Judge orders leaders of cult-like ‘Zizian’ group to be held without bail

A Maryland court has ordered a blogger known as “Ziz”, who leads a cult-like group connected to six killings, to be held without bail.

The blogger, Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley, California, was arrested Sunday along with Michelle Zajko, 32, of Media, Pennsylvania, and Daniel Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California. The three face charges including trespassing, obstructing and hindering, and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.

The Zizians, as the group are known after their apparent leader, have been tied to the killing of a United States Border Patrol agent David Maland last month near the Canadian border, as well as five other killings in three states.

LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland, on Sunday afternoon.

The judge in the case ordered LaSota to be held without bail, citing concerns about her being a flight risk and a danger to public safety. Prosecutors said LaSota “appears to be the leader of an violent group known as Zizians”.

Maland was killed in a January 20 shootout following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 32 kilometres (20 miles) from the Canadian border. Felix Bauckholt, a passenger in the car, also died, and the driver, Teresa Youngblut, has pleaded not guilty to federal firearms charges.

The Zizians have also been tied to the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent slaying in January, and the December 2022 deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania.

The suspects were arrested after a Frostburg resident told police he wanted three “suspicious” people off his property after they had parked two box trucks there and asked to camp for a month, according to police documents.

When they were arrested, they were dressed in black and two wore gun belts holding ammunition, according to police. Officers found a rifle in the back of one truck and a handgun on the front floorboard. Zajko, who refused to put her hands behind her back and was taken to the ground, also was carrying a handgun, police said.

Officials have said the guns they recovered were bought by a person of interest in the deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, and that Youngblut had been in close contact with a person of interest in a homicide in Vallejo, California.

Maximilian Snyder, who applied for a marriage licence with Youngblut in November, is charged with the January 17 stabbing death of Curtis Lind, a Vallejo landlord who had survived an earlier attack by members of the Zizian group and was set to testify against them.

Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, but Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.