Judge Orders Competency Exam for ‘Zizian’ Cult Leader Linked to VT Border Murder
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The lawyer for Jack “Ziz” LaSota, the leader of a militant vegan, transgender, AI-obsessed cult linked to several murders — including the death of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont — has convinced a judge to order a mental competency evaluation for his client.
Given that Zizians believe a super-intelligent AI is coming to bring about a high-tech apocalypse to punish humans for eating meat, the judge’s decision may not be a surprise.
Defense attorney Gary Procter convinced U.S. District Court Judge James Kelleher Bredar to halt proceedings in LaSota’s firearms case and order a competency evaluation. Procter told Bredar he suspects LaSota is mentally impaired.
“Counsel believes there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant is presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, or to assist properly in his defense,” Procter wrote in his March 12 motion.
Procter had been trying to get LaSota evaluated by a psychiatrist for weeks, describing his client’s mental stability as a fluid situation. When Procter finally managed to get LaSota seen by a mental health professional on March 11, the cult leader refused to cooperate, according to the motion.
“After Dr. [Michael] O’Connell reviewed with Ms. LaSota the nature, purpose, and likely uses of the evaluation, including limits of confidentiality and voluntariness, Ms. LaSota declined to participate in the evaluation,” Procter wrote.
LaSota’s career as a cult leader began with an online forum dedicated to Harry Potter fan fiction. The Alaska native who struggled to find a place in Silicon Valley’s tech community soon formed a friend group with other smart, disaffected 20-somethings.
But the group’s views turned dark, and LaSota became Ziz, a self-described villain willing to do evil in order to bring about an AI-dominated age of vegan reason. Based on rationalist philosophy and belief in the “AI basilisk,” a creature coming to destroy humanity for the sin of eating meat, LaSota drew a group of believers to live on a tugboat and be subjected to sleep deprivation. The aim of the sleep control was for Ziz to unlock the gender-fluid “trans” half of the followers’ brains.
The boat sank, but the cult lived on, and people started getting killed. One Zizian committed suicide after being subjected to the cult’s practices, followed by LaSota’s faked death by drowning.
Cult members moved from the boat to storage sheds on a nearby ranch, but that situation deteriorated when three members tried to murder their landlord, 82-year-old California rancher Curtis Lind.
Lind survived the attack, using his handgun to kill one Zizian in self-defense and wound two others. But before he could testify against the injured attackers, Lind was stabbed to death by Zizian Maximillian Snyder.
Meanwhile, LaSota had turned up alive in Pennsylvania as a person of interest in the double murder of Richard and Rita Zajko, the parents of Zizian Michelle Zajko. LaSota was held for months on charges of obstruction of the administration of law and disorderly conduct related to the Zajko investigation. After making bail, LaSota left the state and became a fugitive on misdemeanor charges.
In January of last year, Zizians Teresa Youngblut and Felix Backhault engaged in a shootout with Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border in Vermont. Maland encountered the pair during a traffic stop, and they allegedly opened fire. Maland and Backhault were killed, and Youngblut was injured. Youngblut currently faces the death penalty for allegedly killing Maland.
A month later, LaSota, Zajko, and Daniel Blank, another Zizian, were arrested in Maryland on trespassing and firearms charges. Maryland police say LaSota had a 9mm pistol, a .50-caliber Lynx sniper rifle, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The Lynx rifle model investigators found retails for around $20,000.
Content retrieved from: https://nhjournal.com/judge-orders-competency-exam-for-zizian-cult-leader-linked-to-vt-border-murder/.
