By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press and Colin Atagi, The Press Democrat
A member of the cultlike group known as Zizians, which once protested outside a west Sonoma County gathering and gained notoriety elsewhere in the North Bay, has been charged with the 2022 murders of her parents in Pennsylvania, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Michelle Zajko, who has been jailed in Maryland on other charges since February 2025, has been charged with murder, burglary and conspiracy charges in the deaths of Rita and Richard Zajko, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said at a news conference. The prosecutor said she did not act alone.
Online court records didn’t immediately indicate whether Zajko had an attorney in the Pennsylvania case as of Wednesday. An attorney representing her in Maryland did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and the Delaware County Public Defender’s office declined to comment.
The couple was shot to death in their home on New Year’s Eve after police say a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured video of a car pulling up to their home in Chester Heights, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”
RELATED: What we know about the Zizians and the group’s connection to Sonoma County, the Bay Area
Michelle Zajko has denied any involvement, and in court filings suggested her father might have killed her mother and then himself.
“I didn’t murder my parents,” she wrote in an April 2025 “ Open Letter to the World.”
FILE – In this combination of undated photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police, Richard Zajko, left, and his wife Rita Zajko, who police say were shot to death in their home in suburban Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2022, are shown. (Pennsylvania State Police via AP, File)
FILE – This Jan. 29, 2025 photo shows a Chester Heights, Pa., home, the scene of the 2022 killing of Richard and Rita Zajko, (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
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FILE – In this combination of undated photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police, Richard Zajko, left, and his wife Rita Zajko, who police say were shot to death in their home in suburban Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2022, are shown. (Pennsylvania State Police via AP, File)
Authorities, however, had long described Zajko as a person of interest in the double homicide, two of the six deaths linked to a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence.
Prior to those killings, group members made their presence known in Sonoma County when they invaded a Westminster Woods retreat near Occidental in November 2019. They were protesting an event hosted by the Center for Applied Rationality, a Berkeley nonprofit that stages workshops on rational thinking, The Press Democrat reported at the time. The group showed up while dressed in dark robes and Guy Fawkes masks like those worn by hackers with the activist group Anonymous.
Pat Paterson / The Press Democrat file
Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies closed Bohemian Highway during a standoff with four individuals who barricaded a Camp Meeker retreat center Friday, Nov. 15, 2019. The four individuals arrested became known as part of a cultlike group, the Zizians, with some members now allegedly connected with a series of killings and deaths across the country. (Pat Paterson / The Press Democrat file)
The group barricaded the center during an hours-long standoff. It blocked an exit with a box truck, shuttle bus and Toyota Prius along Bohemian Highway. Two members of the group carried walkie-talkies, one wore a body camera and another had pepper spray, according to the initial arrest report. Authorities evacuated about 50 people, including 18 children, who were at the camp in a school bus during the standoff.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office reported the protesters initially did not follow deputies’ orders, yelled profanities and physically resisted efforts to detain them. Deputies ultimately arrested group leader Jack LaSota, Emma Borhanian of Albany and Alexander Leatham, whose hometown was unknown, authorities said at the time.
Also arrested that day was Gwen Danielson, whose court proceedings played out in Sonoma County Superior Court before she was sentenced in April to 150 days in jail for four misdemeanors counts of criminal conspiracy, obstructing police, trespassing and wearing a mask for unlawful purposes.
AP Photo
This combination of images from top left shows 2019 Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office booking mug shots of Jack LaSota, Alexander Leatham, Emma Borhanian and, at bottom left, Gwen Danielson, court appearance of Maximilian Snyder and a Newport City Inn surveillance video image of Teresa Youngblut. They are associates of LaSota, also known as “Ziz” and members of a cultlike group known as the Zizians now tied to several alleged killings and deaths across the country. (AP Photo)
In an interview with Rolling Stone, she distanced herself from the Zizians’ recent activity and said she she learned from afar about the series of killings and deaths allegedly linked to the group or its members.
Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a Vallejo landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing in January 2025 to prevent his testimony in the initial attack, the Zajkos’ deaths Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left a border agent and another Zizian dead.
Zajko, who is charged with providing the gun used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January 2025, was arrested in Maryland a few weeks later along with Daniel Blank and Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whom authorities describe as the group’s leader. Police who responded to a landowner’s complaint about suspicious people parked in box trucks on his property described them as having “ties with the Zizians Cult” and said they would be questioned about crimes across the country.
All three face state charges of trespassing and illegal gun and drug possession, while LaSota faces a federal charge of illegal gun possession by a fugitive. A judge recently granted a defense request for a competency evaluation in the federal case.
In court filings, LaSota’s attorneys said their client eschews the term Zizian and denies that she and her friends have formed a cult. Zajko has claimed authorities arrested the group in Maryland to prevent them from exonerating Teresa Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty in Vermont to murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Zajko was living in Vermont at the time of her parents’ deaths and was questioned there by police shortly after they died. A few weeks later, officers briefly took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel but released her without charges. LaSota, staying at the same hotel, was charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.
Zajko had been estranged from her parents in the year leading up to their deaths, the prosecutor said. They were killed hours after Rita Zajko texted her daughter in an attempt to reconcile. “Her mother reached out and explained that she was sorry for the rift that had grown between them,” the prosecutor said. “That text went unanswered.”
A few hours later, at least two people entered the home. “The lights go on in the home, and Richard and Rita Zajko are executed,” he said.