The violent deaths linked to the group known as Zizians stopped at six a year ago, after a U.S. border agent was killed and three members were arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.
Police in Maryland quickly connected Jack “Ziz” LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank to homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow covered dirt road last February, according to court documents and pre-trial testimony.
“All the suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult,” Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025 arrests. But their prosecutions have only inched along amid trial delays and little action in other cases.
Called “Zizians” by outsiders, the young, highly intelligent computer scientists appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the border agent and another Zizian dead.
Arguing they’re victims of injustice
Jury selection was supposed to start this week in Cumberland, Maryland, where LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.
The trial was delayed until June, however, after Zajko, who also is charged with resisting arrest, fired her attorney, briefly represented herself and hired a new lawyer.
In handwritten filings, she has made sprawling allegations of rights violations by snitches inside the Allegany County Detention Center and lies by police and prosecutors.
“In the interest of Hope, Justice and Truth, for the good of all people, and for the establishment of a true peace, the defense moves to dismiss this case,” Zajko declared in 20 pages of neat but almost indecipherably small handwriting.
Their lawyers and the lead prosecutor have all declined comment or not responded to interview requests.
Vermont border agent killed
Zajko also is accused of supplying the guns two other Zizians used in a fatal shootout in Vermont in January 2025, although her federal court docket starts and ends with the complaint charging her with lying to a Vermont gun dealer.
In that case, Teresa Youngblut is accused of opening fire on Border Patrol Agent David Maland during a traffic stop before another agent wounded her and killed her companion, Felix Bauckholt. The encounter happened just hours after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term, but in a Maryland court filing, Zajko sought to blame it on a culture of impunity she says is now evident in the administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“Renee Good is probably dead because the regime has so far been able to get away with murdering Ms. Bauckholt & framing Youngblut,” Zajko claimed. Good was fatally shot last month by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Neither ICE nor border patrol officials responded to messages seeking comment.
Zajko claimed authorities arrested the group to prevent them from exonerating Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty in Vermont to murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
“It is an act of obscene cruelty, despotism & the mark of a tyrannical regime to use a bad faith investigation & the threat of phony charges to conceal exculpatory evidence, threaten witnesses into silence, or threaten to put an innocent person to death, all to protect a murderous border patrol human,” wrote Zajko.
The judge in Youngblut’s case last week suspended deadlines for pretrial motions, citing the complexity of the capital case and noting that the exchange of evidence “will include material related to investigations into other individuals in multiple jurisdictions.”