A year after border agent’s killing, 7 Zizians fight criminal charges in 3 states
CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — 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.”
Murder trials pending in California, an open case in Pennsylvania
Two other Zizians, Suri Dao and Alexander Leatham, are charged in a 2022 attack on a landlord in California that left another member, Emma Borhanian, dead, but their trial has been postponed multiple times. Another member, Maximilian Snyder, is charged with killing the landlord, Curtis Lind, three years later, just days before the Vermont shooting.
Dao’s attorney, Brian Ford, said proceedings are suspended for competency hearings and that his client is not guilty. Attorneys for the others, as well as family members of victims and those accused, either declined to comment or did not respond to messages.
LaSota, described by authorities as the apparent leader of the Zizians, has a May trial date in Baltimore federal court on a separate charge of being an armed fugitive — a charge she has asked to have dismissed, arguing it violates her Second Amendment rights.
Authorities allege LaSota faked her own death to evade charges after a 2019 protest in California and disappeared again after being accused of obstructing the investigation into the December 2022 shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.
No one has been charged for killing the Zajkos, and the Delaware County district attorney’s office said only that it still is being investigated. Jeffries, the Maryland trooper, said in a report that “Blank is under investigation for a double homicide that occurred in Delaware County, PA.”
Authorities also have described Zajko as a person of interest in her parents’ death. She has denied any role. In her recent filing, she referred to them as “adoptive guardians” and suggested her father might have killed her mother and then himself. Richard Zajko’s sister-in-law, Rosanne Zajko, declined to comment on behalf of the family.
Mountainside arrests in Maryland
James Broadwater wasn’t sure what to make of the strangers dressed all in black who parked their trucks near his home in Eckhart Mines, outside Frostburg, Maryland. Then Jeffries, the state trooper, told him to Google “Zizians.”
Broadwater testified recently that he had encountered LaSota and Zajko about a half-mile uphill from his house. They asked to stay, but Broadwater gave them until the next morning to leave. After talking with his wife he called state police.
“He changed his mind because he was afraid what would happen if he asked you guys to leave,” Jeffries said when questioned by Zajko in court.
Jeffries testified that a dispatcher had told him about an Associated Press article on the Zizians, published the day before, reporting details about the six deaths. He said LaSota told him they were willing to leave but the three would not identify themselves.
Jeffries said his suspicions were heightened because of the news coverage, their tactical gear that included ammunition on gun belts, and how the trucks were parked with chains on their tires. “I wanted to make sure I identified them before they left,” he testified, and they made the arrests.
The Zizians in Maryland have been working on a joint defense while jailed, though Blank’s parents are pressing the judge to release their son on bail, and his lawyer has sought to distance him from the others. Blank “should not be detained because of the company in which he was arrested,” attorney Rebecca Lechliter wrote.
___
Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.