String of recent killings linked to Bay Area ‘death cult’
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A string of recent killings across the United States have been tied to a fringe online group described as a “death cult.” The complex web of violence includes a samurai sword attack in Vallejo, the stabbing of a landlord and a deadly shootout near the Canadian border.
In 2022, Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind was allegedly attacked by a group of young tenants who lived in box trucks on his property. One of the alleged assailants reportedly stabbed Lind through the chest with a samurai sword. During the attack, Lind shot two of the alleged assailants, leaving Emma Borhanian, 31, dead. Lind survived the attack but lost an eye. On Jan. 17, Lind, now 82, was stabbed to death on the same property, weeks before he could testify in the case. Oxford-educated data scientist Maximilian Snyder, 22, was charged on Tuesday with Lind’s murder.
“Curt had a deep love of the ocean and lived many years on boats and ships he refurbished himself,” Lind’s family said in a statement. “Curt loved life and everything it had to offer.”
Three thousand miles away, in Burlington, Vermont, a 21-year-old data scientist named Teresa Youngblut has been charged in connection with the killing of a Border Patrol agent in a shootout following a traffic stop 12 miles from the Canadian border. On Jan. 20, multiple Border Patrol agents pulled over a blue Toyota Prius belonging to German citizen Felix Baukholt, who was a passenger in the car driven by Youngblut, a criminal complaint seen by SFGATE alleges.
Youngblut allegedly pulled a gun on the agents, and the resulting shootout left Baukholt and agent David Maland, 44, dead, and Youngblut injured. Youngblut and Baukholt had been under surveillance by authorities in Vermont after they were seen walking around two towns in “all black tactical style clothing,” carrying firearms. They had also been seen wrapping cellphones and other items in aluminum foil bought at Walmart, the complaint states.
There now appears to be a link between the two tragedies that occurred three days apart.
On Monday, a prosecutor in Vermont alleged in a court filing that the weapons supplied to Youngblut and Baukholt came from a person connected to the Vallejo homicide investigation and another unspecified double homicide in Pennsylvania. Youngblut and Snyder also applied for a marriage license in Washington state in November, according to an Open Vallejo investigation.
Many of the people linked to the violence are connected to a fringe online community known as the “Zizians,” the investigation found. The group is a radical offshoot of the Rationalism movement, focusing on matters such as veganism and artificial intelligence destroying humanity. The group is apparently named after a person known as “Ziz,” whom Open Vallejo identified as a former tenant on Lind’s Vallejo property.
A 2023 post on Rationalism forum LessWrong.com warned of coming violence in the Zizian community. “Over the past few years, Ziz has repeatedly called for the deaths of many different classes of people,” the anonymous post read. Jessica Taylor, a friend of Baukholt’s, told Open Vallejo she warned Baukholt about the Zizians, describing the group on X as a “death cult.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/bay-area-death-cult-zizian-murders-20064333.php.
