'," she wrote in letters to the court in July 2023, arguing that having unconventional ideas did not prevent her from engaging rationally with other people.
"The prosecution [has] called my political and religious beliefs 'delusions'. Is it my belief that people reincarnate? Is it my belief that financially supporting death camps and consuming the corpses of their victims is wrong and those who do so are monsters? Which of my political and religious beliefs is she claiming is a 'delusion', and why...?
"These so-called 'delusions' are the truth, which I believe even if no one else does. I am not going to change my beliefs just because they are looked down on by the humans of the Solano County Court, who act like their attempted containment and suppression of magic is oh so grown-up and mature."
Slogans and pseudonyms
In recent months, Leatham has repeatedly disrupted court proceedings by shouting slogans.
"Defendant Leatham enters the courtroom and immediately is disruptive by outbursts," reads one summary from October 2024. "Defendant becomes disruptive by constant outbursts," reads one from November 5.
November 13: "The Court enters a not guilty plea on behalf of the defendant due to continued outbursts." December 20: "The Defendant enters the courtroom and repeatedly shouts 'I waive my right to a speedy trial'." March 14: "Defendant enters the courtroom and is immediately disruptive."
At one hearing, Leatham reportedly shouted the same words nearly 100 times: "This is a show trial to coordinate the genocide of transgender people!"
Meanwhile, there continues to be dispute over Dao's identity. Prosecutors contend that Dao is not merely a chosen name but one literally “made up on the spot” in order to avoid justice, claiming that police body cameras show Dao "avoiding the question" and then visibly "hesitating" when asked to identify themself.
Witnesses, the prosecutors said, knew Dao as “Silver and Ivory”. An investigation by the Chronicle appeared to corroborate Dao’s former identity.
Dao's defense lawyer has so far refused to confirm or deny that connection, but insists Suri Dao is their true name today. “My client is transgender and perhaps has a different name than their birth name,” Ford told the Chronicle. “But it is their name."
Court papers suggest the prosecution may be planning to tie Leatham and Dao explicitly to other so-called 'Zizians', who have been linked to multiple deaths and disappearances across the country.
Among the evidence mentioned in the case are police reports about murder case in Pennsylvania — most likely that of Richard Zajko, 72, and his wife and Rita Zajko, 69.
Ford, at least, has disputed this association. “I don’t know that a Zizian is a real thing," he told the Chronicle.
With Lind's death, the prosecution's only witness not connected to the defendants appears to be McMillan, who is over 80 years old and whose memory has "significantly declined" since the incident.
Next Tuesday, April 22, the court will reconvene in the hope of finally setting a trial date, as well as hearing evidence McMillan, whom prosecutors fear may soon die of cancer.
