Tangled web of 'Zizian cult' duo who planned to marry and were both netted for separate murders in same week

Daily Mail, UK/February 2, 2025

By Samantha Rutt

A Washington couple, who planned to marry, have been booked in separate murder cases in the same week - both seemingly linked to a violent California 'vegan trans cult'.

The duo, who filed for a marriage license in King County, Washington in November, have been accused of murdering a US border patrol agent and a state's witness on opposite sides of the country.

Maximilian Snyder, 22, and Teresa Youngblut, 21, are now at the center of a sprawling federal investigation as law enforcement officials investigate their alleged murder charges, links to the California-based 'cult' and its ties to another unsolved murder case in Pennsylvania.

The pair are allegedly connected to a mysterious cult of transgender 'geniuses' who follow a trans leader.

The group, known as the 'Zizians,' are highly educated trans vegan 'rationalists' who hold fringe ideological beliefs about transhumanism and animal rights.

Their leader, Jack 'Ziz' LaSota, is a biological male who identifies as a woman. LaSota also used the name Andrea Phelps, and is accused of influencing followers to kill, the New York Post reported.

Snyder, an 'any pronouns' Oxford-educated data scientist and an alleged member of the 'cult,' was arrested in Northern California last Friday.

Youngblut, a biological female who identifies as trans and and lists having neo-pronouns as 'xe/xem/xyrs' on social media, was charged last week in Vermont in connection with the shooting of US Border Patrol Agent David Maland.

Authorities now believe the two cross-country murders involving the couple may be connected.         

In a motion filed on Monday, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Vermont alleges that Youngblut, also a computer science student at the University of Washington, had been in 'frequent contact' with a 'person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California'.

Snyder, however, was arrested in Redding, California days earlier in connection with the January 17 stabbing death of a long-time Vallejo property owner, 82-year-old Curtis Lind, according to Solano County jail records.

Snyder was charged with murder and two enhancements on Monday, according to court records.

Without releasing the name of the suspect, federal prosecutors said the Vallejo murder suspect, who was mentioned in the Monday report, was also previously detained, but not charged, in connection with a double homicide in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, in Coventry, Vermont, Youngblut and a German national, Felix Baukholt, had been under investigative surveillance since January 14 after an employee at a nearby hotel reported suspicious behavior from the duo.

The hotel employee reported seeing the pair dressed in black tactical clothing and protective equipment, according to the affidavit, Open Vallejo reported. The concerned employee also told officials they saw Youngblut carrying a holstered firearm.

The pair were later pulled over by US Border Patrol agents on January 20 for an immigration inspection, according to an FBI affidavit.

Investigators said Bauckholt, a German citizen, appeared to have an expired visa, although they later learned it was in good standing.

However, the routine stop quickly soured as 'without warning', the FBI alleges, Youngblut drew and fired a handgun toward an agent.

Youngblut, Bauckholt, and the agent, Maland, 44, were shot during the exchange of gunfire.

Bauckholt was pronounced dead at the scene and Maland died at North Country Hospital.

Youngblut, who was transported to a medical center in New Hampshire for treatment, has since been charged with two federal crimes.

The 21-year-old computer science student was charged with intentional use of a deadly weapon while forcibly assaulting or interfering with federal law enforcement, and use and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to an assault with a deadly weapon.

Now, authorities have Youngblut and Snyder in custody as well as two others believed to be connected to the 'cult'.

The others, Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham, were arrested in connection with a near-fatal attack on Lind, years earlier in November 2022.

The landlord had allegedly threatened his current tenants, Dao and Leatham, who lived in box trucks on the property, with eviction after they failed to pay rent, citing a pandemic-era moratorium.

The pair, along with 31-year-old Emma Borhanian, attacked Lind with knives and a samurai sword. Lind lost his right eye in the attack and obtained several other life threatening injuries and Borhanian was killed in an act of self defense from the property owner, records show.

Dao and Leatham, are both trans and are believed to be members of the so-called 'cult'.

Lind was set to deliver the only eyewitness statement against the 2022 attackers before a court. Now, without his testimony there will be no witnesses to defend the brutal attempt on the landlord's life.

'Mr. Lind is the only eye-witness to this case and his testimony is critical for the People to have the ability to prove their case,' prosecutors wrote in court papers filed the day before Lind died, also noting: 'These defendants are extremely dangerous, they have both tried to escape from custody.'

In a review of the property after the gruesome attack, a close friend of Lind's called the tenant's living quarters 'creepy in the extreme'.

'It was actually very uncomfortable,' Lind's friend, Thomas Young, said about walking into the live-in box trucks.

'You kinda wanted to put on a hazmat suit before going into it. It was really just creepy in the extreme,' he added.

Several community members have previously, and since, come forward about their concerns with the strange and seemingly dangerous 'cult'.

Posts in various online forums have attributed the November 2022 attack to the 'Zizians,' Open Vallejo reported.

Believed members of the 'Zizian' group, LaSota and Leatham, among others, were arrested following a 2019 protest at a Center of Applied Rationality, a Rationalist nonprofit based in Berkley.

The group allegedly blocked the exits of the Westminster Camp and Conference Center with multiple vehicles and wore robes and Guy Fawkes masks. A Westminster employee told the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office that one protester had a gun, but the report was never confirmed.

Community warnings posted in online forums about the group cite the protest and the 2022 stabbing as evidence of their potential danger.

Jessica Taylor, a friend of Bauckholt's, who she knew as 'Ophelia,' claims she tried to protect her friend against the strange 'cult'.

Taylor says she warned Bauckholt about 'Zizians,' calling them a 'murder gang'.

She added that she fell out of communication with Bauckholt in late 2023.

It is not clear what kind of, if any, structure the group has.

She said the group believes in timeless decision theory, a Rationalist belief suggesting that human decisions and their effects are mathematically quantifiable.

The Zizians also apparently believe that because there are two hemispheres in the brain, individuals can split their consciousness between two personalities by waking one side at a time, Taylor said.

She said veganism and animal rights are central to the ideology.

A bio for an Instagram account that appears to belong to Youngblut reads, 'talk to me about being vegan and AI alignment'.

Snyder and Youngblut's social media posts and accounts reportedly displayed beliefs consistent with Zizianism but their accounts have since been removed. Court records do not explicitly tie them to the ideology.

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