The Zizians are a small offshoot of the rationalist community, with alleged involvement in six violent deaths across the United States.^[1][2][3] These deaths include a November 2022 attack on their landlord Curtis Lind in California, who killed one member in self-defense, and survived but was killed two years later, allegedly by another person associated with the group. In a still unsolved case from January 2023, the parents of one member were found shot to death in Pennsylvania. In January 2025 in Vermont, United States Border Patrol agent David Maland was killed in a shootout during a traffic stop of two persons associated with the group that also left one of the individuals (Ophelia Bauckholt, a German national) dead.

The term Zizians is derived from Ziz LaSota, who is sometimes characterized as their leader, but the term is only used by the group's critics; they themselves do not use this name.

Generally, Zizians hold anarchist beliefs,^[4] emphasize animal rights and veganism, and believe the hemispheres of the brain can have different genders and conflicting interests.^[5] The group has been described as radical or cult-like by publications such as The Independent,^[6] the CBC,^[7] and SFGate.^[8]

Multiple sources have linked the Zizians to six violent deaths across the United States.^{[4][5][9][10]} A court filing by federal prosecutors claims that Teresa Youngblut and the Zizians are associated with persons of interest in the murders of four people: David Maland (a Border Patrol agent), Curtis Lind (a landlord in California), and Richard and Rita Zajko (the parents of one of the persons of interest in Pennsylvania).^[11] In addition, Emma Borhanian and Ophelia Bauckholt, both associates of the Zizians, were killed during these altercations.^[10]

After struggling with the upkeep of a tugboat they had been living on, which they eventually abandoned, some members of the group opted to move into trailers and converted box trucks.^[12] Curtis Lind, who docked a boat in the same harbor as the Zizians, offered to let them move into a lot he owned in Vallejo, California.^[12] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the group stopped paying rent. Group members also began placing locks on trailers meant for other tenants. When Lind took the group to court for back rent, one member brandished a knife, causing Lind to start carrying a pistol.^[5]

On November 15, 2022, Lind, then 80, was attacked by a group of people after being called in to fix a water leak. He was struck in the head, stabbed through the chest with a sword, and stabbed in his right eye, leaving him blind in that eye,^[11] but survived and fatally shot one of his attackers, 31-year-old Emma Borhanian, and injured another. They had been arrested alongside LaSota at a 2019 protest against an event organized by the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), and Borhanian had reported LaSota's 2022 alleged drowning. Two of Lind's alleged attackers were charged with Borhanian's murder due to their actions precipitating Lind's self-defense, under California's felony murder rule. LaSota was contacted by police during the incident but was not charged.^[5]

On January 17, 2025, three days before the shootout with U.S. Border Patrol officers, Lind was stabbed to death and had his throat slit outside his gated property in Vallejo.^[11] Lind had been expected to be an important witness in the trial of the alleged attackers for the felony murder of Borhanian, and stopping him from testifying was alleged as the motivation for killing him. Prosecutors charged 22-year-old data scientist Maximilian Snyder with Lind's murder.^[9] Youngblut had attended high school with Snyder and had recently applied for a marriage license to marry him.^[13][5] Snyder dictated to reporters a statement addressed to Eliezer Yudkowsky, calling himself "a student of Yudkowsky who became disillusioned with him".^[14]

LaSota was arrested in Maryland on February 16, 2025.^[4] She is being held in custody without bail;^[15] she requested a pretrial release, which a local judge denied.^{[16][relevant?]}

During a welfare check on January 2, 2023, Pennsylvania state police discovered the bodies of husband and wife Richard and Rita Zajko, aged 72 and 69 respectively, at their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania. Autopsies found that Rita had a gunshot wound in the back of her head and Richard had wounds in his right hand and temple. Their daughter, Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, who is associated with the Zizians, has been named a person of interest in the murders. She is alleged to have purchased guns found at the scene of Maland's killing and to have been in contact with a person of interest in Lind's murder.^[17]

On January 20, 2025, after a traffic stop, United States Border Patrol agent David Christopher Maland and at least one other Border Patrol agent engaged in a shoot-out with Youngblut and Bauckholt, leading to Maland's and Bauckholt's deaths and Youngblut's wounding. Youngblut and Bauckholt were traveling south on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont, when they were pulled over.^[18] They were put under "periodic surveillance" nearly one week before the shooting after they were reported to be armed and wearing all-black tactical clothing when checking in to their hotel.^[19] The case has been connected to the killings of Lind and the Zajkos due to connections between the suspects.^[20]

Before traveling to Vermont, Youngblut and Bauckholt lived in separate Airbnb rentals in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.^[21] Both have been described as having cut off all contact with friends in fall 2023 and May 2024.^[22] Homeland Security Investigations agents had been conducting "periodic surveillance" of them since January 14.^[23]

A hotel employee in Lyndonville, Vermont, reportedly contacted law enforcement about the duo after seeing Youngblut carrying "an apparent firearm in an exposed carry holster". Both wore "all-black, tactical style clothing with protective equipment".^[23] After the report, Homeland Security agents contacted the duo, who refused to speak with them. They said they were in Vermont only to purchase real estate.^[23] The duo checked out of the Lyndonville hotel and were seen five days later in Newport, Vermont, with Youngblut carrying a handgun. The next day, hours before the shootout, the two were seen at a Walmart, with Bauckholt buying aluminum foil.^[23]

After the shooting, authorities found ammunition, a helmet, night-vision monoculars, a tactical belt with a holster, a pair of walkie-talkies, a magazine loaded with cartridges, and shooting-range targets in their car. Smartphones were also found, wrapped in aluminum foil, apparently to prevent their phones from being tracked.^[23][24] Their handguns were reportedly bought by an associate in Mount Tabor, Vermont.^[11][25]

Around 3:15 p.m., Agent David Maland initiated a traffic stop on I-91 southbound, about 15 kilometers from the border with Canada, with a blue 2015 Toyota Prius registered in North Carolina to conduct an immigration inspection.^[26] Bauckholt, a German national and the car's registered owner, appeared to have an expired visa in a Homeland Security database.^[23] Youngblut allegedly drew a handgun and fired at least two shots at the agent during the stop while Bauckholt also attempted to draw a firearm.^[23][27][24] At least one Border Patrol agent returned fire and shot the duo. Maland and Bauckholt were pronounced dead at the scene while Youngblut was taken to a hospital and later arrested.^[27]

Maland, 44, was a United States Air Force veteran.^[28] According to his family, he had been planning to marry his partner.^[29] Maland was an active security officer at the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks before handling security at Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling.^[30][24] He had worked for the last 15 years for the Department of Homeland Security as a border patrol agent and as a K-9 handler.^[29] Maland was the first Border Patrol agent killed by gunfire in the line of duty since 2014.^[29]

Vermont's U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch and U.S. House Representative Becca Balint issued a joint statement saying, "Our deepest condolences go out to the agent’s family, and to the Border Patrol".^[29] Representative Mark Green, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, issued a statement saying he was "heartbroken by the loss of Agent David Maland", adding, "[w]e must never forget that the men and women in green on the frontlines of this border crisis defend our homeland at great personal cost" and that "[f]ar too often these courageous public servants, like Agent Maland, pay the ultimate price".^[31]

Maland's flag-draped casket was carried by a motorcade from Burlington, Vermont to Albany International Airport by agents of the Border Patrol and Vermont State Police, and was flown to his family in Minnesota.^[32][33][34]

Although the group members themselves do not use this name or even consider themselves to be members of a group or to have a clearly identified leader, they are referred to by their critics as "Zizians", based on the name of their founder Ziz LaSota.^[12][5][9] Like many other members of the group, LaSota is transgender. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, LaSota targeted "smart, mostly autistic-ish transwomen who were extremely vulnerable and isolated" for recruitment.^[5]

LaSota, who was 34 years old as of 2025, earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering in 2013 from the University of Alaska Fairbanks,^[3] where her father works as an artificial intelligence researcher.^[5] LaSota had an internship at NASA^[5] and pursued a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2013 to 2014 but did not graduate.^[3]

LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in hopes of becoming involved with the effective altruism (EA) and rationality movements.^[12] Disaffected by high cost of housing, she and a group of fellow EA adherents^[who?] sought to form a seasteading intentional community. Initially living on sailboats, they eventually bought an old tugboat and sailed it from Alaska to the Bay Area.^[12] During her involvement with the rationality community, LaSota became disillusioned with the leadership of community institutions such as the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, partly due to allegations of sexual misconduct and discrimination.^{[which?][3][12]} CFAR co-founder Anna Salamon attempted to prevent LaSota from attending the fellowship due to strange beliefs and behavior at previous events, but was overruled by a committee.^[3] These included LaSota's theories that human consciousness can be split between the two hemispheres of the brain, which may hold different values, genders, and may be "good", "evil", or both.^[5][3] After more CFAR staff members raised concerns, LaSota was no longer invited to the group's events.^[3]

In 2019, LaSota and three other members of the movement^{[clarification needed]} staged a protest against a CFAR event in Occidental, California. The protest drew a forceful police response, including the deployment of a SWAT team.^[12] Mutual recriminations^[which?] between the Zizians and the rationalist community establishment about this protest and the police response drove the two groups into more acrimonious opposition.^[12] The Zizians filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sonoma County, which was dismissed.^[2] LaSota faked her own death in a supposed boating accident in August 2022, but turned up in January 2023 in Philadelphia and was arrested for obstruction of justice.^[3][2][5]

Ophelia Bauckholt was a transgender^[35] German citizen on a current visa working as a quantitative trader for Tower Research Capital in New York since October 2021.^[1][36][37] Before working at Tower, she worked as a trader at Radix Trading for two years and as an intern at Jane Street Capital.^[38] Bauckholt reportedly quit working for Tower in 2023, which put her visa's extension at risk.^[39]

Bauckholt was raised in Freiburg im Breisgau and attended the Goethe-Gymnasium there, where she was a gifted mathematician.^[40][41] In 2014 and in 2015, she won gold and bronze medals for the German team at the International Olympiad in Informatics.^[40][38][42] She graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics.^[38][39]

Bauckholt had expressed an interest in LessWrong rationalism after attending a CFAR event in 2019, and reportedly cut off contact with friends in the fall of 2023.^{[22][3][clarification needed]}

On January 20, 2025, Bauckholt was killed in a shootout in Coventry, Vermont, after being stopped by border patrol agent David Maland, who was also killed.^[24] The Freiburg public prosecutor's office is investigating the circumstances surrounding Bauckholt's death, as is done whenever a German citizen dies abroad.^[39]

Teresa Youngblut is a 21-year-old woman from Seattle.^[43][44] She was wounded during the shootout with Maland and taken to North Country Hospital before being transferred to Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.^[45] She graduated from the Lakeside School in Seattle and was studying computer science at the University of Washington.^[45][22]

Youngblut's parents reported her missing to the Seattle Police Department in May 2024. They feared she was in a controlling relationship and being forced to cut off contact with friends and family.^[45] Authorities allegedly found a journal containing "cypher text" and a mention of having recently^{[citation needed]} taken LSD.^[11][24] Youngblut was charged in connection with the shootout on federal charges of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and using and discharging a firearm during a violent crime; she was ordered detained without bail.^[46][47]