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Ziz LaSota, Zizian cult leader, in a 2019 mug shot.
The group has been linked to six killings.
A cultish group known as the Zizians has been linked to six killings across the U.S. It’s led by a transgender woman known as Ziz LaSota, who among other things has faked her own death. She and other members of the group have been arrested on various charges. Here’s the latest information on Ziz and the Zizians.
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LaSota, a.k.a. Ziz, is a 34-year-old trans woman. She graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2013 with a degree in computer science, according to the BBC. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she applied for work in technology, and she had an internship with NASA and began blogging under the name Ziz. She got a job with a gaming startup but was fired, the Los Angeles Timesreports.
She embraced rationalism, a philosophy that stresses “the power of the human mind to see clear truth, eliminate bias and bad thinking, and improve individuals and society,” but she “soon fell out with mainstream rationalists as her writings spun off in bizarre directions,” as the BBC notes.
“LaSota’s beliefs are centered around upending moral norms, practicing extreme veganism and accepting the concept of gendered brain hemispheres,” The New York Times reports, citing a website called Zizians.info, which seeks to expose the group.
LaSota and three associates were arrested during a protest of a rationalist group in California’s Sonoma County in 2019. The charges included trespassing and wearing a mask while committing a crime, according to the L.A. Times. A warrant was issued for her arrest when she failed to show up at a court hearing in 2022, but her lawyer said she was dead, having fallen off a boat in San Francisco Bay. An obituary appeared in an Alaska newspaper. But she was actually alive and resurfaced a year later.
Early on, LaSota joined forces with another trans woman in the tech business, Gwen Danielson. “There was something really deep I hadn’t had before in being able to just think and bounce ideas off someone equally interested in schemes to save the world for weeks on end,” LaSota said of Danielson on her blog, as quoted by the L.A. Times. They bought an old tugboat, the Caleb, in 2017 and decided to use it for housing and their base in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. Emma Borhanian, a Google programmer, soon joined them, and LaSota’s blog posts attracted more adherents. Danielson and Borhanian were arrested along with LaSota and one other person at the Sonoma County protest.
Brett Danielson, Gwen Danielson’s father, “feared his daughter was going down a dangerous path,” the L.A. Times reports. “Nevertheless, he helped pay her legal bills and hoped the trouble would pass.”
The goals of the Zizians “aren’t completely clear but online writings about their beliefs touch upon veganism, artificial intelligence and gender identity,” according to The New York Times.
Zizians.info has warned about LaSota’s hold on the group. “The purpose of this document is to warn you not to join them!” one person wrote the site. “Ziz is a master manipulator; she is extremely skilled at selling people on nonsense ideas about decision theory and ethics that defy not just the ‘rules of rationality’ but basic common sense.”
The cost of maintaining the Caleb proved prohibitive, and the Coast Guard told Gwen Danielson in 2017 that the boat created an environmental hazard because it had “around 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board along with other hazardous petroleum products.”
Curt Lind, who lived on another boat in Half Moon Bay, invited the Zizians to move with him to a lot in Vallejo, Calif., where he had a trailer. They set up makeshift housing on his land, and Lind envisioned the area as a haven for artists and other free spirits who couldn’t afford Bay Area rents. The Zizians were only going to stay four months, or so Lind thought. But they stayed on through the COVID-19 pandemic and stopped paying rent. Their relationship with Lind turned sour and then violent.
In 2022, Lind, then 80, tried to evict the Zizians, and Borhanian and two others, Suri Dao and Alexander Leatham, attacked him with a samurai sword, stabbing him 50 times and putting out his right eye. He shot at the group, killing Borhanian. Lind planned to testify against his assailants. But on January 17 of this year, he was killed when his throat was slit. Maximilian Snyder is charged with murder and trying to prevent Lind’s testimony, The New York Times reports. Snyder has not yet entered a plea but is being held without bail in California.
Dao and Leatham are charged with murder in Borhanian’s death and attempted murder in the 2022 attack on Lind. They are scheduled to go to trial April 2. The charge of Borhanian’s murder was brought against them even though Lind fired the shot, as Dao and Leatham are accused of instigating the attack.
Three days after Lind’s death, Border Patrol agent David Maland, 44, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Coventry, Vt. Teresa Youngblut, a member of the Zizians who had applied for a marriage license with Snyder, was arrested and charged with “assaulting federal law enforcement officers with a deadly weapon,” according to The New York Times, although she has not been charged with murder. Felix Bauckholt, who was in Youngblut’s vehicle, was killed in the crossfire.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said the weapons had been bought by Michelle Zajko, who is charged with “making a false statement to a gun licensee by providing a fake address when purchasing the guns,” the paper reports. Additionally, she was a “person of interest” in the deaths of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on December 31, 2022, in Delaware County, Pa., the ATF complaint notes. She was held briefly but not charged.
LaSota, Michelle Zajko, and Daniel Blank were arrested February 16 in Allegany County, Md. The arrests stem from an incident in Frostburg, Md. A resident said three “suspicious” people in box trucks had asked to camp on his property. They were wearing gun belts containing ammunition, and when police arrived, they found a rifle and a handgun in the trucks. “LaSota and Zajko were accused of trespassing, obstruction, and possessing a handgun,” The New York Times reports. “Blank did not face the weapon charge, but was arraigned on the other charges, while Zajko was also charged with resisting arrest.” They have pleaded not guilty, are being held without bail, and are set to appear in court March 24.
LaSota and Blank had been questioned in January 2023 regarding the deaths of Zajko’s parents. “LaSota was charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly conduct,” the Associated Press reports, while Blank was not charged.
“Lind’s friends are still trying to wrap their heads around it all,” the L.A. Times reports. They remember Lind for his delightful eccentricities — living on ancient boats, jousting with authorities, befriending wild geese. And they remember him for his warmth. He loved his family. He made friends wherever he went, and he inherently trusted everyone he met. In the end, they said, that may have been his downfall.”
Gwen Danielson vanished for a time, but she recently contacted her father for the first time in several years, according to the paper. “I’m in hiding; I’m under an alias, please don’t divulge where I am, or that I’m even alive,” she told him.
Snyder has denied any connection to LaSota. “I am not one of Ziz’s friends, and neither she nor her friends endorse me or my words so far as I know. I speak only for myself, as myself, for the sake of everyone,” he said in a letter dictated from jail, The Independentreports.
LaSota says she has done nothing wrong, as do attorneys for her and other Zizians. “I urge members of the press and the public to refrain from speculation and premature conclusions,” Daniel McGarrigle, one of her lawyers, said in a statement to the BBC. Another lawyer for her, public defender Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden, told the AP that LaSota is “a very, very bright person.” Francoeur-Breeden is also representing Blank, whom she called a “brilliant young man” with mental health issues, and Zajko.
