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‘Ziz’ Misgendered and Other Highlights of Tuesday’s Court Hearing for Cult Suspects

Posted on | February 19, 2025 | Comments Off on ‘Ziz’ Misgendered and Other Highlights of Tuesday’s Court Hearing for Cult Suspects

Left to right: Jack LaSota, Michelle Zajko, Daniel Blank

Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden is an attorney with the public defender’s office in Allegany County, Maryland, who probably never expected she’d be representing three members of a nationally notorious Radical Vegan Transgender Death Cult, but who can predict such things?

So we’re all sitting there in District Court in Cumberland — me and about a half-dozen other reporters — listening as Judge Erich Bean conducts bail hearings by teleconference, which we can’t see, and the audio quality wasn’t ideal, either. The cases were called in alphabetical order by surname, and our three suspects spanned the entire range, Daniel Blank being the first case called and Michelle Zajko being the last, with reputed cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota in the middle. Interspersed between these three cases were several other strictly local crimes — child abuse, robbery, assault, drug possession, etc. — so the hearing that started at 11 a.m. went until 12:30 p.m. Because the “Zizian” cult is linked to no fewer than six homicides, including a Border Patrol agent who died in a January 20 shootout with two cultists, it must have been obvious to Ms. Francoeur-Breeden that her clients were going to be denied bail, but she was nonetheless under a professional obligation to try and present them in the most favorable light. This was probably why she made a point to list their academic credentials — each of them she described as “brilliant,” reciting their degrees and other accomplishments.

“Ziz” LaSota identifies as a transgender woman, despite being a male named Jack, and Judge Bean therefore referred to him as “she,” “her,” “ma’am,” and so forth. And there was a slightly comic moment when Ms. Francoeur-Breeden, doing her bit to hype up her genius clients, said of LaSota: “This is a brilliant young man — er, woman.”

This is not trivial, as I explained last month:

It must be understood that the cult around Jack Lasota (a/k/a”Ziz”) originated in his dispute with the leadership of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky and Anna Salamon. Lasota’s transgender identity was central to that conflict. “Anna discriminates against trans women in CFAR’s employment and inclusion in sponsored workshop events,” Ziz wrote in a flyer printed up for a 2019 protest against CFAR. In that flyer, Ziz labeled Salamon “a trans-exclusive radical feminist” (TERF).

Yudkowsky and Salamon are associated with what is called the “Rationalist” movement, which is very big among Silicon Valley tech types involved with artificial intelligence (AI). After graduating magna cum laude in computer engineering from the Fairbanks campus of the University of Alaska, LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay area trying to find a spot on the fast track to tech success, and being accepted in MIRI/CFAR “Ratlionalist” circles was apparently part of that ambition. LaSota believed that he was blackballed by Salamon, accusing her of “transphobia,” and that was the motive for a 2019 protest where LaSota and three comrades showed up at a CFAR event dressed in “Sith” robes and wearing Guy Fawkes masks, and ended up getting arrested. Since that first arrest, the cult has been linked to at least six violent deaths:

Left to right: Amir “Emma” Borhanian, Rita and Richard Zajko

  • Amir “Emma” Borhanian — Cult member shot to death on November 15, 2022, by Curtis Lind, who was defending himself after being attacked by Borhanian and others. Lind had rented space on his property in Vallejo, California, to the “Zizians,” who were living in vans and box trucks. They were months behind on rent and, with Lind preparing to evict them, he was “allegedly impaled with a sword and blinded in one eye” during the attempted murder by the Zizians.
  • Rita and Richard Zajko — Parents of cult member Michelle Zajko, murdered on New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2022/January 1, 2023) in their Pennsylvania home. Michelle Zajko has been described as a “person of interest” in her parents’ deaths.
  • Curtis Lind — Murdered in California on January 17, 2025. Cult member Maximilian Snyder is charged with the murder. It is believed that Lind was killed to prevent him from testifying against two surviving cult members who were charged in the November 2022 attack.
  • David “Chris” Maland — U.S. Border Patrol agent shot to death in Vermont while making a traffic stop that turned into a shootout on January 20, 2025.
  • Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt — Cult member from Germany, killed during the same Vermont shootout in which Maland died. Bauckholt’s accomplice, Teresa Youngblut, had taken out a marriage license with Snyder (the suspect in Lind’s murder). Youngblut survived the shootout and is now in federal custody.

Left to right: Curtis Lind, David “Chris” Maland, Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt

Despite whatever jokes you might want to make about the “Zizians,” you see that they are quite deadly. And also pathetic. Sitting in the courtroom Tuesday, we heard Daniel Blank’s squeaky voice blabbering incomprensibly, then Ms. Francoeur-Breeden mentioned that Blank has mental health issues. She said Blank’s stepfather, who was willing to help Blank get some kind of local residence if he could be released, had flown in from California and was present in the courtroom. Judge Bean asked the stepfather to stand up and address the bench. He was a gray-haired man in a brown overcoat, obviously distraught, and said he would do whatever he could to help his stepson. Daniel Blank reportedly has dyslexia and is somewhere on the “spectrum” of autism. Yet, as Ms. Francoeur-Breeden told the court, he was unquestionably “brilliant”:

Daniel Blank was born in Berkeley, California and always excelled in school, earning straight A’s and praise from his teachers, his mother Nadia Blank told Open Vallejo. He competed on a science bowl team throughout middle and high school and was fluent in three languages, she said.
Blank, who became vegan in college, graduated a semester early from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in bioengineering and computer science, according to a resume posted on his LinkedIn profile. As an undergraduate, he conducted research for two Berkeley professors and interned at Oracle and Daphnia Labs.
Blank’s mother said he accepted a high-paying corporate offer in Oakland following graduation.

Blank disappeared in 2022, and seeing his stepfather in court was emotionally jarring. Being a father myself, what must it be like to have your “brilliant” stepson disappear, end up in some kind of weird cult, and get arrested in connection with a nationwide crime spree?

As Ms. Francoeur-Breeden said of all three of her clients, Blank has no prior criminal convictions, but like the other two, he was ordered held without bond because of the circumstances surrounding the case, and the fact that they’re all considered “extreme” flight risks. And this, despite the fact that all the charges against them in Maryland are misdemeanors, which in almost any other case would get them released on very low bails.

It was near the intersection of Piney Mountain Road and Coon Club Road in Frostburg, Maryland, that the three “Zizians” were apprehended Sunday afternoon, as detailed in the police report:

Not long after 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Maryland State Police, Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and Maryland Natural Resources Police responded to a property on Piney Mountain Road off Coon Club Road in Frostburg after a man called and reported that two white box trucks with chains on the tires were trespassing on his property.
The man informed police that he told the three people who were wearing all black that they were not allowed on his property. They asked him if they could camp there for one month.
The property owner told law enforcement that the three people appeared suspicious and he wanted them removed from his property, police reported.
When Master Trooper Brandon Jeffries approached the vehicles, he alleges he saw a man sitting in the passenger seat of one of the trucks and ordered him to show his hands. That’s when Blank stated that he had a learning disability and did not understand, police reported.
Then, Jeffries asserts, he saw someone wipe the window in the other truck because it had fogged up.
Police reported that they found two people in that truck who were wearing gun belts that contained ammunition.
Next, Jeffries ordered them to get out of the vehicle. Michelle Zajko, he claims, cried and pleaded with him not to kill her.
Jeffries alleges that he told Zajko and Jack LaSota about the complaint that they were trespassing. The two agreed to leave, police reported, but they then refused to show their IDs.
As Jeffries looked through the back door of the truck, he asserts, he spotted a rifle and a handgun.
The three refused to give their names, police reported. Law enforcement arrested Blank and LaSota.
Police then took Zajko to the ground after they claim she refused to put her hands behind her back. Officers reported that they found a loaded handgun in her waistband.
The FBI identified Blank, LaSota and Zajko after looking at pictures.

Kind of peeved that I didn’t obtain a copy of that report myself, as I’d asked about the availability of such documents at the court clerk’s office. Meanwhile, the Vermont Digger has an excellent report about the federal firearms charges filed against Zajko, who apparently provided false information on her federal forms when she purchased four pistols in Vermont in 2024. Authorities say Zajko supplied the guns used by Youngblut and Bauckholt in the shootout that killed Chris Maland, which is a much more serious thing than the misdemeanor charges in Maryland.

The next court appearance for the three suspects is March 24, which gives investigators five weeks to gather more evidence. So far as I know, the only Zizian cultist whose whereabouts are unknown now is Jasper “Gwen” Danielson, but I’m sure the FBI has alerted law enforcement nationwide to be on the lookout for him/“her.” Hope they’re all locked up a long time, because as I keep telling y’all, Crazy People Are Dangerous.



 

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Category: California, Crime, Maryland, Pennsylvania, The Transgender Cult, Vermont

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