Curtis Lind was killed near his property on Third Street in Vallejo, Calif., on Jan 17, 2025.
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A string of killings across America — including the stabbing death of a landlord in Vallejo, a deadly shootout in Vermont and the massacre of a married couple in Pennsylvania — are seemingly connected by a fringe group led by an elusive leader in the Bay Area.
In Vermont and California, two suspects appeared in court this week facing criminal charges. Oxford-educated data scientist Maximilian Snyder, 22, was charged in Solano County with the murder of Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind. In Vermont, 21-year-old data scientist Teresa Youngblut was charged in connection with the killing of a Border Patrol agent in a shootout near the Canadian border.
It has now been revealed that Snyder and Youngblut recently applied for a marriage license. The connection, though, appears to run deeper than a marriage proposal: The couple has ties to a fringe online group named the Zizians. The namesake of the group, Zizian, has been accused of making death threats on forums promoting a radical form of Rationalism, which discusses the ethics of veganism, artificial intelligence destroying humanity and using scientific techniques to enhance human decision-making.
A recent Open Vallejo investigation identified Zizian as Jack LaSota, a former tenant at a property on Third Street in Vallejo, where a samurai sword attack in 2022 left tenant Emma Borhanian, 31, dead and landlord Curtis Lind without an eye. Lind was stabbed to death at the property earlier this month before he could testify in the trial related to the 2022 attack.
In November 2019, LaSota, Borhanian, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham went to Westminster Woods, a children’s outdoor camp in Occidental, wearing Guy Fawkes-style masks. According to their attorney at the time, they were protesting the “coverup of child molestation by one or more people”; it is not clear who this refers to, or if there are credible allegations of child molestation related to the location. During the protest, the four were arrested by deputies from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, and as a result of those arrests, they later filed a lawsuit alleging they were tortured and sexually assaulted while in custody.
On Feb. 17, 2023, the group’s attorney, Jerold Friedman, was granted a remarkable motion by the court. He had asked to withdraw from the case due to the fact that three of the four clients were definitely or possibly deceased.
First was Borhanian, who was killed during the alleged assault on Lind in Vallejo. The second was Danielson. Friedman wrote that he had last heard from her on Jan. 21, 2022. Three months later, he “heard rumor” that she may have killed herself.
“On September 9, 2022, I received an e-mail apparently from a friend of Gwen Danielson that asked if I can share anything about her rumored suicide,” he wrote. “Taken at face value, the e-mail confirms that Gwen Danielson is missing from her friends. I have no information on whether Gwen Danielson is alive and, if she is alive, where she might be.”
Finally, there was LaSota. According to Friedman, he received a phone call in August 2022 from LaSota’s defense attorney in a separate criminal case. That attorney told Friedman that LaSota fell from a boat in San Francisco Bay and was likely dead. When Friedman reached out to LaSota’s mother, she also “confirmed that Jack LaSota died.”
Friedman obtained the U.S. Coast Guard report on LaSota’s apparent drowning, which was submitted in evidence to the court. According to the Coast Guard, LaSota went overboard at approximately 11 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2022. A map from the Coast Guard depicts LaSota’s last known location as precisely at the midpoint between Oakland Airport and Candlestick Point. Despite hours of searching — and calm seas, clear weather and a 60-degree night — no trace of LaSota was found. An obituary posted to Legacy.com appeared not long after, stating only that LaSota “left our lives but not our hearts on Aug. 19 after a boating accident. Loving adventure, friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals, you are missed.”
Teresa Youngblut, who is charged by the FBI in connection to the shooting death of US Border Patrol Agent David Maland, is seen in the office at the Newport City Inn on Jan. 14, 2025, in Newport, Vt.
Newport City Inn photograph via /Newport City Inn/AP
Less than three months later, Friedman said he was forwarded an email from the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office. “I just wanted to reach out and let you know that Jack Lasota was contacted by police in Vallejo this weekend,” it read. “Lasota was on scene, alive and well.”
Soon, LaSota would be confirmed alive by another police department. In early January 2023, Pennsylvania State Police troopers descended on the Candlewood Suites in Chester City. In hand, they had a search warrant for a room being occupied by Michelle Zajko, whose parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, had been shot and killed in their home on Dec. 31, 2022. One of the troopers testified in court that they believed the weapon in the killing, a 9 mm Smith and Wesson, was in Zajko’s possession.
During their search, the trooper said Zajko indicated she had companions in another hotel room. Upon searching that room, the trooper testified that they found LaSota, who was identified through fingerprints — 17 months after LaSota apparently died in San Francisco Bay. LaSota was charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct and released from custody.
SFGATE could not independently confirm Danielson is dead. A spokesperson from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office said LaSota is still wanted on an outstanding warrant but has not been in contact since last being booked into the county jail.
Zizianism has been described by some as a cult. An anonymous website titled Zizians.info claims that what started as a self-improvement blog from Zizian soon evolved into posts encouraging members to isolate themselves from friends and family and “hurting people she didn’t like.” The post also claims that Zizian attempted and failed to live rent-free on a boat in San Francisco Bay but became embittered by the “dysfunction of the Bay.”
Another lengthy anonymous 2023 post on Medium warned of future violence from Zizian and her followers. “Some people in the rationalist community are concerned about risks of physical violence from Ziz and some of her associates,” the warning began.
Jessica Taylor, a friend of Felix Baukholt, who died in the Border Patrol shootout last week, told Open Vallejo that she warned Baukholt about the Zizians and described the group on X as a “death cult.”
Jack LaSota was unreachable for this story. LaSota’s parents did not return a request for comment by publication time.
