Zizians: Blog Suggests Ziz Ordered Follower to Kill Her Romantic Partner
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Another detail has emerged in the complicated, sordid, and violent saga of the Zizians, and it is the first to draw a direct link between Jack “Ziz” LaSota and an order compelling someone to murder.
If you have not heard the story yet of the Zizians, their formation in the Bay Area, the residency of several of them in Vallejo until late 2022, the attempted murder of their Vallejo landlord, the murders of two people in their 60s in Pennsylvania, and the killings of that Vallejo landlord and a border patrol agent in Vermont last month, then you can start here.
The Chronicle also did a deep dive on formative period of the group, in the summer of 2017, when Ziz and at least one acolyte sailed from Alaska to Half Moon Bay in a rusty tugboat that they briefly turned into their “anchor-out” home. This was meant to be the first in a “rationalist fleet” of boats, where like-minded thinkers, many of whom were deeply concerned with the rise of artificial intelligence, and most of whom were also trans women.
SFGate now picks up and attempts to summarize the full tale in the framework of cults and how they work, typically using mind-control techniques, sleep deprivation, loyalty tests, prescriptive diets (veganism in this case), financial control, and isolation from friends and family to wield control over subjects. A chronicler of the Zizian group who goes by Apollo Mojave compiled this summation and warning of what the local rationalist community knew about them as of several years ago, and noted that it was “far from coincidence” that “Ziz seems to go out of her way to target transgender people” because they are typically financially vulnerable, and have identities that are in flux.
Now, we know that at least two followers of Ziz, Michelle Zajko and Ophelia Bauckholt, were financially quite comfortable, and were perhaps even providing financial support to the group.
Bauckholt, a 28-year-old quantitative analyst, was reportedly earning a salary around $1 million per year, and may have been paying for two expensive Airbnb units in Chapel Hill, North Carolina up until last month. She was killed in the shootout with border patrol agents in northern Vermont on January 20, accompanied by 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut, who is now in custody on gun charges. She has not yet been charged with the murders of the border patrol agent, David Maland, or Bauckholt.*
And Zajko is the daughter of apparently well off parents who were living in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania. Property that Zajko owned in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, in the town of Coventry, was not far from where the January shooting took place. And SFGate notes, voting records and a police charging document indicate that Zajko was living with a romantic partner at the Coventry address, one Alice Monday — and this is the first I’m hearing of this name in the tale.
Content retrieved from: https://sfist.com/2025/02/26/zizians-blog-suggests-ziz-ordered-follower-to-kill-her-romantic-partner/.
