A Maryland court on Tuesday ordered a blogger known as Ziz who heads a cult group linked to six murders detained without surety.
The blogger, Jack Lasota, 34, from Berkeley, in California, was arrested on Sunday with Michelle Zajko, 32, of Media, Pennsylvania; And Daniel Blank, 26, of Sacramento, California. They face accusations, including intrusion, obstruction and hindrance and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.
The Ziziens were linked to the murder of an American border border patrol agent David Maland, near the Canadian border in January and five other murders in three states.
Lasota, Zajko and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland, Sunday afternoon.
The judge in the case ordered Lasota – who uses his pronouns – detained without surety invoking concerns about the risk of flight and a danger to public security. Prosecutors said Lasota “seems to be the leader of an extremist group called Zizian” who was linked to the murders.
The three were to appear remotely for a release hearing on bond on Tuesday at the District Court of the Comté d’Allegany in Cumberland, Maryland, court officials announced.
The Ziziens were linked to the death of a woman during an attack on an owner of California in November 2022, the murder of the owner in January, the death of December 2022 of the parents of Zajko in Pennsylvania and a road shooting in January At Vermont who left Maland in Malé and a dead car passenger.
A resident of Frostburg told the police that he wanted three people “suspect” to his property after parking two trucks there and asked to camp for a month, police documents.
They were dressed in black and two wore cannon belts holding ammunition, police said. The agents found a rifle at the back of a truck and a handgun on the front floor. Zajko, who refused to put his hands behind his back and was taken to the ground, also carried a handgun, said the police.
Maland, 44, was killed in a January 20 shooting after a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles (32 km) from the Canadian border. Ophelia Bauckholt, a car passenger, also died, and the driver, Teresa Youngblut, pleaded not guilty of federal firearms.
The officials said that the weapons they transported had been bought by a person interested in December 31, 2022, the death of Richard and Rita Zajko in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, and that Youngblut had been in close contact with a person of Interest in a homicide in Vallejo, California.
Maximilian Snyder, who asked for a marriage license with Youngblut in November, is accused of the death of January 17 of Curtis Lind, an owner of Vallejo who had survived a previous attack of members of the Zizienne group and was to testify against them.
The officials offered few details on the Cross-Country survey. But the interviews with Associated Press and an examination of the judicial archives and online publications tell how a group of very intelligent computer scientists, most of them in the twenties and the thirties, met online, shared anarchist beliefs and became more and more violent.
Their objectives are not clear, but online writings included subjects such as radical veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence.
In the midst of all this is “Ziz”, the head of the strange group whose members are sometimes called “Ziziens” in online forums.
Lasota published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name of Ziz and – in a section – described his theory according to which the two hemispheres of the brain could contain distinct values and sexes and “often want to kill themselves”.
Lasota, who, in her writings, says that she is a transgender woman, has changed the enemies perceived, including so -called rationalist groups, which operate mainly online and seek to understand human cognition by reason and knowledge. Some are interested in the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
Lasota has not responded to the PA emails in recent weeks, and his lawyer Daniel McGarrigle refused to say if she was linked to one of the deaths. She is wanted for arrest in two states for missing appearances in court.
McGarrigle would confirm that Monday that he had represented Lasota and would not confirm his arrest or no detail of the last case. Attempts to reach the lawyers of Zajko and Blank did not succeed.
Pennsylvania’s state police files describe Blank as Zajko’s roommate at Vermont. In January 2023, police investigating Zajko’s parents’ deadlifts arrested both the Lasota and the White in a hotel where Zajko stayed. Blank was not billed. Lasota was accused of extraction of the police and disorderly conduct.
