Cultlike Zizians group's alleged leader, another member arrested: Police
BOSTON -- The apparent leader of a cultlike group known as the Zizians has been arrested in Maryland along with another member of the group, Maryland State Police said Monday.
Jack Lasota, 34, was arrested Sunday along with Michelle Zajko, 33, of Media, Pennsylvania. They face multiple charges including trespassing, obstructing and hindering and possession of a handgun in the vehicle.
The Zizians have been tied to the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland near the Canadian border in January and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California.
Maland, 44, was killed in a Jan. 20 shootout following a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont, a small town about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Canadian border.
Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, which broke open after the Jan. 20 shooting death of Maland. Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.
North Carolina connection
Members of the group allegedly live in North Carolina which brought the investigation to the Tar Heel state. Dozens of FBI agents searched a wooded area off 15-501 near Chapel Hill on Wednesday, Feb. 5. ABC11 Eyewitness News reached out the agency about the search but got little information.
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The FBI, however, did say they were conducting "court-authorized investigative activity in connection with an ongoing federal law enforcement investigation." They declined to comment further when asked if the loud sounds neighbors heard were related to the investigation.
One homeowner told ABC11, "Woke me up out of my sleep," Candice Welch said. "It was a real loud bang, about 30 minutes apart. I thought it was just a transformer (blowing), it was loud." Welch said she woke up to the sound of a bang followed by a large federal presence in the neighborhood near the intersection of Bell Circle and Woodbridge Drive.
SEE ALSO | A timeline of activities of cultlike group tied to the killing of a Border Patrol agent
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She said they were told the agents were looking for a "missing item."
"They were looking for a missing item, that's all they told us. We knew it had to be something important, something very serious because of the fact that it was the FBI, along with the sheriff's deputies, and unmarked cars. There was a little bit of everything out here."
Documents reveal new information
Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation, which broke open after the Jan. 20 shooting death of a Border Patrol trooper in Vermont during a traffic stop. Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.
Their goals aren't clear, but online writings span topics from radical veganism and gender identity to artificial intelligence.
At the middle of it all is "Ziz," who appears to be the leader of the strange group, who called themselves "Zizians." She has been seen near multiple crime scenes and has connections to various suspects. She was even declared dead for a time, before reappearing amid more violence.
Who is Ziz?
Jack LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay area after earning a computer science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2013 and interning at NASA, according to a profile on a hiring site for programmers, coders and other freelance workers. NASA officials did not respond to a request to confirm LaSota's internship, but a Jack LaSota is listed on a website about past interns.
In 2016, she began publishing a dark and rambling blog under the name Ziz, describing her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and "often desire to kill each other."
LaSota used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman. She railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.