Three apparent members of a violent, cultlike group called the Zizians, which is linked to the fatal shooting of a Vermont border patrol agent and other killings around the country, will remain behind bars after they were arrested on Sunday in rural western Maryland.
The group’s leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, and two associates — Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank — were all busted in Frostburg after someone called police about suspicious people living in white box trucks on private property.
They are charged with various misdemeanors, including trespass. Zajko and LaSota also face misdemeanor charges related to their possession of loaded firearms in the trucks, which is illegal under Maryland law, as well as obstructing and hindering police.
Following Zajko’s arrest in Maryland, federal prosecutors in Vermont charged her on Tuesday with lying on February 2024 applications to purchase four handguns in Mount Tabor. Two of the weapons were recovered at the scene of the deadly border patrol shoot-out last month.
During appearances in Allegany County District Court on Tuesday morning, Judge Erich Bean ordered each defendant held in jail without bond until further notice, according to court records. The hearings were not accessible for remote viewing, but Bean voiced concern that LaSota was a flight risk and posed a danger to public safety, the Associated Press reported.
LaSota “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians,” an unnamed prosecutor said during the hearing, according to the Associated Press. Among other exploits, LaSota is suspected of faking her own death in August 2022 after someone reported LaSota fell off a boat in the waters off of San Francisco, Calif.
Zajko is also a suspect in the unsolved killings of her parents, who were found shot dead in December 2022 in their suburban Philadelphia home.
Sunday’s arrests represent a major breakthrough in the sprawling, bizarre and secretive investigation that gained momentum following last month’s deadly shoot-out.Authorities appear to have gotten lucky: A man called Maryland State Police for help kicking the trespassing trio off his land because he thought they looked “suspicious,” court records say.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were wearing all black and staying in the box trucks at the end of a dirt road near a tree line, the resident reported. He asked them to leave his property, and they replied by asking for permission to camp there for a month. The man declined and instead called police.
Two Maryland state troopers, plus several people from the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and the Maryland Natural Resources Police, responded to the call, according a trooper’s court affidavit.
The trooper noticed a man, later identified as Blank, 26, sitting in the passenger seat of one of the box trucks. The trooper ordered Blank to show his hands, to which Blank replied that he had a learning disability and could not understand what the trooper was saying.
Police encountered LaSota and Zajko in the other truck. Zajko, who was carrying a loaded Sig Sauer handgun, began to cry, the trooper wrote, “saying not to kill her.” Police also located a long rifle in the back of the truck and another handgun on the front floorboard where LaSota was sitting.
None of the three would tell police their names. As authorities proceeded to arrest them for trespassing, Zajko, 32, refused to put her hands behind her back, authorities allege. The trooper and two other officers took her to the ground, the trooper wrote.
An FBI agent later identified the three arrestees using their photos, the Maryland trooper wrote.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” the trooper wrote.
None of the three has been charged for any of the homicides that may be linked to LaSota’s cultlike group. But court records and other clues have indicated that federal authorities suspect they were involved in many of them. All three were detained in a Pennsylvania hotel room in early 2023 following the unsolved double murder of Zajko’s elderly parents.
Zajko and Blank appeared to have lived together in an Orleans home that was purchased through a trust in 2020. The home was sold in 2023, but Zajko continues to own a tiny, undeveloped slice of wooded land in Derby, according to town records.
In February 2024, federal investigators believe Zajko drove to Vermont to purchase four handguns from a Mount Tabor dealer called the Last Frontier, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington. Zajko provided her Orleans address to the dealer as part of a background check, but prosecutors allege she no longer lived at the home, which had been sold to new owners the previous July.
Then, last month, Teresa Youngblut was carrying a Glock handgun that Zajko had purchased when border patrol stopped her and Bauckholt on Interstate 91 in Coventry. Authorities allege that Youngblut opened fire on the agents at some point during the stop. Maland and Bauckholt were killed in the ensuing firefight, though the feds have said little about how the exchange unfolded, including who fired the fatal rounds.
Youngblut had previously filed for a marriage license with a man named Maximilian Snyder, who is accused of fatally stabbing an 82-year-old landlord in Vallejo, Calif., just three days before the border patrol shoot-out. Other Zizians had attacked the landlord once before, and the man had been set to testify against his attackers in an upcoming trial.
The band of well-educated extremists appears to have emerged as a fringe offshoot of a trendy philosophy known as rationalism. Adherents appear to share vows of veganism and a belief that artificial intelligence is an existential threat to planetary life. A number are also transgender and have used a mix of names and aliases in recent years.
At some point, the group appears to have taken a militant, violent turn.
Parents of Youngblut and Blank, in statements to police and the online news outlet Open Vallejo, have expressed concern that their children were being influenced by more controlling personalities. Both young adults had been reported missing in recent years.
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