Andy Ngo probes Zizian cult linked to killings across multiple states

Michelle Zajko was charged with murder on June 25, 2026, in the deaths of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, at their suburban Philadelphia home on her 30th birthday. Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said a neighbor’s doorbell camera, ballistics and cellphone records led investigators to conclude she was not acting alone.

That case pulled a sharper line through the Zizians, a small group that some coverage has described as a few dozen people and that has been linked in court records and reporting to six killings across Vermont, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Jack LaSota, also known as Ziz and in some reports as Jack Amadeus LaSota, has been identified as the group’s leader in the case material and news coverage surrounding the deaths.

The earliest violent flashpoint in the public record came in Coventry, Vermont, where a Jan. 20, 2025 shootout killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland. Weeks later, investigators tied the group to the Jan. 31, 2025 killing of landlord Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California. Those deaths helped turn the Zizians from an online extremist circle into a multi-state homicide investigation with overlapping defendants, witnesses and firearm evidence.

Maryland added another branch to the case on Feb. 19, 2025, when police arrested LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank after the trio was found in a rural area near Frostburg following a tip from a property owner. The arrests widened attention on the group’s alleged members and associates, including Alexander Leatham, Emma Borhanian, Gwen Danielson, Maximilian Snyder and Teresa Youngblut, all names that have surfaced in court papers and coverage tied to the broader investigation.

Journalist Andy Ngo has also turned the Zizians into the subject of an upcoming true-crime book that examines allegations that some members felt compelled to kill their parents. That theme now runs through the Pennsylvania murder charge, where prosecutors say the doorbell video, ballistics and cellphone records point beyond one defendant and into the larger network that investigators have been trying to map for more than a year.

By 2026, seven jailed Zizians members were still fighting criminal charges in three states, and the case remained split across jurisdictions. What began with a rural stop in Frostburg and a fatal shootout in Vermont has become a paper trail of arrests, homicide charges and forensic links that keeps circling back to family violence.