Mysterious alleged Zizian cult leader Jack Lasota was arrested alongside an accomplice in Maryland on Monday.
The elusive head of the largely transgender, vegan group had gone as far as to apparently fake his own death in 2022 to avoid scrutiny. However, at the time of Lasota’s arrest he was wanted in both California and Pennsylvania.
Taken into custody alongside Lasota were alleged followers Daniel Blank, 26, and Michelle Zajko, 32, a person of interest in the double murder of her parents – both fatally shot in their heads at their home on New Year’s Eve 2022.
Their deaths are two of four linked to the cult – which is based around LaSota, 34, who previously went by Ziz online – alongside an elderly landowner in California and a border patrol agent killed in a shootout with another member of the group in Vermont on Jan. 20.
Police say members of the Zizian group could number as high as 30 and they appear to be mainly young trans women who are math and computer whizzes, who previously worked at NASA, Google and on Wall Street.
They gather around Ziz, who was born male but now identifies as female and grew up in Alaska before moving to the Bay Area. There he gathered acolytes who believe in the same eccentric and arcane blend of Silicon Valley-driven Rationalist movement theories and animal rights.
Both investigators and people who know the Zizians told The Post many of them have been estranged from their parents, some are thought to be on the autism spectrum and that they are an anti-sex group who take hormones for their gender transitions.
The Zizians are involved in esoteric practices like “unihemispheric sleep”— a practice not dissimilar to hypnosis where adherents are told to sleep with one eye open in a state of chronic exhaustion.
The practice is meant to prove the two hemispheres of the brain are distinct identities, with one side thought to be female and one male, one side thought to be good and the other evil. They two sides “often desire to kill each other,” according to Lasota’s blog.
“They talk as if they really believe they have supernatural powers and they believe movies like ‘The Matrix’ are real and they can manipulate reality,” an investigator familiar with the Zizians told The Post.
“They talk about the Nazis and the Holocaust a lot. They’ve made it very difficult and confusing to catch them. They all have so many aliases and move around a lot. We think a lot of what’s happened can be traced back to Ziz.”
Because many of the group use numerous different names and a variety of pronouns and have been linked to California, Vermont, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, it makes them more difficult to track according to police sources.
Jessica Taylor, 32, of Berkeley, Calif., first became friendly with at least four Zizians beginning around 2015 when she met them at the Center for Applied Rationality, an organization in the city which hosts
workshops on cognitive science and “de-biasing” with a mission to “develop clear thinking for the sake of humanity’s future,” according to its website.
She said Ziz appeared normal at first and they had discussions about “self”. But by 2019, Taylor said Ziz had started to strike her as “creepy” – especially when he gave a “strange description” of the suicide of a mutual connection, which seemed to link to the group’s theory on brain function.
“Ziz’s belief was this person had two brain hemispheres, one good – another one non-good, like selfish… [and that led to a] commitment to kill the self.
“And I already knew two of about six or seven people in his group had committed suicide by this stage – which is a lot for a small group. It was strange. They had a high death rate.”
Two people in the group’s orbit who took their own lives were named Maia Pasek, who left a quasi-suicide note in 2018 referencing rational thought processes, and Jay Winterford — also known as Jacob Pekarek — a math and science graduate in 2021.
Since then the death toll has risen dramatically, including four civilians.
Nine years ago, due to the high cost of living in the San Francisco area, Lasota and other Zizians lived aboard an old half-sunken tugboat in Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay.
There they befriended Curtis Lind, a boat enthusiast described by one friend as an “old, friendly hippie.”
Around 2020 he invited the group to live in campers and box trucks on his modest property in nearby Vallejo which he had envisioned as a sort of artists’ colony, a close friend of Lind told The Post.
Lind didn’t charge the group rent during the worst of the pandemic but when it was over he requested some payment – but the Zizians refused to pony up.
“Curt was just a great guy,” his friend and neighbor of 25 years, John Jenkins, 66, told The Post.
“He was cool with [the Zizians]. They obviously were a little different but he was very open-minded.”
By “different,” Jenkins said he meant the group appeared to be mostly men when they arrived to camp on Lind’s land — but then he noticed mail was coming for them with both male and female names.
“Then we’d see one walk down the street with his shirt off and we’d see boobies,” Jenkins said. “It was a little confusing. But Curt just told us they were transgender.”
Jenkins was on the property when Lind was allegedly violently ambushed by a group of Zizians in Nov. 2022.
Jenkins said Lind was carrying his pistol at the time because group members had been throwing rocks at his house. They allegedly stabbed him 57 times, taking out his eye and thrusting a sword through his back.
Lind fired back at his attackers, killing Amir “Emma” Bohanian and injuring another Zizian. He then limped over to his close friend, Pat McMillan’s, trailer.
“His eyeball was hanging off his face and the sword was still impaled in his back when he got to Pat’s,” Jenkins said.
Lind survived that first attack and went on to live a relatively normal life, although without his eye, Jenkins said.
Two people from the attack on Lind were scheduled to go on trial this April, with the victim as key witness. However, last month Lind was murdered, with his throat allegedly slit by a 22-year-old Seattle man, Maximilian Snyder.
California prosecutors have claimed Snyder killed Lind to prevent him from testifying against the suspects accused of the earlier attack on him.
Snyder had previously obtained a marriage license to wed another Zizian, Teresa “Milo” Youngblut, 21.
Three days after Lind’s death, Youngblut was also dramatically killed.
She had been in a car with Ophelia, née Felix, Bauckholt, 27, a math whiz from Germany who had been part of a lively and fun Jersey City-based group of fintech wizards before getting involved with the Zizians.
US Border Patrol agents pulled them over in northern Vermont and Police say Youngblut fired a weapon, killing agent David “Chris” Maland, 44.
Bauckholt also pulled out a gun but was killed in the exchange of fire. Youngblut is now being held in a New Hampshire jail in connection with Maland’s murder.
The shootout shed light on another case which was, until then, going cold — the handgun used to kill Maland was bought by Zajko, according to police.
Zajko, reportedly transitioning from female to male also and also using the name “Jamie,” was questioned by police about the murders but then fled.
Friends said they had heard the elder Zajkos were increasingly distressed by their estrangement from their daughter and it’s believed they told her she was going to be cut out of their will if she didn’t resume contact with them, shortly before their murders.
Friends of Zajko’s parents say they can’t believe she wasn’t already in custody.
“We are still so confused and angry that nothing has been done and there’s no justice for Rich and Rita,” said a longtime friend of the couple, who were landlords of about 16 apartment units in the area.
“If that Border Patrol agent hadn’t been killed, I bet their case would never have been solved.”
The source, like many friends of the murder victims, did not want to be publicly identified because they fear retribution from the Zizians.
“It’s only when the Border Patrol agent was killed last month that everything became connected. They didn’t deserve this.
“They couldn’t have children which is why they adopted Michelle. Rich used to say his wife was over the moon when they got her as a baby.”
Pennsylvania state police sources told The Post they believe they had enough evidence to arrest Zajko for the murders but the Delaware County DA’s office told the Post cops still had not provided adequate evidence. With Zajko’s arrest this week on unrelated charges, that could change.
Ring camera video from two neighbors’ homes the night of the murders shows a car pulling up to the Zajko home at 11:30 p.m. A minute later, screams of “Mom!” and “Oh my God! Oh, God! God!” could be heard. The footage showed two people going into the house and then an upstairs light went on. Nine minutes later two people were seen leaving the home and driving away in the car.
One of the two neighbors who gave their Ring video to police admitted to The Post it was impossible to make out from the video who got out of the car that fateful night.
With the arrests of Zajko and Lasota, the seven most prominent members of the Zizians are now either dead or in custody.
Lasota’s sister, Naomi, had reported him missing in 2022, claiming he had fallen off the back of a boat. The Coast Guard searched but did not find a body and an obituary was published.
However, far from dead, Lasota was then arrested in a police raid on a Pennsylvania hotel in Jan. 2023 by officers investigating the murder of the Zajkos.
In that incident LaSota reportedly kept his eyes closed, refused to speak and had to be carried from the hotel room by four officers after refusing to move.
LaSota was charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction, according to court records, but did not show up for hearings.
The trio arrested this week were all held without bail after a brief court appearance Tuesday. Currently they all face minor charges of trespassing, obstructing and hindering and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.
“I shouldn’t be here, I haven’t done anything wrong,” Lasota said by video link when beamed into a Maryland court on Tuesday.
How long Lasota can be uncooperative remains to be seen, but prosecutors in various jurisdictions across the US are now preparing cases.
“I warned Ophelia about the Zizians,” Taylor told The Post. “I knew about the suicides in the group – so I thought that when people go there it’s maybe dangerous for them. This group has a high death rate. And that was even before the murders.”
