Possible Cult Leader ‘Ziz,’ Who Faked Her Own Death and Was Questioned In Pennsylvania Double Murder, Still at Large
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It feels like there are still shoes to drop in the strange case of the Zizians, whose troubling beliefs and alleged pattern of extreme violence came to light in just the last several days. And now we learn that several key figures in the group are still at large, considered “persons of interest” and wanted for questioning in several murders, and potentially plotting future acts.
The FBI has now released a photo (seen above) of 32-year-old Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, and a manhunt is reportedly underway for her in mutliple states. Zajko is known to be the owner of a piece of property, purchased for a reported $10,000 in 2021, in a remote corner of Vermont, in the down of Derby, about five miles from the Canadian border. This is very near where, last week, 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut and Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt (~age 25) were in a shootout with border patrol agents in Coventry, Vermont — a shootout in which Youngblut allegedly killed an agent, David Maland, and was injured herself, and Bauckholt was killed.
Zajko has been a person of interest in the death of her parents, Richard Zajko, 72, and Rita Zajko, 69, on or around December 31, 2022. And, as VTDigger reported, she was the purchaser of weapons in Rutland County, Vermont, one of which was the gun allegedly used by Youngblut to shot Maland. And on the gun registration, Zajko reportedly listed an Orleans, Vermont address — Orleans is several miles south of Derby, also near the Canadian border.
A manhunt is reportedly underway for Zajko by law enforcement in several states, and the FBI has warned that she should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”
It’s unclear if Zajko has ever had any direct ties to the Bay Area. But a clue emerged earlier this week that could connect her to the deaths of Zizian member Emma Borhanian in November 2022, and the January 2025 killing of Curtis Lind, both in Vallejo. Box trucks that belonged to the group, that were parked for three years on Lind’s property, were registered in Vermont.
This timeline of events surrounding the Zizians suggests that Zajko was threatened by the group leader Ziz around February 2022 — with Ziz allegedly threatening to kill Zajko if she did not kill her own girlfriend, not identified by name, and then provide proof of it. The timeline also suggests that Zajko’s parents were killed in order to gain her inheritance, estimated in the millions of dollars.
As the Newport (Vermont) Dispatch reports, authorities believe Zajko may be driving a green 2013 Subaru Outback with an expired Vermont registration.
The whereabouts of Jack “Ziz” LaSota, the reported ideological driving force behind a small offshoot of rationalist thinkers partly based in the Bay Area, has unclear since the first threads of this story began coming together earlier this week. We learned that Ziz/LaSota, who uses she/her pronouns, faked her own death with the help of two followers in August 2022, only to be discovered alive by authorities three months later amid a murder investigation in Solano County, and then detained in a murder investigation in Delaware County, Pennsylvania less than two months after that.
As the Chronicle is now is reporting, LaSota did not exactly go willingly when the authorities descended on a motel room in Chester, Pennsylvania in January 2023. While another person sharing the motel room, Daniel Blank, followed police commands and exited with hands behind his back, LaSota lay motionless on the bathroom floor.
“He had his eyes closed,” a Pennsylvania state trooper reportedly testified, using male pronouns. “He would not speak. He was just laying almost unconscious or as if he was dead on the ground. … He had to be carried out.”
Ultimately, Ziz was briefly jailed and charged with misdemeanor obstruction and disorderly conduct, but was freed on bail in June 2023 and soon stopped showing up for court dates. She is at large, and there is a warrant for her arrest in Pennsylvania, with the case still pending.
It seems possible that Ziz is the person referred to by investigators as a “person of interest” in cases in California and Pennsylvania who had been in frequent contact with Youngblut and Bauckholt before the January 20 shootout in Vermont.
Content retrieved from: https://sfist.com/2025/01/31/possible-cult-leader-ziz-who-faked-her-own-death-and-was-questioned-in-pennsylvania-double-murder-still-at-large/.
