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Real Murders, Fake Suicides: ‘Zizian’ Death Cult Fugitives Still at Large

Posted on | February 1, 2025 | No Comments

Jack ‘Ziz’ LaSota (left); Jasper ‘Gwen’ Danielson (right)

There are layers and layers to the story of the radical vegan transgender death cult known as “Zizians,” whose existence became newsworthy after two reputed associates of the cult, Teresa “Milo” Youngblut and Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt, got into a shootout in Vermont that killed a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 20. In the first few days after the shootout, in which Bauckholt was also killed, the news accounts were mysterious. What were Youngblut, a Seattle native, and Bauckholt, a German citizen in the U.S. on a work visa, doing up in Vermont near the Canadian border?

Jessica Taylor (@jessi_cata), who knew Bauckholt in New York City circa 2022 and tried to warn him about the cult following of Jack “Ziz” LaSota, connected the dots early, but it was Andy Ngo who was the first journalist to follow up on Taylor’s information.

Note that it took Andy three days — from Friday, Jan. 24, to Monday, Jan. 27 — to get from his first X post about the case to having a full story at the Post Millennial. That’s a lot of work and, as I say, when I first saw Andy’s Jan. 27 headline, I was like, “You gotta be kidding me.” Here we are, five days later, and now the Zizian death cult story is making headlines in Canada’s National Post:

An already bizarre shootout that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent and a suspect on a highway near the Canadian border is unfurling into a sprawling investigation encompassing four other killings allegedly linked to an odd cabal of young math and computer whizzes sharing a passion for artificial intelligence, veganism, fringe philosophy and gender fluidity.

You can read the whole thing, which is a pretty good summary of the case for those not yet acquainted with it. Now that more reporters are paying attention to the cult angle, we’re starting to get some of the holes in the story filled in, like how “Ziz” LaSota faked his own death in 2022:

According to [defense attorney Jerold] Friedman, he received a phone call in August 2022 from LaSota’s defense attorney in a separate criminal case. That attorney told Friedman that LaSota fell from a boat in San Francisco Bay and was likely dead. When Friedman reached out to LaSota’s mother, she also “confirmed that Jack LaSota died.”
Friedman obtained the U.S. Coast Guard report on LaSota’s apparent drowning, which was submitted in evidence to the court. According to the Coast Guard, LaSota went overboard at approximately 11 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2022. . . . Despite hours of searching — and calm seas, clear weather and a 60-degree night — no trace of LaSota was found. An obituary posted to Legacy.com appeared not long after . . .
Less than three months later, Friedman said he was forwarded an email from the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office. “I just wanted to reach out and let you know that Jack Lasota was contacted by police in Vallejo this weekend,” it read. “Lasota was on scene, alive and well.”
Soon, LaSota would be confirmed alive by another police department. In early January 2023, Pennsylvania State Police troopers descended on the Candlewood Suites in Chester City. In hand, they had a search warrant for a room being occupied by Michelle Zajko, whose parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, had been shot and killed in their home on Dec. 31, 2022. One of the troopers testified in court that they believed the weapon in the killing, a 9 mm Smith and Wesson, was in Zajko’s possession.
During their search, the trooper said Zajko indicated she had companions in another hotel room. Upon searching that room, the trooper testified that they found LaSota, who was identified through fingerprints — 17 months after LaSota apparently died in San Francisco Bay. LaSota was charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct and released from custody.

This is very important for three reasons, first, confirming that “Ziz” LaSota definitely had faked his own death, second, that he was in Vallejo at the time of the November 2022 attack on Curtis Lind, and third, that Ziz was associating with Zajko, whose parents had just been murdered — almost certainly not a coincidence. Andy Ngo has now followed up to report that a longtime associate of Ziz, known as “Gwen” Danielson, is a transgender Spokane native whose name was Jasper Danielson. “Gwen”/Jasper was one of those arrested along with Ziz at a 2019 protest against the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). “In 2022, Danielson likely faked his death to avoid accountability in an ongoing criminal case in Sonoma County, Calif. . . . There is a bench warrant for Danielson’s arrest, like there is for ‘Ziz’ LaSota, who faked his death that same year.”

If you’re keeping score at home, that means there at least three fugitives — Ziz LaSota, Gwen Danielson and Michelle Zajko — currently at large and suspected in this interstate crime spree. Oh, and I neglected to mention this interesting sidenote earlier:

It’s a gigantic pancake stack of weirdness, covered in insanity syrup, and while the manhunt for these dangerous fugitives continues, I expect still further information about the Zizian death cult to emerge.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! This is my fourth post on this subject in five days, because how often in my career am I gonna get a chance to cover a RADICAL VEGAN TRANSGENDER DEATH CULT?

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