How a ‘vegan cult’ left a trail of death across America
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When three strangers arrived at the edge of a property in Frostburg, Maryland, its owner was immediately suspicious at the sight of their black clothing and belts filled with ammunition.
The trio asked to camp on the land for a month. Unnerved, the owner called the police, and they were arrested for trespassing. Later, the owner would learn the interlopers were accused by prosecutors of belonging to a cult-like group — the “Zizians” — that has been linked to at least six deaths in three states.
Jack “Ziz” LaSota is said to be the group’s leader. The 34-year-old, who uses female pronouns but is listed as male in a police database, was detained alongside Michelle Zajko, 32, whose parents were murdered more than two years ago, and Daniel Blank, 26.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank are being held in a Maryland jail while investigators expand a multi-state investigation into the Zizians and the web of deaths around them.
Who is ‘Ziz’?
Authorities allege that the leader of the Zizians is Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a transgender computer engineer from Alaska.
LaSota graduated from university in Fairbanks in 2013 and some time after that moved to California, becoming involved in the rationalist movement, falling in with intellectually gifted friends and developing interests in everything from radical veganism to artificial intelligence.
LaSota wrote about a theory that the left and right sides of the brain could hold different genders and “often desire to kill each other”. This idea is reported to have been rejected by other rationalists, prompting LaSota to break from the movement.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/zizian-meaning-cult-leader-arrested-jack-amadeus-lasota-vqb5k6c7t.
