As you are reading this a cult of “vegan Sith” computer whizzkids are racking up a terrifying body count. Multiple people are dead, their leader remains at large, and there’s no indication they’re going to stop anytime soon. They call themselves “Zizians” and are led by Jack “Ziz” LaSota, 34.
This is a tangled tale that began in Vallejo, California in 2019 when the elderly Curtis Lind invited artists and workers to live on his land. Within this community a “rationalist” group formed that was quickly dubbed “The Cult” by neighbors, then consisting of four people including their leader LaSota. The group — known as “Zizians” — have a strong interest in behavioral psychology and AI, combined with militant veganism and animal rights activism.
LaSota seems to have followed the standard cult playbook, encouraging followers to enter sleep deprivation, distance themselves from family and friends, and craft cult identities. The cult’s beliefs were chronicled on LaSota’s blog (archived here) and appear to divide all people into “non-good,” “single-good,” and the rare “double-good” categories. LaSota is (naturally for a cult leader) double-good and told the followers that non-good people who eat meat must be punished.
The murders of Richard and Rita Zajko
On Jan. 2, 2023 Richard and Rita Zajko (72 and 69 years old, respectively) were discovered dead in their home in Chester Heights, Philadelphia. Police quickly ruled their deaths as homicide due to gunshot wounds and began an investigation. Little evidence was discovered, no suspects were arrested, and the police remained quiet, save for a comment that they believed this was “not a random act of violence.”
Their daughter, Michelle J. Zajko, was an associate of LaSota and it’s theorized that the motive behind the murders was for her to gain a multi-million dollar inheritance.
The murder of Curtis Lind
On Jan. 17, 2025 at around 2:30 pm Curtis Lind (82) was fatally stabbed in the neck by an assailant wearing a mask and black beanie. The attack took place outside his property on Lemon Street in Vallejo and the assailant fled.
As per OpenVallejo.org, Lind was due to testify in court in April against “a group of young tenants” in relation to a serious attack on him in November 2022, which began when the cult stopped paying rent and he attempted to evict them. They responded by tossing rocks at him, before the next day luring him out of his house with a plea for help before (as per Lind’s friend, Thomas Young) they “jumped him with a bunch of knives and swords, apparently with the intent of chopping him up and dissolving him in a bath of chemicals, which they had prepared.”
Lind was apparently impaled with a samurai sword and lost consciousness, awakening to find the cult attempting to decapitate him (he had scars to corroborate this) and responded by shooting his attackers, injuring a woman known as Somni, and killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian. Prosecutors trying to unpick the case were stymied by a lack of evidence and the elderly Lind’s “severe memory decline.” After Lind was released from hospital he was understandably paranoid the cult would finish the job, as Young recalls “He was generally afraid that they were going to track him down and kill him.”
Cult members Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham were charged with “murder, attempted murder, and aggravated mayhem” in relation to the 2022 incident, with prosecutors dubbing them “extremely dangerous” and noting that they’ve “both tried to escape from custody.”
22-year-old University of Oxford computer scientist Maximilian Snyder has now been charged with Lind’s murder, with reports indicating he’s also a member of LaSota’s cult. Snyder was a student at the University of Oxford, a decorated scholar, and in 2023 won an $11,000 prize in AI research. In November Snyder had applied for a Washington marriage license to marry 21-year-old computer science student Teresa Youngblut, of which we’ll hear more about in a moment.
The murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland
On Jan. 20 U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, was a member of a team who pulled over a Toyota Prius in Coventry, Vermont being driven by Youngblut and another man, Felix Bauckholt, a German citizen, a former finance trader, and math whiz. The pair had been under covert surveillance since Jan. 14, after a hotel employee became suspicious upon seeing them armed and dressed in black tactical gear.
Youngblut and Bauckholt had already been approached by authorities, claiming they were “in the vicinity to look at purchasing property.” Raising suspicions, they were tailed and stopped, only for things to rapidly go south. As per the FBI, Youngblut suddenly pulled out a handgun and began blasting, with Bauckholt attempting to join her.
The agents riddled their car with bullets. When the smoke cleared Bauckholt was dead, Agent Maland was fatally wounded, and Youngblut was seriously injured. She was rushed to hospital and has been charged with “intentional use of a deadly weapon while forcibly assaulting or interfering with federal law enforcement, and use and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to an assault with a deadly weapon.”
A search of the car revealed some seriously disturbing equipment: body armor, firearms, night-vision goggles, multiple electronic devices, ammunition, and cellphones wrapped in aluminum foil. According to police, the person who purchased the firearms used in this shooting is Michelle J. Zajko the lead suspect in her parents’ murders (detailed above).
So what’s next?
If this byzantine case were on one of those giant pinboards covered in photos, all the strands of red string would lead back to a central photograph of Jack “Ziz” LaSota, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Either way, this story clearly hasn’t run its course quite yet, though given what we already know we doubt it’s going to end peacefully.
Published: Jan 30, 2025 09:12 am