A Washington state woman charged in the fatal shooting of a U.S. border patrol agent in Vermont last week was ordered to be held without bail.
Teresa Youngblut, 21, was back in court on Thursday morning for a detention hearing, where she faces federal firearms charges in the death of Agent David Maland, 44, who was shot and killed on January 20 during a traffic stop in northern Vermont near the Canadian border.
Youngblut had been traveling with Felix Bauckholt, a German citizen who also was killed in the shootout. The pair had been under surveillance for several days. Youngblut was treated for her injuries at a local hospital and placed under arrest.
Prosecutors argued that Youngblut should not be allowed bail or release, and called her a flight risk due to several factors, which included her lack of ties to Vermont and a lack of information about her employment, the violent nature of the crime, the weight of evidence against her, and the danger she poses to the community.
Youngblut, who wore a face mask and an arm sling, faced forward during the hearing on Thursday, NBC5 reported.
The judge overseeing the hearing ordered that Youngblut be held without bail until her preliminary hearing on February 7.
Earlier this week, a motion filed by the prosecution claimed Youngblut was in frequent contact with someone who is a person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California.
Court records show that Maximilian Snyder, 22, was arrested by Vallejo police on Friday and charged on Monday with the murder of 82-year-old Curtis Lind, who was stabbed to death on December 17.
In November, Snyder applied for a marriage license with a person by the name of Teresa Youngblut in Kirkland, Washington, according to a records search in Washington state’s King County.
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania state police said that the gun used in the Vermont shooting was purchased by a person of interest in the killings of Richard and Rita Zajko, who were shot to death in their home on December 31, 2022.
Authorities have not publicly identified the person who bought the gun used in Vermont; VTDigger news reported that federal authorities issued an alert to firearms dealers seeking information about purchases made by Michelle Jacqueline Zajko and describing her as a person of interest in the Vermont shooting.
A search of a public records database revealed that a person named Michelle Zajko was registered to vote in 2016 at the same home address in Pennsylvania as Richard and Rita Zajko. And in 2021, a Michelle Zajko bought a half-acre piece of property in Derby, Vermont, a few miles from the Canadian border.
Both Youngblut and the buyer of the gun were in frequent contact with someone who was detained as part of the Pennsylvania investigation and is a person of interest in another killing in California, a federal prosecutor said in a court filing this week.
Meanwhile, Jack LaSota is currently facing charges of obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct in Pennsylvania. Authorities won’t say whether those charges are related to the Zajko deaths, but court records show that police were searching for a gun used in two murders when they arrested LaSota 12 days later at a hotel about 10 miles from the scene of the killings.
LaSota also has connections to some of the key players in the California case, the Associated Press reported.
In 2019, LaSota and three others were arrested while protesting an event hosted by the Center for Applied Rationality at a camping retreat in Occidental, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2022, two of the others, Emma Borhanian and Jeffrey Leatham, were accused of attacking their landlord with a sword in Vallejo, California. Borhanian died in the attack.
The landlord, Curtis Lind, survived the November 2022 attack but was stabbed to death on January 17, weeks before he was set to testify against his surviving assailants in the 2022 attack. Maximilian Snyder now faces charges in his death.
Both Youngblut and Snyder appeared to follow the “vegan Sith” ideology of a fringe Bay Area group that has been described as a “murder gang,” Open Vallejo reported, citing an interview with a person familiar with the group.
Jessica Taylor said she was a friend of Bauckholt, who she knew by the name Ophelia. She recalled warning Bauckholt about Zizians, a group she described as a “murder gang.”
Several online posters attributed the attack to the “Zizians,” which was referred to as a “cult” on various online forums. The group is a radical offshoot of the Rationalist movement, an ideology centered on using scientific techniques to enhance human decision making, Open Vallejo reported.
