How a traffic stop in Vermont cracked open a cultlike group linked to deaths in multiple states

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." (AP Photo)

In the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, N.C., a perplexed landlord noticed odd sights at two of his rental properties.

Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes. They ran an electrical cord from one box truck into one of the condos, and kept a stretcher inside another.

A neighbour remembers similarly dressed figures walking around at night holding hands. They never spoke a word.

By the time the FBI searched the property last week, one of the most recent tenants had been killed in a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol agents in Vermont, and a second was under arrest. A third, a shadowy figure known online as “Ziz,” remains missing after authorities linked their cultlike group to six deaths in three states.

Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, which broke open after the Jan. 20 shooting death of a Border Patrol trooper in Vermont during a traffic stop. 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.

Their goals aren’t clear, but online writings span topics from radical veganism and gender identity to artificial intelligence.

At the middle of it all is “Ziz,” who appears to be the leader of the strange group, who called themselves “Zizians.” She has been seen near multiple crime scenes and has connections to various suspects.

She was even declared dead for a time, before reappearing amid more violence.

Who is Ziz?

Jack LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay area after earning a computer science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2013 and interning at NASA, according to a profile on a hiring site for programmers, coders and other freelance workers. NASA officials did not respond to a request to confirm LaSota’s internship, but a Jack LaSota is listed on a website about past interns.

In 2016, she began publishing a dark and rambling blog under the name Ziz, describing her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other.”

LaSota used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman. She railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

LaSota began promoting an extreme mix of rationalism, ethical veganism, anarchism and other value systems, said Jessica Taylor, an AI researcher who met LaSota both in person and online through the rationalist community and knew her as Ziz.

When LaSota left the rationalists behind, she took with her a group of “extremely vulnerable and isolated” followers, Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Taylor said Ziz adherents use the rationalist ideology as a reason to commit violence. “Stuff like, thinking it’s reasonable to avoid paying rent and defend oneself from being evicted,” she said.

Poulomi Saha, a professor who has studied cults, said LaSota’s beliefs and writings may have made readers feel seen, an often central factor in the formation of groups commonly labeled cults. That’s especially true in the era of online communities, in which it’s easier for marginalized people to seek fellow believers.

“For the person who feels hailed by that blog post, there is likely to be a kind of dual experience,” said Saha, co-director of the program in critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. “One where they feel like ‘I have been saying this, or thinking this, all along, and no one has believed me.’”

LaSota, 34, has not responded to multiple Associated Press emails in recent weeks, and her attorney Daniel McGarrigle declined to comment when asked whether she is connected to any of the deaths. She has missed court appearances in two states, and bench warrants have been issued for her arrest. Associated Press reporters have left numerous phone and e-mail messages with LaSota’s family and received no response.

Ziz and followers’ first run-in with the law

In November 2019, LaSota was arrested along with several other people at a protest outside a Northern California retreat center where the Center for Applied Rationality was holding an event. Sheriff’s deputies called in a SWAT team and armored vehicle after the mask-wearing group blocked the property’s exits and handed out fliers railing against the rationalist organization. The group said they were protesting sexual misconduct inside the rationalist group.

The case against LaSota, Emma Borhanian, 31, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham, 29, was pending in August 2022 when the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a report that LaSota had fallen out of a boat in San Francisco Bay. Her body wasn’t found, but her mother confirmed the death and an obituary was published.

It wasn’t long before Ziz surfaced again.

A landlord is attacked in California

By the autumn of 2022, LaSota had moved with other group members, including Borhanian and Leatham, into vans and box trucks on property owned by Curtis Lind in Vallejo, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.

“Emma’s van was amazing,” said someone who knew Borhanian. “It had a refrigerator and freezer and microwave. It was truly a work of art.”

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for her safety, described Borhanian as a kind and loving young woman so smart that she worked at Google while in college. Google did not respond to an inquiry about Borhanian’s employment there.

Prosecutors say she was among those who attacked Lind on Nov. 13 when he tried to evict the group for not paying rent.

Impaled by a sword and partially blinded, Lind fought back, fatally shooting Borhanian. Concluding that Lind acted in self-defence, officials charged Leatham and Suri Dao, 23, with murder in Borhanian’s death, as well as attempted murder of Lind.

A person reached by an Associated Press reporter at a phone number listed for Alex Leatham’s father declined to comment. Attempts to reach family members for Dao were not successful.

Police believe LaSota was at the scene of the crime, but she was not arrested.

An elderly couple is killed in Pennsylvania

On New Year’s Eve of 2022, a couple was shot and killed in their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.

A doorbell camera captured audio and video of a car pulling up to the home of Richard Zajko, 71, and his wife, Rita, 69. A voice shouts “Mom!” and another voice exclaims, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!” according to a Pennsylvania state police affidavit. Police found the couple shot in the head in an upstairs bedroom after they failed to show up to take care of Rita’s mother.

Police questioned the couple’s daughter, Michelle, at her home in Vermont, and a few weeks later, took her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel. She wasn’t arrested or charged with anything. LaSota was at the hotel, too, and was arrested after refusing to cooperate with officers, and charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct.

Six months later, LaSota was released on bail but stopped showing up for court.

LaSota’s attorney, Daniel McGarrigle, said last month his client was “wholly and unequivocally innocent of the charges filed in this case.”

The landlord in California is found dead

Meanwhile, the case regarding the landlord in California was headed to trial. The landlord, who was 82, was the only eyewitness, and prosecutors wanted to hurry along the proceedings.

But on Jan. 17, Lind’s throat was cut, and he died, not far from where he had survived the earlier attack.

Maximilian Snyder, 22, who is charged with murder, appeared in court Feb. 6, only long enough to request a new attorney. It’s not clear how he was identified as a suspect; he has ties to a woman who just days later would be involved in a shootout.

Snyder is listed as in custody in the Solano County Jail in California. Attempts to reach family members of Snyder were not successful.

A Border Patrol agent dies in a shootout Vermont

On. Jan 20, in Vermont, U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle carrying two people connected to the Ziz group. A hotel worker had called authorities after seeing one of them, Teresa Youngblut, with a gun.

Youngblut was driving the car when it was pulled over on Jan. 20, and authorities say she quickly opened fire on officers. The passenger, Felix Bauckholt, a German national who is also listed in court documents as Ophelia, died, along with the border patrol agent, David Maland.

Youngblut was wounded and arrested and has pleaded not guilty to firearms charges.

Authorities who searched the car found a ballistic helmet, night-vision goggles, respirators and ammunition, the FBI said. They also found two-way radios and used shooting range targets.

Youngblut applied for a marriage license with Snyder, the man accused of murdering the elderly landlord. He was a childhood friend; it was unclear if they were married. Authorities say the gun she was carrying was purchased by a person of interest in the Zajko killings.

The last sighting of Ziz

Youngblut and Bauckholt had been living at the two condos in North Carolina, where the landlord and neighbours now say they saw the odd behavior.

LaSota also had been living there as recently as this winter, said the landlord, who reviewed LaSota’s 2019 police booking photo. He spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he was concerned for his safety.

Expressing similar concerns, a neighbour who lived in the other side of Bauckholt’s duplex until September 2023 recalled seeing three people wearing long black robes and tactical clothes.

“They rarely came out during the day but would walk around the neighbourhood and in the woods at night,” the former neighbour said, who also spoke only on condition of anonymity because of concerns for their safety. “Sometimes all three of them would go for a walk and they all held hands. They seemed to care for each other a great deal.”

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Holly Ramer, Patrick Whittle And Mark Scolforo, The Associated Press

Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack, Lisa Baumann, Janie Har, Maryclaire Dale and Gary Robertson contributed to this report.