Thealleged ringleaderof what has been called a Bay Area “ murder rage ” was arrested this weekend , along with a issue of other supposed phallus of the dark and orphic group .
Jack LaSota , a 34 - year - old “ blogger ” and Berkeley native , was taken into custody in Maryland on Sunday . LaSota , who is transgendered , and identify as a womanhood , is better known by her on-line sobriquet “ Ziz . ” For twelvemonth , LaSotahas been associatedwith a slack - knit group that stresses a bizarre form of techno - fundamentalism and has been link to multiple slayings .
Ziz has now been charged with trespassing , obstructing and hindering , and willpower of a shooting iron , the Associated Pressreports . shoot into custody alongside LaSota were two other apparent members of the group , Michelle Zajko , 32 , of Media , Pennsylvania , and Daniel Blank , 26 , of Sacramento , California . These are only the most recent arrests in the typeface , which cross multiple states , and is believed to be connected to at least six murders .
© Michael Ciaglo (Getty Images)
Thepreviously arrestedinclude Maximilian Snyder — who has been accuse of stab an 82 - year - former California landlord to death — and 21 - year - old Teresa Youngblut — who is implicate in the shot last of a Border Patrol police officer in Vermont . Weirdly , Synder and Youngblut have also been connect via a wedlock licence , though it is unclear if they are in reality wed . Another alleged extremity of the group , a German citizen and patent quantitative trader namedFelix “ Ophelia ” Bauckholt , was killed during the Vermont shootout .
Meanwhile , the parents of Zajko — who was recently arrested — were found slay in her Pennsylvania home plate in 2022 , and law recall those unsolved homicides may be tie in to the recent string of demise .
Quite bizarrely , LaSota was previously thought to be dead . AP writes that , in the summer of 2022 , the U.S. Coast Guard responded to news report that LaSota had come down into the San Francisco Bay . Subsequently , an obituary for him was published and his mother also seemed to confirm he had died , AP writes . However , LaSota subsequently protrude back up in Vallejo and was say to have been contact by constabulary at the site of yet another crime . Thus , it has been reported thathe cook his own death .
The Zizianshave been called a “ demise cult”and a “ murder work party ” though , in many agency , the connections between all of the group ’s alleged extremity are n’t totally clear yet . A numeral of them seem to have lived and travel together . Some mathematical group memberslived on a propertyin Vallejo , California , that was have by Curtis Lind , the 82 - year - former landlord who was latterly poke to decease — allegedly by Snyder . bad blood between the group members and Lind allegedly stemmed from their failure to make up rent during the pandemic , which led Lind to take them to tourist court for back payments . Prior to his death , Lind was also stabbed with a samurai swordby one of the fellow member of the chemical group . During that same affray , Lind fatally dash another one of the group ’s members . At the time of his destruction , Lind was lay totestify against some of the group ’s membersover this previous violent incident .
The chemical group ’s broader mission is also something of a whodunit , though they seem to have a clear-cut ideology , some of which has been position out on the popular e - meeting place LessWrong . Reading through the online post made by Zizian extremity is an exercise in sanity examination . It has been claim that the mathematical group is in the first place associated with veganism , AI doomerism , and the “ rationalist ” movement .
In abizarre screedthat was dictate to journalists at The San Francisco Chronicle , murder suspect Snyder address a spectacular member of the rationalist movement , Eliezer Yudkowsky . Yudowsky is the founding father of LessWrong , where many of the Zizians have posted their thoughts . “ I am not one of Ziz ’s friend , and neither she nor her Friend endorse me or my actor’s line so far as I get it on , ” Snyder said , in the dictated affirmation . “ I mouth only for myself , as myself , for the sake of everyone . This I swear on my practice of law , ” he enunciate , before going on an extensive rant about how Yudkowsky demand to have a “ crisis of religion ” over his notion .
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