Trans Cultist Charged with Murder of 'Her' Parents

Do you remember the trans cult known as the Zizians? I wrote about them several times last year because members of this group have been tied to a number of murders. Like a lot of bad ideas, this one started in Berkeley. The cult-like group formed around Jack Amadeus “Ziz” LaSota, a trans woman and a "rationalist," plus another trans woman named Gwen Danielson.

They were part of a Bay Area intellectual movement and subculture, called rationalism, whose followers coalesced, in online forums and at communal homes and gatherings in Berkeley, around their desire to improve human cognition and their fears about runaway artificial intelligence.

LaSota and Danielson were also transgender and vegan, factors that heavily influenced them; they believed trans women were intrinsically gifted.

Two two lived on a small sailboat but as the group grew they decided to create a "rat fleet" of old boats which they could live on and move from place to place. They bought an old tugboat but wouldn't pay for a place to anchor it so it became a problem. Eventually they abandoned the boats (literally) and wound up in legal trouble. It was at this point that "Ziz" faked his own death to avoid being hit with fines/charges related to the old tugboat. 

Meanwhile, the group rented a fleet of RVs instead which they parked at a property in Vallejo, CA which belonged to a man named Curtis Lind. Lind charged them $2,000 a month in rent. After a few months, Lind decided he'd had enough of the group which was not paying him the rent they'd agreed on. And at that point the Zizians decided to murder him. They attacked him and one ran him through with a samurai sword. He was armed and shot two of them, killing one member. Somehow Lind survived and members of the cult were facing attempted murder charges. But just before Lind was set to testify to what the cult had done to him, he was murdered by another person connected to the cult.

Last January, two members of the cult were pulled over by a border patrol agent in Vermont near the Canadian border. They opened fired and killed him but the agent fired back, killing one of the attackers, Felix Bauckholt. The guns used in the attack came from yet another Ziz associate named Michelle Zajko who is also trans.

Michelle Zajko's parents both were killed on New Year's Eve 2022.

Rita, 69, had a gunshot wound to the back of her head, her autopsy found. Richard, 71, had taken a bullet to his right hand and another to his right temple, according to his autopsy.

Their bodies were discovered in an upstairs bedroom. No gun was found at the scene, according to court records, but there were two 9 mm shell casings — each bearing a stamped impression of “9mm Luger +P SIG.”

Michelle, their only child, was a prime suspect. Investigators learned she'd bought a gun prior to the killings and even saw it briefly but at the time they lacked a warrant and couldn't seize it. The gun was later found in the room of Jack "Ziz" LaSota.

This week, Michelle Zajko was finally charged in the death of her parents.

A woman with ties to a cultlike group called the Zizians has been charged with the murder of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, inside their Pennsylvania home in December 2022.

Michelle Zajko, 33, was charged with murder, conspiracy and related offenses in the death of her parents in their Delaware County home, court documents show.

"We are finally at the point where we can say beyond any doubt that Michelle Zajko was at least in part responsible for the death of her parents," Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Wednesday. "She did not act alone. At this time, we do not know who her co-conspirators were, but we are very certain that Michelle Zajko was in the home and arranged for the death of her parents."...

"It does not seem to be a spur-of-the-moment operation," Rouse said. "There was clearly quite a bit of thought put into this. When that started, I can't say. What spurred that, I can't say. But it certainly wasn't sloppy."

There's video showing two people entered the house that day for about 10 minutes. Michelle was (allegedly) one of them but the 2nd person hasn't been identified yet. Here's the booking photo.

Finally, it's worth noting that despite the long trail of murders associated with this group, NBC News and CNN can barely bring themselves to mention to readers that nearly all of the group's members are trans. NBC gives it exactly one paragraph near the end of the story.

The group’s leader is believed to be Jack “Ziz” LaSota, an Alaskan computer scientist and blogger. Like several other members, LaSota is transgender and identifies as female.

CNN is even worse and barely mentions it at all. 

Authorities, however, had long described Zajko as a person of interest in the double homicide, two of the six deaths linked to a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists who appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence.

Here's a local news report about the charges.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/06/25/trans-cultist-charged-with-death-of-her-parents-n3816321