By HOLLY RAMER, PATRICK WHITTLE and MARK SCOLFORO
In the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 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 neighbor 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-defense, 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 neighbors 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 neighbor 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 neighborhood and in the woods at night,” the former neighbor 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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Here’s a timeline of events in a series of killings that culminated in a Jan. 20 highways shootout that killed a Border Patrol officer in Vermont. It is based on Associated Press interviews and a review of police reports, court records and online postings:
2016: Jack LaSota, who uses feminine pronouns, a computer programmer and transgender woman living in the San Francisco Bay area, starts writing a blog under the online persona “Ziz” with complex and sometimes rambling theories about technology, gender identity and human cognition. She gets involved in the rationalist movement, a community that seeks to understand human cognition and is concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
2018: LaSota attends programs organized by rationalist groups but splits from them after they reject her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain can hold separate values and genders.
November 2019: LaSota and three others — Emma Borhanian, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham — are arrested during what they called a protest against sexual misconduct within rationalist organizations.
August 2022: The U.S. Coast Guard responds to a report that LaSota had fallen out of a boat in San Francisco Bay. No body is found. An obituary is published.
November 2022: Curtis Lind goes to court seeking to evict LaSota, Borhanian, Leatham and others who have been living in vans and box trucks on his property in Vallejo, California, for nonpayment of rent. On Nov. 15, two days before the eviction deadline, Lind is impaled with a sword and partially blinded in an attack during which he shoots and kills Borhanian.
Concluding that Lind acted in self-defense, officials charge Leatham and Suri Dao with murder. LaSota is not charged but police report having contact with her at the scene.
December 2022: Rita and Richard Zajko are shot and killed in their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, on New Year’s Eve. A neighbor’s doorbell camera captures audio and video of a car pulling up to their home, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”
January 2023: Police question the Zajkos’ daughter, Michelle, at her home in Vermont. A few weeks later, officers briefly take her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel, but release her without charges. LaSota, staying at the same hotel, is arrested and charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.
July 2023: Felix Bauckholt, also referred to in court documents as Ophelia, begins renting half a duplex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
May 2024: Teresa Youngblut’s parents report her missing in Seattle after she sends her mother emails saying she has moved in with a friend and changed her number.
November 2024
Youngblut and Maximilian Snyder apply for a marriage license in Washington state. Also this month, Youngblut begins renting a condo near Bauckholt’s in North Carolina.
January 2025: Youngblut and Bauckholt check into a hotel in Lyndonville, Vermont, on Jan. 14. Investigators put the pair under surveillance after a hotel worker reports concerns about their all-black tactical clothing and the gun Youngblut was carrying.
On Jan. 17, Lind, the landlord in California is killed. Snyder is charged with murder, and prosecutors allege he was trying to prevent Lind from testifying against his earlier attackers.
On Jan. 20, U.S. Border Patrol officers pull Youngblut and Bauckholt over on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont. Agent David Maland and Bauckholt are killed in a shootout. Youngblut, who is wounded, is charged with firearms charges.
February 2025: The FBI searches the Chapel Hill property where a landlord says Youngblut, Bauckholt and LaSota had been living earlier this winter.
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Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack, Lisa Baumann, Janie Har, Maryclaire Dale and Gary Robertson contributed to this report.
