Who Are the Zizians? Police Investigate a Cult-Like Group Allegedly Linked to Several Deaths

Just before the pandemic lockdown took hold in 2020, Jon Jenkins, 66, was talking to his friend Curtis Lind, a former tugboat captain who operated an RV and boat storage yard in Vallejo, Calif., about an odd group of new tenants who were living in trailers and trucks on his property and walked around naked and wearing gas masks.

“He said, ‘These are friends of mine,’” recalls Jenkins. “He was all up for it. He was always helping people.”

But by the fall of 2022, the relationship between the kind landlord and his eccentric renters—followers of a blogger named Jack “Ziz” LaSota who preached a mash-up of ideas about anarchism, veganism, transgender rights and the dangers of AI technology—had turned sour.

Lind sought to evict the group for not paying rent. “They owed him like $60,000,” says Jenkins. “He asked me to help him put eviction notices on their trucks because he was scared of them.”

And for good reason.

On Nov. 13, 2022, two days before the group was to be evicted, authorities say, Lind was lured from his trailer when one of LaSota’s followers, mathematician Suri Dao, 24, knocked on his door to report a water leak. When he walked outside, authorities say, Lind was viciously attacked by Dao and other members of the group, including Emma Borhanian, 31, and Somni Leatham, 29. Lind suffered multiple knife wounds, lost an eye and was impaled with a samurai sword but managed to fire a handgun in self-defense, killing Borhanian and injuring Leatham.

Miraculously, Lind survived the assault. After cleaning out his former tenants’ trailers and trucks and discovering dozens of jars of urine, an ultrasound machine, 3D printers, multiple computers and 50 containers of lye, he thought he had seen the last of them. But on Jan. 17, 2025, the 82-year-old landlord was ambushed as he was getting out of his car at the gate of his property and fatally stabbed.

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According to Solano County, Calif.,  prosecutors—who charged suspected group member and University of Oxford-trained data scientist Maximilian Snyder, 23, with Lind’s murder—the landlord was killed to prevent him from testifying at Dao and Leatham’s upcoming trial for attempted murder.

According to federal authorities, Lind’s killing may not be an isolated event. The FBI is now investigating a series of lethal crimes across the country—in California, Vermont and Pennsylvania—that authorities believe were carried out by people linked to the Zizians, the cultlike circle of radicals led by LaSota, a former computer engineer who broke away from the more mainstream rationalist movement that is currently popular in Silicon Valley.

Five suspected Zizians have been arrested in connection with shootings and stabbings that have claimed the lives of four victims and two group members. In a statement after the indictment of Zizians associate Teresa Youngblut, 21, on federal weapons charges related to the Jan. 20, 2025, killing of a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Vermont, FBI spokesperson Sarah Ruane said, “Youngblut is believed to have associations with other individuals suspected of violent acts in multiple states. The FBI is coordinating information sharing on any case-related details with our partners from various law enforcement agencies to follow every lead and aggressively investigate the connections. This is an ongoing investigation.”

On Jan. 20, three days after the death of Lind in California, Zizians Youngblut and Ophelia Bauckholt, 26, a German mathematician, were pulled over in a blue Toyota Prius by U.S. Border Patrol agent Chris Maland, 44, in Coventry, Vt., about 20 miles from the Canadian border. An employee at a nearby hotel had called authorities days earlier to report seeing Youngblut armed and Bauckholt dressed in tactical gear. When Maland asked to check Bauckholt’s U.S. visa, a gun battle broke out; Bauckholt died at the scene, and Maland, a U.S. Air Force veteran who loved the outdoors and was planning to marry his longtime partner, was taken to a hospital, where he later died.

Investigators soon learned that the guns allegedly used by Youngblut and Bauckholt had been purchased by Michelle Zajko, a former intern at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California who began reading and commenting on LaSota’s blog in 2019. Zajko had been questioned by police in 2023 after they responded to a welfare check call and found her parents, Rita and Richard Zajko, 68 and 71, respectively, shot dead in an upstairs bedroom of the family home in Chester Heights, Pa. Authorities served Zajko a search warrant at her hotel while she was in town for her parents’ funeral and brought her to the state police barracks for further inquiries. They described her as “not cooperative” and released her without charges. Zajko, who was believed to be traveling with LaSota at the time, then left town without reclaiming her car and $40,000 found inside.

Police later discovered that ammunition purchased by Zajko was from the same manufacturer and of the same type as that of the spent casings recovered near the bodies of her parents and named her a person of interest in their deaths.

Zajko was taken into custody earlier this year when a homeowner in rural Frostburg, Md., notified police that three “suspicious” people had parked a pair of white box trucks on his property and asked if they could stay for a month. When officers arrived on the scene on Feb. 16, they say, they found LaSota, Zajko and a third associate, Daniel Blank, 26, dressed in black; two of them were also wearing gun belts filled with ammo.

A search led to the discovery of a long rifle and a handgun in a truck. Although the three suspects were charged with trespassing and misdemeanor weapons violations, Allegany County State’s Attorney James Elliott said one of them “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians” who have been linked to as many as six deaths. “All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” according to a Maryland State Police probable cause statement.

Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, suspected Zizians Leatham, Snyder and Dao are awaiting trial for murder and attempted murder in Lind’s assault and death. Galen Metzger, 23, who knew Dao during their high school and college years, will be watching with interest. He describes his old friend as “the smartest person I’ve ever known” until they drifted apart. When he tried to reestablish contact three years ago, he looked on a Discord chat channel that they had used together, “and that’s when Zizians came up,” Metzger says. Dao “was kind of caught up in that.”

Meanwhile, Lind’s friends are still trying to come to terms with his violent death. “Curtis was modeling how to live a life of generosity and kindness,” says David Ferrera, 62, who fondly remembers camping with Lind at the Burning Man festival. “The depth of kindness in his eyes was so disarming. He’s etched in my heart forever.”