Member of Bay Area cult-like Zizians group charged with parents’ murder

A member of the extremist Bay Area group known as the Zizians has been charged with murder. Michelle Zajko, 33, who has been jailed in Maryland since early 2025, was charged Wednesday with murder in the 2022 killings of her parents in their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.

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The Zizians are a cult-like fringe group of Bay Area rationalists and former tech workers linked to six killings across three states.

Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse announced the charges against Zajko at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, the Associated Press reports. She faces two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy and burglary charges in the shooting deaths of her mother, Rita Zajko, 69, and father, Richard Zajko, 72, on New Year’s Eve 2022. Rouse said she did not act alone.

Zajko had been a person of interest in the killings for more than three years. She has maintained her innocence, writing in an April 2025 open letter: “I didn’t murder my parents.”

Police discovered Rita and Richard Zajko shot to death on Jan. 2, 2023, after conducting a welfare check at the couple’s home. Surveillance footage from a neighbor’s doorbell camera showed a vehicle arriving at the house shortly before 11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. On the recording, a voice can be heard calling out “Mom!” followed by cries of “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”

The couple had grown apart from their daughter in the months before their deaths. That same evening, Rita Zajko made an attempt to bridge the divide with a text message. “Her mother reached out and explained that she was sorry for the rift that had grown between them,” Rouse said. “That text went unanswered.”

Prosecutors say at least two people were inside the home that night. “The lights go on in the home, and Richard and Rita Zajko are executed,” Rouse said.

Zajko, who has also been linked with providing the gun used in the January 2025 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Christopher Maland in Vermont, was arrested in Maryland in February 2025 alongside Zizians leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and another group member, Daniel Blank. All three remain jailed in Maryland on charges including trespassing and gun and drug violations.

Zajko has denied involvement in both cases. In court filings, she put forward an alternative theory: that her father shot her mother and then turned the gun on himself. She has also alleged that the Maryland arrest was a pretext by authorities to stop her group from producing evidence in defense of Teresa Youngblut, a fellow Zizian facing murder charges in Vermont who could face the death penalty if convicted.

SFGATE has covered the Zizians extensively since the group first emerged in connection with a wave of violence that has left six people dead across California, Pennsylvania and Vermont since 2022.

The Zizians are a loosely organized group of highly educated former tech workers and computer scientists who coalesced around Berkeley’s rationalist movement and shared radical beliefs about veganism, artificial intelligence and gender identity. Nearly all members identify as transgender or gender-fluid. Around a dozen individuals appear to have in-person connections to LaSota, and some previously worked at NASA and Google.

LaSota, who goes by “Ziz” and uses she/her pronouns, grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, studied computer science and later moved to the Bay Area in 2016. The group took shape around her through online rationalist forums and a series of failed attempts to live communally, first on a rusty tugboat off Half Moon Bay, later on a sailboat in Berkeley Marina and eventually in modified box trucks fitted out with solar panels and computer equipment. 

The violence tied to the group spans three states: Vermont, Pennsylvania and California.

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In 2022, a member of the group was killed in Vallejo after reportedly taking part in an assault.

Emma Borhanian was a former Google engineer who won awards at the company before becoming disillusioned and joining the group at a Vallejo property owned by landlord Curtis Lind. In November 2022, Lind alleged he was lured to the property under the pretense of checking a water leak and was ambushed by group members wielding knives and a samurai sword. During the attack, Lind shot and killed Borhanian. A person close to Borhanian, who was granted anonymity due to safety concerns in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy, spoke to SFGATE about Borhanian’s early life, describing a child of extraordinary intelligence who began coding in sixth grade.

Three years after Borhanian’s death, Lind was killed in January 2025, allegedly by Maximilian Snyder, an Oxford-educated data scientist authorities say is also connected to the group, in what prosecutors described as an attempt to prevent Lind from testifying. 

Another person linked to the group, Alice Monday, was allegedly targeted by a kill order from LaSota, Zajko wrote on her blog. Zajko wrote that LaSota told her during a phone call that the only way to regain her trust was to kill Monday and video-call her with proof. Monday appears to have since left the country. 

In Vermont, Youngblut and German national Ophelia Bauckholt checked into a motel near a property owned by Zajko in January 2025. Days later, Bauckholt pulled a weapon during a traffic stop by U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland. Both she and Maland were killed in the ensuing shootout. 

Youngblut was arrested and faces murder charges.

Two other members of the group, Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao, are in custody awaiting trial for attempted murder charges for the 2022 attack on Lind. Leatham has attempted to escape jail three times and has now asked to represent herself.

LaSota faces a federal charge of illegal gun possession as a fugitive. In March 2026, her attorney sought a competency evaluation in the federal case, writing there was reasonable cause to believe she could not understand the nature of the proceedings. At a hearing, LaSota told the judge she wanted to represent herself and accused him of being part of an organized crime ring. The evaluation was granted, AP reports.

LaSota’s attorneys have pushed back on how the group has been characterized. “Ms. LaSota eschews the term Zizian and denies any and all allegations that she and her friends have formed a cult,” they wrote in a recent court filing. 

Maryland investigators have also said Blank is under investigation in connection with the Pennsylvania double homicide, though he has not been charged. His attorney has sought to distance him from the other defendants, writing that Blank “should not be detained because of the company in which he was arrested.” 

Wednesday’s charges mark the first time Zajko has faced criminal charges directly tied to her parents’ deaths. She is awaiting a preliminary hearing in Delaware County, according to court records.